(US and Canada) Don Vu, Chief Data Officer, Northwestern Mutual, speaks with Cheryl Rodenfels, Chief Technology Officer, Field Stratascale – an SHI Company, about implementing AI initiatives, services for internal customers, and adoption of new technology.

Vu shares five key focus areas for implementing AI initiatives. The first requires a cross-functional coalition to bring solutions to life. The second involves treating parallel AI initiatives as a portfolio to understand how they complement each other. The third is AI governance, which includes regulation, AI bias, ethics, privacy, and security. Finally, implementing AI initiatives requires focusing on short-term wins and considering the incremental value provided in the short term.

Vu mentions that a reasonable amount of effort goes into evangelizing the overall data strategy and services. His organization centralized many data capabilities under one umbrella to enable a more cohesive and strategic direction across all functions. The data strategy steering committee meets every month and reviews roadmap progress. A community is maintained for sharing best practices across the enterprise.

Regarding the adoption of new technology and services, he says Northwestern Mutual’s strategic, clear perspective on its capabilities as an organization allows quick value delivery for its business partners.

While it started with a foundational notion of aggregating data into a unified data platform, advanced machine learning capabilities are being considered now, Vu says.

Concerning the workforce, Northwestern Mutual has its core data engineering team and data science and analytics team, and a machine learning analytics team within that. There is also an innovation arm specific to data science. Vu explains that their data product team ensures all of the firm’s functions work harmoniously. 

In conclusion,  he emphasizes that leaders need to be bimodal, operating and taking care of today while innovating for the future.