 Hello and welcome to Data Diversity Talks, a podcast where we discuss with industry leaders and experts how they have built their careers around data. I'm your host Shannon Kemp and today we're talking to Akradi Agrawal, the manager of Data Governance at American Express. With a robust catalog of courses offered on demand and industry leading live online sessions throughout the year, the Data Diversity Training Center is your launch pad for career success. Browse the complete catalog at training.dativersity.net and use code DBTOX for 20% off your purchase. Hello and welcome my name is Shannon Kemp and I'm the Chief Digital Officer at Data Diversity and this is my career in data, a Data Diversity Talks podcast dedicated to learning from those who have careers in data management to understand how they got there and to be talking with people who help make those careers a little bit easier. Today we are joined by Akradi Agrawal, the manager of Data Governance at American Express and normally this is where a podcast host would read a short bio the guest, but in this podcast your bio is what we're here to talk about. Akradi, hello and welcome. Hey Shannon, thanks for having me glad to be here. I so appreciate it. So you're the manager of Data Governance at American Express. What does that mean and what is it that you do? Yeah, absolutely. So Data Governance in a nutshell is primarily two aspects of data. So there's a lot of different careers in data as you know a lot of the other guests on this podcast have spoken about data governance specifically handles two different areas. So we look at data catalog so what data means to a company more from the business side as well as where that data sits in our technical databases and then the other side of it is now that you know where your data sits, how do you know you can trust it? So we look at data quality and we'll set up rules and code to implement data quality across our databases so people can trust their data better. So that's pretty much what I do those two aspects of it at American Express we have a fairly large team doing that we're a fairly large company and so we're actually on a federated team, which means that there's an enterprise team so there's one data governance team that's setting up the policies and the procedures and best practices for the whole company. And then I'm on a team in a specific business line that actually implements those policies and helps work with our business partners to ensure that we're meeting our standards. We are compliant with any regulatory policies that we might have as well as we're just getting them what we need what they need. Very interesting. I love that the quality is an aspect of your job and a very important aspect of your job. So just in case somebody doesn't know who, what is American Express and what do they do? American Express is a Fortune 100 company that works all across the world in credit cards and financial services. So you might know us as the blue box, maybe the platinum card, the gold card, the centurion card, which is very hard to get. And so we work with data from all across the globe and help people around the world with all of their finances. We do a lot of work in travel. So that's a large part of our business. That's actually where we started from. And as an employer, we have employees all over the world, about 73,000 employees working at the company. And yeah, it's been pretty good. A lot of data. That is a lot of data. Yeah. There's millions of transactions, billions of transactions a day that we're processing. Wow. That's amazing. So beyond that, I also understand you are the co-founder of Girls Code Lincoln and the founder of the non-profiting org. Tell me about those. Yes. So my whole career, I've really focused on my corporate career, which has been in data, and then also on what I call non-profiting. So I've been doing a lot of nonprofit work and volunteer work in our communities. I actually used to, I currently live in Phoenix, Arizona, but I used to live in Lincoln, Nebraska, where I founded Girls Code Lincoln, which was a non-profit that taught middle school girls how to computer program. I'm a self-taught computer programmer. So I actually started it when I was learning to code myself. And we started with seven girls and have since grown to about 100 that we serve on a semester by semester basis. That's amazing. Yeah. I volunteered with it for about six years and recently actually transitioned out. And so we have our first non-founder board of directors and operations team, which I'm really proud of and something that is very, it's a very close to my heart nonprofit. I'm actually in the process of starting my next nonprofit, which is the non-profiting org. So not quite a founder yet, but it's about to be a serial nonprofit founder, which I'm very excited for. And the non-profiting org supports other nonprofit founders. So I'm hoping to overcome three major barriers that I overcame when I started Girls Code Lincoln and help other people get through them a little faster and a little more efficiently. So we're giving nonprofit founders more of a community. So we're doing monthly meetups where they can meet other nonprofit founders around the world. And then we're actually going to start our own podcast soon where we talk about nonprofit resources and interview experts in the nonprofit space. So that founders can learn how to do this well and how to do it right. And then hopefully eventually we'll get to some funding for founders and become almost like a nonprofit incubator where we can help nonprofit start up and give them all of the support that they need financial and otherwise to grow. So that's kind of my new goal. I really enjoy the volunteering side outside of work and helps keep me grounded and also gives me a really great experience for my career. That's amazing. So do you sleep like I'm getting better. Apparently we'll sleep nine hours. That's crazy. It's been really nice to sleep more. Yeah. I used to volunteer about 45 hours a week with Girls Code Lincoln. Wow. It was a full second job for me. Wow. And I loved it. But that means that you give up on some things and I was not willing to travel and I was not willing to give up on socialization. So I gave up on sleep. Something's got to go. That's amazing. All right. Well, so tell me when you were just a child, just a wee one, you know, is this what you wanted to be when you grew up? Do you like I'm going to be a manager of data governance? I'm going to start all these nonprofits. No, I don't think any kid really is like, I'm going to work in data. It's not really usually the dream. I was really into the water and oceans and wanted to be marine biologists. And then I think when I was in maybe the seventh or eighth grade, I learned that a large part of marine biology is biology, which I know seems silly. I was not good at biology. And so that was not going to work out for me. And I actually didn't. I think this is true of a lot of data governance folk. I didn't know about data governance till I was working in it. I was voluntold to work in it. And the nonprofit, I actually did never. I wanted to start a nonprofit, but not necessarily this one. And Girls Code Lincoln just kind of ended up becoming a thing. And because we just it was one step at a time. And we got to a point where it needed to become a nonprofit. So no, I never wanted to be any of these things. But I'm really excited that that's where I've ended up. And I think that's true of a lot of careers. A lot of people think that at least when I was in college, I always thought careers are a very straight path. I went to school for actuarial science and you go to school for actuarial science, you become an actuary and you take your actuarial tests and you become more of an actuary. And then that's what you do. That's your career, your retire. But I feel like most adults don't have straight career paths. And they you can all of your skills are transferable. And so you can take the skills that you learn in your degree or otherwise and apply them in other places. And that's, I think, been my career in a nutshell, where I've taken all of these skills and applied them elsewhere. So I think that's really important to think about when we think about our careers, what are we learning and what are we enjoying? And how can we apply that to other spaces? Even spaces we would have never thought about. Absolutely. We're learning a lot of that through this podcast and interviews. So tell me a bit about that path. So you, you know, you discover that biology, maybe not your thing. So where did you go from there? So when I was in high school, I went to, I did the International Baccalaureate, which is where you choose your subjects. And so you don't take standard subjects. You can kind of choose. So I started taking economics and business in the ninth grade, which is unusual for like a freshman in high school to start taking all of those classes. And I took advanced levels of those classes. And my economics teacher in the ninth and 10th grade would tell me about actuarial science. She would say, you know, you're really good at math. You're really good at econ. You like business. Why don't you look at actuarial science? She would say actuarial science and econometrics. These are two careers that are good for you. And I, you know, it's a hard to remember word. And I never wrote it down. And so one day she printed off the Wikipedia for me of actuarial science and handed it to me. And she said, this is what you're going to do, probably. Like this seems like the right career path for you. And it just sounded really interesting. I at the time was volunteering in high school. I was volunteering at a local school. I went to high school in India and was volunteering at a low income school in my neighborhood and could see the effects of them not having like financial stability to how it was affecting their education. So their parents being financially unstable affected their entire educational outcome. And I guess 10th grade me was like, you know how we can fix this, insurance. Insurance is the key to fixing all of this. My city got a lot of floods and insurance is not very common in India, but definitely not common with people who are lower income. Because it requires a disposable income for you to purchase insurance policies. And so I just decided I was going to start an insurance nonprofit and that was my dream. So I went to school for actuarial science. I went to the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, which is one of the top actuarial science schools in the country. And so it chose it for my undergrad and absolutely loved my college experience. I was very involved. I learned a lot about startups and about nonprofits and about what was happening in our community, but I wasn't really involved in any of it. So when I graduated, I was looking for mostly actuarial science jobs. And it's hard to find actuarial science jobs because there weren't a lot of them. And I was an international student, which made it even harder to get hired. And so I got offered a job at a tech startup. And they said if I could learn how to computer program in two weeks, I would have a job. And I just really wanted a job. And I loved the idea of working at a startup because I wanted to start up my own thing. And so I felt like I could take my experience from the startup and apply it to my insurance nonprofit one day. I was always like a long-term dream, I would have a whole career and retire and that's what I would do. And so I would talk about it all the time because my dream, my hope was that someone else would just start it and then I wouldn't have to. So we wouldn't have to wait 40 years for it to happen. But I started working at this startup and was learning to code and found that it was really challenging. I worked as a data analyst. So I did everything related to data at the company and we were an engineering firm. And so we had a lot of data that we brought in from our own product. I also did all of our web development. So learned this whole new array of things that I never really thought I would do. We didn't do a lot of computer programming in actuarial science. So it wasn't really anything I had learned in college. And so I started, I was at an event and there was a booth Girls Who Code which is a national nonprofit, had a local chapter and they had a booth and I walked up to them and they were teaching their fourth graders the same language as I was trying to learn. And so in my brain it just made logical sense that I should volunteer and I can just learn with them. And one thing led to another and we actually ended up founding our local Girls Who Code chapter into Girls Code Lincoln which was our own grassroots nonprofit and large part of that was because of funding and because of the way that we wanted to run our own curriculum. And in that process, I then got recruited to work at an insurance company, also in Lincoln, Nebraska. And that made a lot of sense because I was an actuary but during my interview process of my last interview identified maybe I shouldn't be a data analyst maybe I should be in data governance. And so during my interview, I was told to go research data governance and call them back and I had never heard of it before. And so I went and read the Wikipedia on data governance. I had almost nothing and called them back and said, okay, I don't really get it but I understand that data is important and I'm good at communicating and that's I think important to this field. So I would love to learn how to do this. And so that's how I started working in data governance. So I worked at an insurance company and a lot of my clients were actuaries which is part of why they wanted me. It was, I was also a very small department which is very common in data governance. We were starting up a new program and I had experience starting up a nonprofit. And so they thought that I would be good at this. They also wanted somebody who could translate tech and business and I was now a computer programmer but I had a business background. And so it was serendipitous and kind of perfect. So I worked there for three years and then it was recruited to American Express which was in between that three years I finished my master's degree. I got an MBA in entrepreneurship and nonprofit, nonprofit management and like change management. That's what I studied for my master's and got an MBA. And when I was being recruited for American Express they offered me a manager role and asked me to move out to Arizona. So amazing. Yeah, so it's been really interesting how the nonprofit side and my volunteerism as well as all of these skills that I've learned along the way have kind of merged and melded into this current career. So a couple of questions from that. So okay, so when you were handed the Wikipedia page of what an actuary is what was that definition for everybody? Oh gosh, it mostly talked about, I remember it talking about how you could predict the future by looking at past results. And specifically it was talking about life insurance but what I found really fascinating about it was just that math could be useful. I was always good at math. I didn't really think that I didn't I don't wanna become a math teacher that seemed to be one of the most obvious math career paths. I didn't wanna become an engineer that wasn't really where my brain was. And so it was cool for me to see a way to apply math. And it just seemed like I could tell a story through math and that was really cool. And that's really what I enjoy about data governance too that data has a story and a lot of people can't tell that story because they just look at the numbers but we're good at telling stories. That's what data governance people are good at. That's what actuaries are good at. And so I love that piece of it where you can come up with like business results and you can make decisions based on data. And so you can really add that context in. That's amazing, that's impressive. So and I love how throughout your whole career so far it's just been one challenge after another and you just step right up to it. Can you learn coding in two weeks? Sure, no problem. You know, it's all of the things that I've done in my career I would have never chosen for myself mostly because I didn't know there were options. Sure. And I think that's why we talk about mentorship a lot and we talk about putting things out there. The younger kids nowadays are talking about manifestation. That's a really big word right now. You can't be what you can't see and most of the things in my career I didn't know were options. And so I depended on other people around me to see those as options for me. So I've leaned a lot on my mentors. I've taken opportunities that I didn't think would lead to anything because I don't know what they could lead to but sometimes you just trust the process and you try some stuff out. And if it doesn't work, you can always go back. You can always change path. You're not married to a career. You're not married to a job. You're not married to anything. You can always change if you need to. And I think that's really important. I didn't know if the startup job would work out. I didn't know if coding would work out. I didn't know if the nonprofit would work out. I didn't know if data governance would work out. I really didn't know if actual science to begin with would have worked out. And so it's been nice to just go with the flow as opportunities present themselves and see where they lead. It's really impressive. I love that learning to code and going to the nonprofit and volunteering. It became a multi-tasking sort of venture for you which is truly amazing. Have you always just been curious? Have you always just like, I'm gonna go, it sounds like you have been, that you found this need in your neighborhood in India and just constantly seeking out needs and how to fix things. Is that a true statement? Have you always been curious as a kid and just continue to? I would say more so than just being curious, I've been very community oriented. So I was a Girl Scout my whole life. I'm a Girl Scout Gold Award which is the equivalent of an Eagle Scout. My parents both volunteered very heavily in our communities. And so as a child, I just saw that around me. It was almost like everybody did it. That's just how it felt to me. All of my parents' friends volunteered. Everybody was very involved in their communities. And so that just seemed like the right thing to do. I never saw the connection between volunteering and my career until just very recently. So I started volunteering and volunteered heavily because that's what I wanted to do and that's what I cared about. And I loved working with children. I mean, working with fourth, fifth, sixth graders is so much fun when you're teaching them how to code because it's so cool watching their brains just get it. And it's so cool teaching them about confidence and leadership and showing them women in these fields that seem inaccessible to them. So it was just a really cool project to work on and it was kind of convenient that it worked into my career because that gave me even more motivation to continue doing it. And it also helped me guide how I managed my nonprofit because Girl Scout Lincoln is 100% volunteer run. We have 250 volunteers that volunteer with us. Wow. And so figuring out how to motivate your volunteers and motivate the people around you to participate goes a lot further. If you can't pay them but their careers pay them and if you can benefit their career then maybe they'll keep doing it and obviously they have the heart to do it. You can't just do it if you wanna benefit your career but you can give them these additional benefits to volunteering with you. And switching that over to like data governance. So many data governance departments are one person department. So now you're walking around your company looking for volunteers. You're saying, hey, I have this cool idea that everyone's ignoring and I think you guys should come be a part of it just like we do in the volunteer space and nonprofit space. So you're not walking around your company looking for volunteers and you're trying to convince these people that you're gonna upscale them and you're gonna give them, you're gonna help them be a part of something better and you're gonna teach them all of these cool things and they get to be a part of this. So it's very similar. I think a lot of the skills do transfer which is I think a little odd. We don't really think of nonprofits and data. Governance is being related ever. That makes a lot of sense, yeah. Communication is so important and yeah. Visit dataversity.net and expand your knowledge with thousands of articles and blogs written by industry experts plus free live and on-demand webinars covering the complete data management spectrum. While you're there, subscribe to the weekly newsletter so you'll never miss a beat. So as we come back to data then, what is your definition of data? Yeah, this is such a good question because there's so many definitions of data, right? None of us are ever gonna agree on it. I think data is like numbers and values and words that convey information. But I think the most important thing is context. So data doesn't mean anything without context and data in the wrong context can mean the wrong thing. And so as data professionals, it's really important that we provide context really well and that's what data governance is all about. It's all about the context and the metadata. Data about data is what metadata is and how we can provide that context and easier to understand way that makes sense to everybody. I love it. So do you see then the importance of data management and the number of jobs increasing or decreasing over the next 10 years and why? Oh, increasing a lot. I think a lot of companies are seeing that data helps drive decisions a lot more. A lot of companies are putting data in the hands of users across their business lines. Instead of, I think years ago, it would just be IT that would work with data and then somebody in IT would generate a report and give it to the business side where now we're having people across the enterprise work with data. So I would say every job is a data job. At least all of our corporate jobs are data jobs now. I was actually just at the DGIQ which is the conference that Data Diversity puts on. And I think at DGIQ this year, there were a lot more people than usual. There were a lot more people that were new to the field than usual. There was a lot more diversity. So across industries, across ages of employees, across sizes of departments, it was just really cool to see kind of this world expand. And so yeah, I don't think data is going anywhere. We've been saying that for a while but it's more so now than ever before. Companies gather so much data. I mean, think about how much data social media has about us or Google has or companies like Apple with our phones. And so yeah, I think the career is just gonna keep growing. We're also gonna see, I think we're gonna see more specializations within data. And I think data governance is a good example of that where data governance wasn't really something a lot of people were talking about even as little as two years ago. But now it's being talked about a lot more. And so we'll start to see more specialized terms and more specialized jobs within the field. Yeah, I've seen very much of the same thing. So, you've relied on mentors to find your different stages in your career. What advice do you give to people looking to get into a career in data management and who are just discovering that there is such thing as a data governance job out there? Yeah, that's a great question. So I think mentors are really important. And something that I talked to a lot of college students about is how do you find a mentor? The best way is to just reach out to somebody. So I've done a lot of cold emailing over LinkedIn where I will just send somebody an invite and say, hey, I'm trying to learn about your field or your job. Would you mind if we just get a 30 minute virtual cup of coffee? And I found it's most of the time people say that's not always, but I've had a pretty good success rate with something like that. Especially if you are a college student, I think people are open to that. I'm always open to it. I do a lot of that. So reaching out to people around you, looking at what companies or professionals are in your area that might have jobs that you're interested in and just going in for like an informational interview if they're willing to do it or reverse interviewing them where you ask them questions, things like that I think are really impactful. There's a lot of material out there in terms of like podcasts, YouTube videos, education online, things like this where you can learn from the field and pick up new skills. There's a lot of like paid as well as free things you can learn from online. So those are really great. I think the other thing that people, I wish more people did was really think of their transferable skills. So think about what you like in your job and what you don't like in your job and other opportunities that may be able to amplify the things that you like and reduce the things that you don't. But also think about your transferable skills. Like, what have you done in your volunteer work? What have you done in your community? What have you done in your company that maybe isn't part of your job? I, for example, run have in the past have been very involved in our community giving at our companies and at American Express. I'm helping out with our volunteering and community giving for our women's organization starting in January. So think about other things that you've done that are like leadership skills or things that you've learned from your job or outside that you could then apply into these fields. A lot of people in data governance don't have degrees in data. There's actually quite a few that don't. There's also a lot of people that have never really worked in data heavily before but might have like or at least titled they haven't worked in data but have worked with information. There's people that come from like the law background. There's people that come from the regulatory background. There's people that come from IT. There's people that come from business. So really you can go anywhere with anything if you're willing to upskill a little bit and willing to talk about your transferable skills. I love it. And it sounds like one of the key components there is to follow your passion. Absolutely. Yeah, you can't work a job if you don't like it. It's- We can, but maybe not be very good at it. Exactly. It's at least 40 hours a week of your life. You're not getting back. And so you should love it to some extent. Not everybody loves their jobs. I understand that. But you can be good at it and enjoy it and or at least be neutral about it. And then you can always do other things that help make that better. For me, it's really important to have a really good team. And so I'm excited to have that at American Express. We've got a very robust and like strong the relationships on our team are very strong. And sometimes the day is not easy, but having a really strong team around me makes that easy. So we all vent to each other when necessary. We celebrate all of our small wins. And that's really important. So yeah, I would say having a passion, if not for the job itself, for the people you're working with or the organization you're working with or something. You have to be passionate about something in your career or you're just in the wrong spot. And I, again, I love that curiosity that you demonstrate in finding mentors on LinkedIn. That's really brave, I would say. And impressive that you've found so many mentors and sought out mentors and looked to learn. You're so open to learning. Yeah. And that's the thing about data fields. They're always changing. Our careers are constantly changing. The data world is changing. Tech is changing every single minute of every single day. And so you have to be willing to learn. It's so necessary because otherwise you become obsolete and the work that you're doing becomes obsolete. And data governance is a very, it's a field that depends on learning or constantly going to business partners and trying to learn how they do things so that we can record it and trying to learn how we can make their lives better so we can do it. And so, yep, learning is a really big aspect of this career. And I think a lot of careers do depend on that as well, but this one in particular. Well, Akriti, I really appreciate you taking the time with us today. If people wanna learn more about the nonprofits that you have championed, where can they go? Yes, Girls Code, LinkedIn is girlscodelinkin.org. And the non-profiting org is thenonprofiting.org. But they're also all linked on my LinkedIn. So feel free to hop over there and find me and connect if there's anything I can help with. But yeah, I'm excited that people wanna learn more. Well, thank you so much for everything that you do within your community and around you. And it's again, very impressive and it's been a pleasure chatting with you. Thanks, Shannon. It's so good chatting with you. We finally get to hear the voice behind all of our webinars. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, indeed. Well, thank you so much. And thanks to all of our listeners out there. 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