Nestlé’s Chief Data & AI Officer on Scaling AI
Show notes
In this episode of Data Analytics Chat, we welcome Jessica Matheron, Chief Data & AI Officer at Nestlé. Jessica brings a rare mix of experience to the role, from a French engineering and mathematics background and a Harvard MBA to a decade trading structured credit on Wall Street, followed by roles across fintech, ad tech and e-commerce before joining Nestlé.
Jessica shares how she took a data team that was seen as a service centre, built on Excel and Power BI and reliant on external vendors, and rebuilt it into an internal department able to deliver GenAI at scale. The discussion examines what was really slowing projects down, why the bottleneck was upstream in the data rather than the data science, and how a single consumer data foundation on Segment and Snowflake made it possible to engage tens of millions of consumers across Europe.
The data topic explores the three flavours of GenAI, from everyday copilots to coding copilots that more than doubled productivity and the AI agents now in production. Jessica also covers winning trust from the CEO down, why organisational change and technology can't be separated in a 270,000-person company, how to build a business case before measuring value, and why redesigning end-to-end workflows around AI is the biggest opportunity ahead.
01:20 Introduction to Data Analytics Chat
02:01 Jessica's Background and Career Journey
04:05 When Things Were at Their Messiest at Nestlé
05:59 How It Was Affecting the Business
07:09 The Turning Point for Change
10:51 Fixing the Data Before GenAI
12:48 Where GenAI First Created Real Value
16:41 The Moment GenAI Proved It Worked
17:55 What Had to Change in Data, Technology and Operating Model
21:23 Moving From a Promising Use Case to Scale
24:19 Winning Trust Across the Organisation
26:57 Technology vs Changing the Organisation
31:50 How AI Helps Engage Tens of Millions of Consumers
34:08 Measuring Whether GenAI Creates Value
36:50 Surprises of Operating at Scale
40:01 What She Got Wrong and Would Do Differently
42:11 Where Enterprises Should Focus First
45:24 The Biggest Opportunity Ahead
Connect with our guest:
Jessica Matheron: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmatheron/
Thank you for listening!