Dr. Velkoski serves as Director, Data Science at the National Association of REALTORS and Adjunct Professor at DePaul University. It has been nearly eight years since data scientist was declared the sexiest job of the 21st century. As senior professionals demonstrating the talent and creativity necessary to transform raw data into deep, intuitive knowledge, data scientists were poised to revolutionize decision-making and strengthen organizational performance. According to PwC's 22nd Annual Global CEO Survey, organizations continue to struggle to extract actionable intelligence from data. Those that participated in the survey highlighted a lack of analytical talent, data silos and poor data reliability as the main causes for the absence of progress.

Data and analytics (D&A) fuels digital business and plays a major role in the future survival of organizations worldwide. However, D&A leaders are challenged by new legislative initiatives, such as the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), as well as by the key task of evaluating and defining the role and influence of artificial intelligence (AI). Jorgen Heizenberg, research director at Gartner and conference chair for the Gartner Data & Analytics Summit, taking place 23 to 24 October in Frankfurt, outlines the current opportunities and challenges facing D&A leaders around the world. D&A leaders have to deal with delivering business outcomes from their data-driven programs today -- and at the same time build an effective D&A organization that is fit for tomorrow. In order to meet these challenges, D&A leaders need to take ownership and develop a data and analytics strategy.