Australia's top 25 analytics leaders announced

Silvio Georgio, Australia Post’s General Manager of Data Science, has been ranked as the Institute of Analytics Professionals of Australia (IAPA) top analytics leader for 2020.

Georgio topped this year's IAPA top 25 Analytics Leaders program, the third since the list was launched in 2018.

“I feel privileged to work with talent who inspire me, leaders who present opportunities for us to rise to the challenge, and people who are passionate about the customers and communities we serve,” Georgio said after the award was announced last night.

Judged by a panel of leading analytics and business leaders, the IAPA Top 25 Analytics Leaders recognises excellence in four key areas: strategy and impact; influence and advocacy; innovation and improvement; and team growth and leadership.

The previous winners of this award have been PwC’s Matt Kuperholz in 2018 and Sean Pereira from JLL in 2019, with the 2020 list spanning industries including charity, agency and travel sectors along with traditional analytics heavy fields such as financial services, utilities, telco and e-commerce.

“The diversity of the Top 25 shows the importance of analytics to all industries and the benefit of diverse voices to analytics, data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence endeavours,” said Annette Slunjski, Managing Director, IAPA.

“The gender balance in analytics skews dramatically to men, so it’s great to see half of the top six were women, 40% in the Top 10 and just under 30% across the 25 people recognised.”

“Leadership in analytics is so much more than technical expertise. Soft skills continue to be the difference between good and great while the ability to crisply distil and translate analytics insights to business impact creates standout leaders.”

Amy Christopher, Director of Marketing and Account Development, at Domo, supporter of this year’s awards said, “the ability to be data-driven at all levels of a business is paramount to success in the future and this has only been made more evident by the current climate.

"What is clear from this years' data and analytics leaders is the importance of bringing the wider business along on the analytics journey and clearly communicating the benefits so a data-driven culture can permeate the entire organisation.”

Slunjski said IAPA was proud to publicly recognise analytics professionals for their leading role in building better business.

“Analytics leaders are the linchpin to the successful delivery of business value from analytics.”

The 2020 Top 25 Analytics Leaders (ordered by surname)