Head of Data and Intelligence, SEAA

CHANEL SEAA is seeking a Head of Data & Intelligence, SEAA to lead the region’s enterprise data and AI agenda, ensuring data, analytics and AI capabilities are focused on business priorities and translated into measurable value. The role is responsible for steering the regional data portfolio, realizing value from AI use cases, and driving data literacy and adoption across the region. It leads a specialized team, working closely with business divisions, corporate functions and technology teams to prioritize the right opportunities and deliver fit-for-purpose Data & AI products and solutions.

The role will establish the foundations, governance and ways of working needed for data and AI to become embedded in business decision-making.  It will also guide data and AI architecture and platform strategy, ensuring the region builds on coherent, scalable and future-ready technical foundations.

In doing so, it will enable CHANEL teams to make better decisions with stronger insight, sharper priorities and greater confidence - driving growth, enhancing performance and elevating luxury client experiences across the region.

Impact You Can Create In The Role:

Shape SEAA Data & AI Strategy

• Define and evolve the SEAA Data & AI roadmap, ensuring alignment with Chanel’s regional business priorities, data direction, brand & business ambition.
• Identify and prioritize high-value opportunities where data, analytics and AI can strengthen client understanding and business excellence.
• Set clear objectives and success measures to ensure Data & AI initiatives are purposeful, measurable and consistent with Chanel’s standards of excellence.

Drive Business Partnership and Value Creation

• Act as a trusted strategic partner to senior stakeholders across SEAA, translating business needs into clear data priorities and actionable recommendations.
• Engage team across divisions and functions to align priorities, secure sponsorship and shape initiatives that address meaningful business opportunities.
• Translate insights into compelling business narratives, helping leadership teams make better decisions and ensuring data work creates tangible value.

Lead Portfolio Delivery and BAU Excellence

• Govern the regional Data & Intelligence portfolio, covering BAU data activities and strategic Data & AI initiatives.
• Manage prioritization, delivery roadmap, resources, risks, dependencies and stakeholder communication to ensure initiatives are delivered with discipline and consistency.
• Ensure reliable, high-quality delivery while continuously improving data services to meet evolving business needs.

Guide Data & AI Architecture and Platform Strategy

• Guide SEAA’s data and AI architecture and platform direction in close alignment with Global and Technology teams, ensuring coherence across data platforms, analytics tooling and AI infrastructure.
• Steer the region’s adoption and convergence toward the target architecture (e.g., Microsoft Fabric, Databricks), balancing enterprise standards with business needs so data products are built on scalable, governed and reusable foundations.
• Ensure data models, pipelines and AI solutions are designed for interoperability, enabling a connected ecosystem from data ingestion through to reporting and AI-enabled experiences.

Strengthen Data Governance and Responsible AI

• Partner with Technology, Legal, Global Data and business teams to embed appropriate data governance practices across the SEAA Data and AI portfolio.
• Strengthen data quality, common definitions, ownership, access principles and privacy awareness, ensuring business teams can rely on trusted and well-understood data.
• Promote responsible AI and responsible data use, ensuring AI-enabled initiatives are designed with clear purpose, human judgment, appropriate controls, and governance frameworks that manage risks in line with Chanel’s standards.

Build Data Literacy and Business Adoption

• Champion data literacy across SEAA, drive adoption of data products and AI-enabled solutions
• Enable a culture where data supports judgment, creativity and client-centric decision-making

Develop the Data and AI practice

• Lead, coach and develop the SEAA Data & Intelligence team, strengthening capabilities across analytics, data product thinking, AI adoption, stakeholder engagement and insight storytelling.
• Establish clear priorities, ways of working, service standards and development paths so the team can deliver with precision, agility and strong business proximity.
• Foster a culture of curiosity, collaboration, accountability and continuous learning, enabling the team to act as a proactive business partner with a deep understanding of Chanel’s clients, markets and culture.

Your Success Measures

Portfolio Clarity & Strategic Alignment: The regional Data & Intelligence portfolio is clearly defined, prioritized and aligned with business priorities, business & brand ambition and global standards.

Business Value & Impact: Data, analytics and AI initiatives show measurable contribution to decision-making, operational efficiency, client experience, activation and growth priorities.

Adoption & Usage: Priority data products and analytics capabilities are adopted by target users and embedded into regular business rhythms and decision processes.

Prioritization Discipline: Business requests are consistently challenged, clarified and prioritized based on impact, feasibility, urgency, data readiness and resource capacity.

Governance Effectiveness: Portfolio reviews, steering meetings, decisions, risks and dependencies are managed transparently with timely escalation and resolution.

Stakeholder Satisfaction: Positive feedback from business, technology and data stakeholders on portfolio transparency, delivery coordination, business relevance and executive communication.

Data Literacy & Change Adoption: Business teams show improved confidence in using data products, interpreting insights and applying analytics outputs to decision-making.

You are Energized by:

Steering the Portfolio: Bringing structure, transparency and discipline to a complex portfolio of data, analytics and AI initiatives.

Turning Data into Business Impact: Transforming complex data, analytics and AI opportunities into clear business value, stronger decision-making and measurable impact.

Driving Adoption: Helping teams move beyond reporting consumption towards insight generation, action planning and performance improvement.

Building Alignment in a Complex Environment: Translating complexity into clarity, helping leaders make confident decisions while balancing regional needs, market realities and global direction.

Developing Data Team: Coaching talent, building high-performing teams and creating an environment where analysts, data scientists and business partners can grow together.

Building Data Culture: Raising data literacy across the organization, helping teams ask better questions, interpret insights and use data with confidence and responsibility.

Shaping the Future Operating Model: Evolving the data domain from an incubation-phase team into an enduring enterprise capability that grows with the region's ambition.

What You Will Bring - Capability Requirements:

Data Strategy and Leadership: Proven experience in Data Strategy, Analytics, Business Intelligence, AI Transformation. Proven ability to define and lead a Data & AI roadmap, translating data and technology complexity into commercial value, client experience improvement and operational impact.  Demonstrated experience managing analytics products, BI platforms, client intelligence, AI/GenAI use cases and BAU data services across a regional or multi-market environment.

Technical Fluency in Data, AI and Modern Platforms: Strong understanding of the modern data ecosystem, including cloud data platforms, BI and visualization tools, Machine Learning and GenAI, able to challenge, guide and lead technical teams with credibility.  Familiarity with modern data platform architectures (e.g., lakehouses, semantic models, cloud-native AI) and ability to guide architecture decisions in partnership with technology teams.

Governance & Operating Model Mindset: Experience working across business, technology and data teams to establish effective governance rhythms, decision forums, roles, responsibilities and escalation paths.

Stakeholder Management & Executive Communication: Able to communicate complex data and portfolio topics clearly to senior leaders, facilitate alignment across functions and manage expectations across strategic and working-level stakeholders.

Change Management & Data Literacy: Comfortable driving adoption, communication and data literacy activities that help business teams understand, trust and apply data and AI-enabled capabilities.

Regional Collaboration & Enterprise Alignment: Able to balance regional business needs with enterprise data standards, working effectively with global, regional, market and corporate function stakeholders.

At Chanel, we are focused on creating an inclusive culture that nurtures personal growth, contributing to collective progress. We believe the uniqueness of each individual increases the diversity, complementarity and effectiveness of our teams. We strongly encourage your application, as we value the perspective, experience and potential you could bring to Chanel.