Governing Body Spotlight

Phil Bangayan is a Principal Data Scientist at Teradata, where he has worked since 2018. In this role, his industry focus is on the Media & Entertainment, Travel and Hospitality industries, drawing upon his fifteen years of experience in theme parks and resorts. Having worked in data science, finance and marketing roles, Phil’s functional passion is applying analytics to solve business problems, thereby growing revenue and reducing cost. He holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management and an MS in Electrical Engineering from UCLA.

Learn more about the Southern California CDAO community here.
 

Give us a brief overview of the path that led to your current role.

While I was building speech recognition systems for five years at Rockwell, I became interested in the business side of the company. This led me to finance and marketing roles at Disney and Universal where I saw firsthand how data and analytics helps companies make better informed decisions. The more I worked in these roles, the more I missed working with the enabling technology. For this reason, I’m happy to be a Principal Data Scientist at Teradata where I can stay close to the technology and see its applications in practice.
 

What is one of your guiding leadership principles?

Have your team take credit for the work they do and the value they bring.
 

With disruption being a key theme of the past few years, where do you see your role as a CDAO going in the next 1-2 years?

I see ethics playing a larger part of the CDAO’s role in the next 1-2 years, because technology enables more and more possibilities, but does not tell us whether we should pursue them.
 

What advice would you give to someone just starting out in the role as a CDAO?

Encourage your team to understand how their data, reports, and models are used by their partners. This will help your team members learn more about the underlying business as well as the value that their work contributes to help the company meet its goals.
 

Tell us three fun facts about yourself.

1. I was the Prince John character (from Robin Hood) when I worked at Disneyland.
2. I set up the UCLA Athletics Department’s first website.
3. I have attended three Final Fours and two Rose Bowls.
    

Evanta Governing Body members share their insights and leadership perspectives to shape the agendas and topics that address the top priorities impacting business leaders today.
 

by CDAOs, for CDAOs
 

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