From a lone statistician toiling over narrowly defined problems for the marketing department, to a C-level executive overseeing a mission-critical area impacting every function of the company, the meaning of “data and analytics professional” has changed a lot in recent years. A. Charles Thomas’s career has reflected those developments.

Thomas, who is General Motors’ first-ever chief data and analytics officer, shared where corporate data analytics has been, where it’s going, and the evolution of chief data officer roles, in a keynote at the recent Wharton Customer Analytics conference “Successful Applications of Analytics.” He spoke from his experience not only at GM, but also other major companies, including Hewlett Packard, the United Services Automobile Association (USAA), and Wells Fargo.

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