Arun Shastry
SVP, Global Data & Analytics Portfolio
Marsh
Arun Shastry is the SVP, Global Data & Analytics Portfolio at Marsh, one of the world’s leading insurance brokers and risk advisors with over 45,000 employees operating in 130 countries.
Shastry is a visionary leader with over 30 years of experience in driving growth at global organizations by blending innovation and analytics with business strategies. He has successfully aligned stakeholders around strategic analytics solutions and delivered sustained results. When he’s not working, he enjoys golfing and flying planes.
Learn more about the Dallas CDAO community here.
Give us a brief overview of the path that led to your current role.
My path to becoming an analytics leader started with humble roots as a support engineer and took me through interesting turns over the years. As an IT technologist, the journey has been amazing as I developed and grew through the ranks; I've learned from both my experiences and my mistakes during my tenure. It has also given me an opportunity to be an empathetic leader with an appreciation for efforts.
I've always been passionate about data and the ways it can be used to solve interesting problems in our daily lives. I'm in awe of the evolution in the latest technologies including cloud computing and AI and how we're able to deploy these technologies in every industry.
What is one of your guiding leadership principles?
Be an empathetic leader. To me, this means to be able to truly appreciate someone's circumstances and to put in efforts to understand them. It also means to listen actively and act purposefully.
What is the greatest challenge CDAOs face today, and how are you addressing it?
Changing the corporate culture is and has been a tough challenge for us. True transformations are painful, but they can get extremely difficult if there's no alignment and you have to overcome organizational barriers.
We're emphasizing the business outcomes with our strategies and trying to appeal to key stakeholders who may be apprehensive to new ideas. We're also working with a few champions who are willing to promote the causes we believe in by putting their weights behind it.
What is the key to success for someone just starting out as a CDAO?
Patience and perseverance (or grit). Change takes time and transformations are not for the faint of heart. You must have grit to stay the course after you've built a successful strategy and the ability to handle turbulence.
How do you measure success as a leader?
Success means different things to different people. To me, it means a successful delivery against a strategy and an organization which benefits from it. Sometimes, it also means failure, BUT we learned from it quickly and ensured we put adequate measures in place to prevent them in the future.
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