S1E40 Demystifying The Data Ecosystem: Navigating the Data Quality Crisis with Joe Reis Part 1

Gone are the days where organizations can think of AI as the strategy. At least, they should be. In this episode of Bringing Data and AI to Life, host Amy Horowitz, GVP Solutions Sales and Business Development at Informatica, welcomes Elon Salfati, Founder of the Salfati Group, to explore why you should treat AI as infrastructure rather than a standalone tool, how you can map workflows and pinpoint the right intervention points for AI augmentation and the key strategies to build organizational alignment across technology, people, and governance. Turns out - starting small with something like the right KPI alignment is the secret to transformation.

AI is everywhere but many organizations are still getting it wrong. In this special Greatest Hits episode of Bringing Data and AI to Life, hosts Amy Horowitz and Nick Dobbins sit down with Zoher, a seasoned data and AI leader, to unpack why AI is the business accelerator today. From messy data foundations to misguided “AI-first” thinking, Zoher breaks down why companies rush into AI without clarity on the problem they’re solving, and how that leads to wasted effort and poor outcomes. He emphasises thinking backwards from the business problem, not forward from the technology.

Getting your AI system into production isn’t the finish line. It’s the point where the real work begins. In this episode of Bringing Data and AI to Life, host Nick Dobbins sits down with Maria Vechtomova, Co-Founder of Cauchy, MLOps expert and O’Reilly author, to unpack what it really takes to make AI reliable beyond the experimentation phase. She breaks down the four principles underpinning MLOps as well as the challenges of evaluating GenAI outputs, governing agentic systems and integrating AI across complex enterprise environments. The conversation makes one thing clear: AI cannot be treated like static software. Because when the outputs, failure modes and evaluation criteria keep changing, the work is never really “done.”

There are no easy answers. Just ask your finance, marketing and operations teams what “sales” means, and you’ll see. In this episode of Bringing Data and AI to Life, host Amy Horowitz (GVP, Informatica) sits down with Allison Sagraves, Chief Data Officer and Carnegie Mellon CDAO faculty. They break down the real barrier holding enterprise AI back: agreeing on what your data actually means. Learn why taxonomy trumps simple data quality, how to close the executive AI confidence gap, and why real AI leadership demands getting into the trenches.

AI this, AI that - but how many of us are actually extracting its complete value and making it work for us? In this episode of Bringing Data and AI to Life, host and GVP Solutions Sales and Business Development at Informatica, Amy Horowitz sits down with Karen Pfeifer, Chief AI Officer at Pythian, to unravel the complexities of enterprise data and AI transformation. Drawing from her extensive experience at industry giants like Disney, Hulu, and Comcast, Karen shares invaluable insights on measuring data success through business impact, developing cross-functional teams, and navigating the challenges of AI governance. Her experiential perspectives offer practical wisdom on building trusted data foundations and embracing emerging trends like Agentic AI. Tune in for a reminder that the bridge between technical innovation and tangible business outcomes exists, and you can cross it!

So, you’ve got your data in place. Now what? The world of data collection, analysis and engineering is undergoing a massive overhaul and it can be hard to keep on. In part 2 of this Bringing Data and AI To Life episode, host Nick Dobbins, Worldwide VP and Field CTO at Informatica, and Joe Reis, bestselling author of "Fundamentals of Data Engineering" and Data Engineer, continue to unpack why prioritizing business problems over technological solutions in AI implementation is critical. Tune in to discover practical strategies for better active listening, translating technical concepts into business value, and mastering the fundamentals in an AI-first world. The keys to unlocking the potential of the data ecosystem are where you least expect them to be.

Today’s data ecosystem is less an absolute and more an ever-evolving mystery that’s always got eyes on it. Our eyes too - on the latest episode of Bringing Data and AI to Life, our host Nick Dobbins, Worldwide VP and Field CTO at Informatica, welcomes Joe Reis, bestselling author of "Fundamentals of Data Engineering" and Data Engineer, to explore the evolving landscape of data engineering and AI implementation. Tune in to understand why focusing on fundamentals remains crucial amid rapid technological change, unpack the ways to build robust data systems without falling into “hype cycles”, and learn practical strategies for aligning architecture, governance, and tooling with real business outcomes. It’s time to balance innovation with proven principles, while emphasizing the often-overlooked importance of security and governance in modern data engineering.

AI is everywhere but many organizations are still getting it wrong. In this episode of Bringing Data and AI to Life, hosts Amy Horowitz and Nick Dobbins sit down with Zoher, a seasoned data and AI leader, to unpack why AI is the business accelerator today. From messy data foundations to misguided “AI-first” thinking, Zoher breaks down why companies rush into AI without clarity on the problem they’re solving, and how that leads to wasted effort and poor outcomes. He emphasises thinking backwards from the business problem, not forward from the technology.

AI isn't just a technology trend. It's fundamentally reshaping how enterprises manage, govern and activate their data to power intelligent systems. In this episode of Bringing Data and AI to Life, host Amy Horowitz, GVP Solutions Sales and Business Development at Informatica sits down with Gaurav Pathak, VP of Product Management for AI and Metadata at Informatica, to explore how traditional data management is evolving, what's blocking AI adoption and how organizations can prepare for the agentic AI revolution reshaping business operations. Tune in for Gaurav’s playbook on making AI strategy a driver of success - not an obstacle - for your business.

Gone are the days where organizations can think of AI as the strategy. At least, they should be. In this episode of Bringing Data and AI to Life, host Amy Horowitz, GVP Solutions Sales and Business Development at Informatica, welcomes Elon Salfati, Founder of the Salfati Group, to explore why you should treat AI as infrastructure rather than a standalone tool, how you can map workflows and pinpoint the right intervention points for AI augmentation and the key strategies to build organizational alignment across technology, people, and governance. Turns out - starting small with something like the right KPI alignment is the secret to transformation.