VIDEO | The Estee Lauder Companies CAO: Everyone and No One Owns Data

(US and Canada) Sol Rashidi, SVP and Chief Analytics Officer, The Estee Lauder Companies, speaks with Kellie de Leon, Treasure Data Content Marketing Senior Director, about expectations from the business side, understanding the data practice, and shifts in the data science space.

Rashidi starts by saying that data people deserve empathy and appreciation because everyone and no one owns data. While they have full accountability and responsibility, they do not have the full decision rates, making the job difficult. She mentions that today data is a commodity service and is expected to just be there. However, she maintains that non-tech companies have historically underinvested in data and need to catch up while meeting current expectations. 

Speaking about awareness of the data organization’s job, Rashidi says that the CDO and CAO roles have provided space to be technical and creative, and build phenomenal assets and capabilities. She mentions an initiative by a former leader in the organization that involved running two to three-day executive workshops on data and analytics. The CEO even mandated senior leaders to attend this workshop and complete the curriculum, she adds. Rashidi elaborates that the goal of such an initiative is to normalize the nomenclature, get a baseline understanding of the data world, and then go through use case exercises. 

Sharing her views on changes in the data and analytics space in the last few years, Rashidi points toward two key areas.

1. She says that leaders tend to fall for buzzwords and that not everything needs to be solved through AI. Vendors and software partners take advantage of these buzzwords.

2. Rashidi highlights the role of a data scientist. People are of the notion that data science is necessary for generating insights. She stresses that organizations actually need decision science. A lot of the business questions do not require double doctorates in mathematics and computer science, she says.