(US and Canada) EY has named Richard Clough as its Global Chief Data Officer (CDO). Clough has been with EY for over 20 years, advising global companies on tax transformation, finance, data strategy, governance, and digital tax initiatives. Before stepping into the CDO role, he played a key part in shaping EY’s approach to AI-ready data, working across geographies and business functions.

Prior to EY, Clough spent five years at GE Capital, leading projects in acquisition integration, tax treasury initiatives, tax reporting, and compliance process improvement. He holds an ACA qualification (ICAEW), an MA in Corporate Strategy, and a BSc in Economics from the University of Nottingham.

Clough succeeds Marco Vernocchi, who, as EY’s first Global CDO, laid the foundation for managing generative AI (GenAI) integration and developed EY’s “Trusted Data Fabric” to connect platforms through a semantic layer for metadata and policy management. Vernocchi also championed knowledge graphs, which help AI applications interpret relationships and context within data. His focus on targeted data readiness ensured AI implementations addressed specific business use cases rather than attempting to make all enterprise data AI-ready at once.

As Global CDO, Clough will continue to build a strong AI-ready data foundation, leverage synthetic data, and drive collaboration across EY’s tech alliances. He will report to Joe Depa, EY’s Global Chief Innovation Officer, under Raj Sharma, Global Managing Partner for Growth and Innovation. Vernocchi will transition to Global Innovation Commercial Leader, focusing on scaling key innovation investments.