Executive
Track: Analytics Leadership
Analytics Leadership Skills
Analytics is a quantitative, technical discipline by its nature. Leading an analytics organization additionally entails a whole different set of skills than those required to be an Analytics practitioner. This presentation will address the author’s choice of the Top 10 Analytics Leadership Skills, and through real-world examples and mini-case studies demonstrate the importance of these skills in ensuring successful Analytics project and initiative outcomes. Drawing from 30 years of experience with companies like American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and Walmart, the author will offer experience-based examples of the softer skills required to run an Analytics organization like a “business unit” and not simply a “group of Analytics professionals.”
Douglas Gray
Douglas Gray
Director of Data Strategy & Insights at Walmart
Douglas A. Gray is an entrepreneur, practitioner, and executive with 30+ years of experience in Data & Analytics, IT/Software, E-Commerce, and Consulting. He has worked for Fortune 1-250, start-up, and early-stage companies in industries including retail, airlines, travel distribution, financial services, healthcare insurance, consulting, and commercial software. Doug is currently a Director at Walmart in Global Data – Analytics Solutions Consulting where he leads teams that increase efficiency, cost effectiveness, and revenue/profit performance leveraging data and advanced analytics focused on the Supply Chain. Previously, Doug served as Director, Enterprise Data & Analytics at Southwest Airlines. Through the data and analytics solutions delivered, Doug’s organization at Southwest Airlines generated $100M in annual operating cost reduction, and $100M in annual revenue augmentation. As a result the team was recognized with the following industry awards: Teradata EPIC Award, Alteryx Best Business ROI Award (2) and Drexel LeBow Analytics50 Award (2), & FICO Decision Management Innovation Award and AGIFORS Operations Best Innovation Award.
Doug was an early team member at award-winning American Airlines Decision Technologies (AADT) (now Sabre Airline Solutions), which pioneered numerous innovations driving substantial economic impact in the use of Analytics in the airline industry, solving commercial and operational problems across the enterprise. At Sabre, Doug served as the Founding CTO of Travelocity.com, the world’s first real-time, Internet-based travel reservation system. Doug served as Acting Director of Analytics at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City where he led the development of an Analytics Platform, i.e., a data warehouse, an operational dashboard, and a portfolio of analytical scoring models for measuring patient propensity for health conditions, behaviors, and outcomes. BCBSKC evolved the platform into a commercial Analytics-as-a-Service enterprise (CobaltTalon) serving other BCBS entities that was sold to HealthLumen.
Through his own company, Blueprint Technology Advisors, LLC, d.b.a., Optima Analytics, he has advised executive leadership teams on best practices of applying Technology & Analytics to corporate strategy and Digital Transformation, and implementing Technology & Analytics organizations and capabilities. As a consulting professional, he has taught executive education seminars in Analytics since 2009. He has taught BA6057 Business Analytics at SMU’s Cox School of Business EMBA Program since 2016, through which his students’ real-world Case Analysis Projects routinely delivery 6-7-8-figure ($M) tangible, measurable business value and economic impact benefits.
As of 2018, he is the primary instructor for DS6057 Business Analytics for SMU’s MS in Data Science program. He holds an MBA from SMU’s Cox School of Business (Beta Gamma Sigma), an MS in Operations Research from the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering (Omega Rho – Qualified), and a BS cum laude in Mathematical Sciences (Statistics) from Loyola University Maryland (Pi Mu Epsilon). Doug is a recognized Analytics Expert of the International Institute for Analytics (IIA). He has published several articles and academic papers on analytics applications, and been an invited keynote & guest speaker and panel discussion participant at industry conferences and universities world-wide, including INFORMS, Gartner, IIA, Alteryx, SMU, NC State, Univ. of Dallas, and Georgia Tech.
Doug is originally from Baltimore, Maryland, however he considers himself a “transplanted Texan” having lived in North Texas for over 20 years. He is married to his wife Sonja, and has two grown sons, Nathan, a licensed commercial diver, & Ryan, a student at The University of Arkansas-Fayetteville Sam Walton College of Business, and a Wheaten Terrier-Lhasa Apso rescue, Charlie. He lives in Dallas, Texas.
