Heidi Lanford is a Chief Data and Analytics Officer with over 30 years of global strategy and operations leadership experience. Most recently, she served as the Chief Data Officer at Fitch Group, one of the big three credit ratings agencies. In this role, she was responsible for Fitch’s data across all divisions and products, and leading their digital transformation to harness data in order to provide next-generation tools for clients.
She joined Fitch from Red Hat (IBM), where she was Vice President of Enterprise Data & Analytics, leading strategy and execution across analytics, business intelligence, data science, AI/ML, data literacy education, data architecture and governance. She previously held executive-level positions with Avaya and WPP. She was an advisor for HearstLab, which provides investment and services to early-stage, women-led technology startups. She serves on the advisory board for the School of Data Science at the University of Virginia, the editorial board for CDO Magazine, and is a founding board member for Tableau’s Data Leadership Collaborative, which connects like-minded leaders who are building data-driven organizations.
