Christina O’Reilly: Navigating the Complexities of the Digital Sphere with Compassion and Tech Visionaries

Gensquared is a consulting firm that works with some of North America's top enterprise companies to solve their biggest data and analytics challenges and transform their data into actionable insights.

Embracing agile, product management principles, they approach data and analytics challenges by first understanding and empathizing with business needs. This approach drives alignment between business and technology teams, allowing Gensquared to deliver value early and often.

With their "Data Team as a Service (DTaaS) model, Gensquared provides both strategic advisory and implementation services, followed by data management and hosting services. Its end-to-end service offering helps break down organizational data silos that transform data into valuable and tangible business assets.

A Versatile Leader with Extensive Experience

As the Chief Marketing Officer of Gensquared, Christina O'Reilly is responsible for demand generation, brand management, and partner management. She is also the host of 'Data-Driven Leaders', a podcast series that features conversations with business and technology leaders who share their journeys, challenges, and thoughts about the future of data and analytics.

Christina has over 20 years of experience as an award-winning leader and has worked for several innovative global companies such as PeopleSoft, Microsoft, SAP, along with many mid-sized start-ups throughout her journey. Her background ranges from corporate marketing, PR, and brand management to business development, audience marketing, and global events management.

Stepping Out of Her Comfort Zone

Christina firmly believes that life begins outside her comfort zone. Adding to this, she mentions that the past 18 months have pushed her outside her comfort zone. As a leader, she never enjoyed being the centre of attention and instead, always focused on supporting and elevating her team. But in 2021, Christina was challenged to step outside her comfort zone by hosting a podcast, which went live in November.

In the 'Data-Driven Leaders' podcast series, Gensquared brings together business and technology leaders who are transforming the data and analytics landscape. Talking about the podcast and her experience with it, she says, "It's been a joy to work on. I've already had so many fascinating conversations with brilliant data leaders from a variety of industries and I can't wait to see what 2022 brings."

She says that COVID has helped her realize that simple acts like checking on someone or reaching out and asking how they are doing can be so powerful during times of stress and uncertainty. And she feels that it shouldn't take a pandemic to do it.

Empathy, Transparency, and Understanding: Keys to Resolving Challenges 

Christina feels extremely fortunate to have worked for and with so many strong, smart and supportive women leaders throughout her career. She says that each one of them helped, guided, and shaped her into the leader she is today.

Reflecting on the challenges she faced, Christina says, "On rare occasions when you encounter leaders who fall short of expectations, it can be challenging to navigate. However, I've always tried to use those scenarios as a learning opportunity, to try and look at it from a different point of view or perspective, to ask more questions. The more I did this, the more I realized that empathy, transparency, and understanding are the keys to resolving challenges."

'Balanced Approach' at the Heart of Leadership

Christina affirms that today's leaders need to adopt a balanced approach to leadership – one that is collaborative, creative, and inclusive. They must also learn to incorporate a data-driven approach as to how they make decisions. "Data-driven leadership allows organizations to anticipate and respond quickly to market trends and changing customer preferences—and help better understand their employees," she adds.

Approaching Data Initiatives as Business Prospects

At Gensquared, the team looks at data initiatives as business initiatives instead of treating them as technology projects, says Christina. She adds that the company understands that well-defined business outcomes drive successful data initiatives. "By bringing the voice of the business to the technology conversation, we avoid so many of the pitfalls that often doom data transformations from the start. We achieve this through our unique 'Data Team as a Service' approach to data initiatives. With this new model for collaboration, we provide an on-demand flexible data team that builds value across your entire organization," says Christina.

She mentions that, unlike most consulting firms, Gensquared takes a product management approach to data initiatives, which allows the team to deliver solutions quickly and iterate on them in real-time.

Bridging the Gap between Data and People with Tech

Christina claims that disruptive technologies like AI/ML/DL and cloud computing are connecting people and data in new and meaningful ways. She asserts that organizations have no choice except to become data-driven to make the most of the volume of data they are generating and collecting to avoid the risk of being left behind in the fast-moving marketplace.

"But one can't just focus on the technology implementation side of things, which is a trap that a lot of companies fall into. AI/ML/DL and cloud computing are all valuable data tools but becoming a data-driven organization isn't just about technology—it's about how one approaches their data overall," says Christina. She believes that the true disruption is a shift from taking a divisional approach to data to an organizational one. She mentions that conversations about data need to happen at all levels, including the C-suite.

Women Leaders at the Forefront of Data Roles

Christina says that the role of the leader has changed as everybody across the organization needs to be data-driven or "data-curious".

Leaders need to be agile and quick-thinking by breaking down data silos, teaching data literacy, and gaining alignment across their organization. To do this, they need to rely on what has traditionally been referred to as "soft skills" like emotional intelligence, team building, and creative thinking,. "I would like to see these skills re-marketed as "strategic skills" in 2022 since there's nothing "soft" about them!" she says.

More and more women are joining the data space because women not only bring deep technical knowledge to their roles but also possess those key "strategic skills", says Christina. Things like organizational alignment, collaboration, and creative problem solving require "strategic skills" and in Christina's opinion, this is one of the reasons why women are moving into data leadership roles.

Towards New Horizons with Four Critical Themes 

Christina foresees four critical themes developing in the industry:

• Skills and knowledge gaps will continue to rise.
• Companies will start to think of their data as an asset and rethink how to make data accessible across the organization in a safe and trusted way.
• Data literacy will become a key baseline skill for everyone across the organization.
• Businesses will start to establish data governance policies and guidelines on how to define, produce and use data to reduce risk and improve decision-making capabilities to maximize the value of their data assets.

Business-Centric and Data Approach as Catalysts to Growth

Christina remarks that as organizations begin to rethink the value of their data and how to access it and use it to their advantage, they will also need to address the growing skills and knowledge gap. "The future of data and analytics lies in partnering with our customers and helping them bridge that gap," she adds.

Gensquared's 'Data Team as a Service' model is an on-demand flexible approach to support companies experiencing skills shortages and knowledge gaps. Not every organization has its own data team or skills to scale on-demand, so Gensquared promotes knowledge sharing and training by helping its clients build their own capabilities to reach self-reliance. She adds that this agile, business-centric approach allows the company to deliver the best results for businesses often and as early as possible.

Christina shares her excitement for the future of Gensquared. "Last year, Report on Business named us one of Canada's Top Growing Companies, with a three-year growth of 162%. The company is continuing to grow in 2022, working with enterprise companies to deliver trusted data that everyone can access safely and reliably," she says.

Words of Wisdom to Emerging Pioneers 

Christina believes that one should not neglect his or her so-called "soft skills". She advises emerging leaders to build them and view them as their strategic power skills. She also advises emerging executives to practice resilience and take risks.

"Also, invest in yourself by building your community and genuinely supporting others along the way—it's good for the soul and good for your career. At some point, you might need to rely on your network and if you've invested in them, they will invest in you," she says.