VP, Data Strategy & Governance
Humana · DFW Airport, Texas, United States
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The Vice President, Data Strategy & Governance is a senior executive accountable for defining, advancing, and operationalizing the enterprise data strategy. This leader drives the full lifecycle of data governance — from policy design and sensitive data management to technology enablement, data quality, and regulatory compliance. Serving as a strategic advisor to executive stakeholders across all business units and technology functions, the VP partners closely with Cybersecurity,
Enterprise Architecture, and line-of-business leaders cultivate a data-rich, AI-ready environment grounded in trust, quality, and accountability.
The VP is a visionary organizational builder who attracts and develops world-class talent, shapes data culture, and influences enterprise-wide change. This individual would need to partner across business and technology leaders to drive a product mindset and promote adoption to realize business outcomes. This leader will promote a data product operating model by embedding accountability for data quality, metadata, lineage, access, and data lifecycle management across the enterprise. This leader brings deep command of applied data governance practices, data protection strategies, emerging ML/AI-based governance tools, and the legislative landscape governing personal and sensitive data. Their work directly enables the organization's digital and analytics ambitions while fortifying its cyber-breach resistance posture.
Key Responsibilities
Strategic Initiatives & Program Outcomes- Establish and own the enterprise data strategy, translating organizational goals into a continuously evolving roadmap of data capabilities spanning people, process, technology, and budget.
- Lead portfolio governance of enterprise data programs, ensuring initiatives are prioritized, resourced, and delivering measurable business outcomes aligned to financial and strategic objectives.
- Partner with the Chief Data & Analytics Officer and executive peers to articulate the value of data assets, influence investment decisions, and embed data thinking into enterprise planning cycles.
- Drive enterprise-scale data science and AI readiness by ensuring foundational data infrastructure, lineage, quality, and accessibility meet the demands of advanced analytics and generative AI use cases.
- Develop and maintain a data product mindset across the organization — enabling reusable, trusted, and well-documented data assets that accelerate time-to-insight across business units.
Team Building & Organizational Development- Build, lead, and continuously develop a high-performing, world-class team of experts spanning sensitive data governance, data lineage and mapping, data enrichment, data quality, data democratization, and program management.
- Foster a culture of accountability, innovation, and continuous learning; champion data literacy initiatives that upskill the broader organization and democratize access to trusted data.
- Act as a Culture Shaper and Talent Builder — recruiting diverse, senior talent, establishing clear career pathways, and mentoring future data leaders across the enterprise.
- Operate as a cross-functional influencer and collaborator, building strong relationships across Technology, Cybersecurity, Legal, Compliance, Finance, and business unit stakeholders to drive data governance adoption at scale.
- Define team operating models, performance metrics, and OKRs that demonstrate the strategic and financial impact of the data governance function.
Technology Implementations & Tools- Lead evaluation, selection, and implementation of enterprise data governance platforms, data catalog and marketplace solutions, data quality tooling, and metadata management systems.
- Modernize data scanning, automated tagging, and labeling capabilities to improve governance efficiency, enable proactive data classification, and strengthen data loss prevention (DLP) outcomes.
- Partner with Security Architecture and Enterprise Architecture to design and deploy solutions that deliver integrated data governance and data security at scale — on-premises and across cloud environments.
- Invest in and operationalize innovative ML/AI-based approaches for data governance, including automated lineage discovery, anomaly detection, synthetic data generation, and differential privacy techniques.
- Maintain awareness of the evolving data governance technology landscape; drive a buy/build/partner strategy that balances innovation with cost discipline and commercial accountability.
Data Governance Process Improvements- Operate and continuously enhance enterprise data governance capabilities — including metadata management, data lineage, data quality standards, master data management, and access governance — through a structured and measurable capability roadmap.
- Define, publish, and enforce enterprise data policies, standards, and controls ensuring consistent, compliant, and high-quality data usage across all business domains.
- Champion data democratization by enabling self-service data access models backed by robust governance guardrails, role-based access controls, and data marketplace infrastructure.
- Establish data stewardship programs and data domain ownership models that distribute accountability for data quality and governance across the enterprise.
- Drive continuous improvement of data anonymization, de-identification, and synthetic data capabilities to enable broader analytics use while protecting sensitive information.
Risk Management & Compliance- Lead the enterprise Data Risk Assessment program, identifying, measuring, and managing data security risks across applications, platforms, and business and technology initiatives.
- Ensure the organization's data practices comply with applicable data privacy regulations and industry standards, including HIPAA, CCPA/CPRA, GDPR, and other relevant legislation governing personal and sensitive data.
- Collaborate with Legal, Compliance, and Cybersecurity to proactively identify regulatory changes, assess their data governance implications, and implement controls before compliance deadlines.
- Strengthen data protection strategy and execution — including encryption, tokenization, data masking, data loss prevention, and access control frameworks — to improve cyber-breach resistance.
- Provide executive reporting and Board-level transparency on data governance risk posture, compliance status, and program maturity metrics on a recurring basis.
Use your skills to make an impact
Key Requirements
Experience- 10+ years of senior leadership experience in data governance, data management, or data strategy roles within large, complex, matrixed corporate environments.
- 10+ years of hands-on data governance experience, including both on-premises and cloud-native environments (AWS, Azure, GCP or equivalent).
- Demonstrated track record of building and scaling data governance programs from concept through enterprise adoption, with measurable improvements in data quality, compliance, and business outcomes.
- Proven experience managing and delivering large, multi-workstream programs — including strategic initiatives, technology implementations, and organizational transformation — on time and within budget.
- Prior hands-on experience and/or leadership responsibility for technical data governance tools, including data catalogs, data lineage platforms, data marketplace systems, and data quality frameworks.
- Relevant experience in consumer goods, healthcare, financial services, or technology industries strongly preferred.
Technical & Domain Knowledge- Deep expertise in data architecture, data warehousing, data quality processes, and enterprise data modeling.
- Relevant experience with data protection strategies, including encryption, tokenization, data masking, data loss prevention, and role-based access control design.
- Working knowledge of cybersecurity assessment methodologies and data secu