SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA — When Hernan Asorey attended conferences a decade ago, discussions on how to use data to overhaul operations and drive new revenue were sparsely attended, and centered mostly around how projects continually failed.
Now, as chief data officer at Salesforce, Asorey is a big draw for industry events and discussions surrounding data management, artificial intelligence, and other related topics that are often the focus of entire conferences.
Back then, "there was nobody getting it, nobody even witnessing the value of those things, nobody going to conferences because they actually did not even understand why that was needed," he told Business Insider.
As an early advocate for the technology, Asorey's career trajectory shows just how far companies have advanced in thinking about their stored data and how it can be put to use to benefit the enterprise.
Asorey noticed a sea change in how both businesses and the public think about data when social media sites like Facebook became popular. "The beginning of social networking was something that was very, very disruptive for how data was going to genuinely change everybody's lives," he said.
Asorey shared his career trajectory — from working for Shell in Argentina, to a job in Silicon Valley at eBay, to eventually leading the data operation at Salesforce, the $138 billion enterprise-software giant — and why ethics are the biggest problem facing chief data officers today.
The early days of data: 'Misery loves company'
Asorey's path to chief data officer of Salesforce was by no means common.
Growing up in Argentina, he was unsure whether he would even attend college — his parents only had enough money to send his brother. But with scholarships, Asorey was able to graduate and go on to earn a master's degree in applied mathematics. He also taught himself three language.
So it was a major achievement when Asorey got a job offer from eBay in 2003, while working at Shell in Bueno Aires, and was given the chance to move to the US. The one problem? He didn't know what eBay was — a particularly startling admission given it was one of the top companies in the world at the time.
But that didn't stop him from joining and building what was then the world's largest data warehouse. This was over a decade ago and the data revolution was just beginning. Cloud-based storage centers were largely non-existent and, while companies were trying to tackle the challenge of analyzing data to improve operations, many of the projects were failing.
At conferences, "it would be forums where nobody [would] be there, and even the people that would show up, [it] would be to just explain all the things" that failed, Asorey said. "Misery loves company, right?"
Today, the landscape has changed dramatically. Companies are rushing to craft cloud strategies and are taking on the arduous task of organizing data to power new AI-based applications. But now, businesses are facing new challenges, including how to ethically collect the necessary consumer information that is critical to advanced technology.
'We'll have two sides of a coin'
Scandals like Facebook's Cambridge Analytica breach — where a British consulting firm tied to the Trump campaign improperly accessed the information of millions of users — have escalated the public discussion over the collection and use of consumer data.
Congress has yet to pass legislation on the issue, but new laws in Europe and California are forcing companies to rush to catalog all the data they stored. While there is no national mandate, the topic is still a hot-button issue among corporate boards.
"The public is becoming a lot more educated at an extremely high pace," Asorey said. That's changing how tech chiefs plan to "go to market with services or products."
Alongside data collection, debate is also raging over how to monitor AI applications to prevent bias and the broader impact the technology will have on society. Estimates of potential job loss due to AI can vary widely, but it's a common fear that workers of all kinds will be impacted, from accountants to Walmart store associates.
That dual-impact is another major problem that tech chiefs are grappling with. "We'll have two sides of a coin. One side will be positive, but we're going to create a lot of negatives and how quickly are we going to be able to react," Asorey said.
