TLA Friday, March 4th Morning Meeting

Technology Leaders Association (TLA) was established in 2002 to help senior level IT executives develop and manage their careers. As part of this effort, we hold monthly meetings to network, share ideas, and learn from featured guest speakers in the strategy, information technology, and career management fields.

Our speaker for March is Dr. Mechie Nkengla, Chief Data Strategist at Data Products LLC, who will present The Importance of Data in your Digital Transformation Strategy.

As we kick off 2022, business leaders across industries have learned one simple truth: all roads lead to digital transformation. Predictions from the International Data Corporation (IDC) paint a picture of a world galvanized by digital transformation. They anticipate that 60% of enterprises will invest heavily in digitizing employer experiences; by 2025, 75% of business leaders will use digital platforms to adapt their value chains to new markets and industries; in the same year, 50% of enterprises are expected to implement an organizational culture that is optimized for digital transformation that is customer-centric and data-driven. The singular underlying determinant of a successful digital transformation lies within the data context.

In this presentation, we will review key trends in Data & Analytics underpinning digital transformation with the goal of preparing business leaders to navigate the transformations successfully.

Topics will include:

1. Identifying the top data challenges and opportunities facing enterprise executives in 2022.
2. An introduction to major trends in enterprise data including: Data strategy, Data Literacy, AIops, and Composability.
3. We will round out the first two topics by covering best practices for data & analytics leaders and their teams to address these challenges

Date:  Friday, March 4th

Where:  Zoom Meeting
Cost:  No charge

For reservations – please reply to Pat Moroney with your name and telephone number no later than noon on Thursday, December 2nd with the first 20 reservations accepted for Zoom roundtable networking. Beyond 20 reservations, due to time constraints, you are welcome to attend both the roundtable and speaker presentations as a viewer only.

Once you have reserved, the night before the meeting, you will be sent the Zoom link for the meeting. Please do not share or publish this link.

We have allowed for 60 minutes for facilitated Zoom roundtable networking. Depending upon the size of the group, each participant will receive up to 3 minutes to give their pitch/overview and what we can do to help (such as target contacts or job leads).

If you have a contact, advice, or lead for a roundtable member, please use the Zoom chat feature to supply this information. This will allow the roundtable member to follow up with you afterwards in more detail. Or you are encouraged to contact the Zoom roundtable member directly using the attendee list which will be sent out to all meeting attendees afterwards

If you have reserved but are unable to attend, as a courtesy to our host, please send a note to Pat Moroney.

Agenda

7:15am – 7:30am                    Introductions

7:30am – 8:30am                    Structured Zoom networking (first 20)
8:30am – 9:30am                    Mechie Nkengla

9:30am                                  Adjourn

Structured Networking
Structured networking is a technique used at most major executive transition groups. It is meant to be a powerful method of generating ideas that might help each of our searches. During this process, we will quickly brainstorm potential job lead ideas, gain networking contacts at desired companies, and generate advice from the members by sharing our backgrounds as well as our career objectives. It is designed to generate ideas, but given the time constraints, not get into immediate detailed discussions. You should plan on following up with anybody who may have had an interesting idea or a good contact.

Speaker Bio

Mechie Nkengla is the CEO and Principal Data Strategist at Data Products LLC, focusing on educating clients on varying aspects of data and modern technology, data strategy, data science, data literacy, and AI/ML initiatives.

Formerly, she was a director at EY Analytics Center of Excellence, taught courses in the Masters of Data Analytics programs at the University of Chicago, and is a holder of multiple patents. Mechie has a PhD from the University of Illinois at Chicago in Applied Mathematics as well as a master’s degree in Mathematical Computer Science.

She enjoys hiking, dancing, and eating seafood, not necessarily in that order.