- Tension: We’ve been conditioned to think more data equals better decisions—but what if the real power lies in asking the right question before the data is even touched?
- Noise: Industry narratives glamorize big data and predictive analytics, but ignore the cognitive fatigue, false certainty, and strategic fog created by too much unfiltered information.
- Direct Message: Data isn’t what drives value—clarity of inquiry does.
Read more about our approach → The Direct Message Methodology
Walk into any boardroom today and you’ll hear the same confident claim: We’re data-driven. It’s become a badge of maturity, of strategic edge. But talk to the people in charge of making those data-driven decisions—and a quieter story emerges.
A story not about volume, but about overwhelm.
A story about questions left unasked.
Because what most organizations are actually wrestling with isn’t access to data—it’s the inability to make meaning out of it. And the problem isn’t technical. It’s human.
This is the conversation Emad Georgy, CTO of Experian Marketing Services, has been having for years. Not just with clients. But inside the mirror of his own decisions as an engineer, a strategist, and a systems thinker.
“With my software engineering background, I’m naturally inclined to data. It’s part of my DNA, and part of the organizational DNA here at Experian.” Emad Georgy is CTO at Experian Marketing Services, a business built on the foundations of Experian plc‘s twenty year history of securely aggregating and managing consumer data.
Georgy’s perspective isn’t theoretical. It’s operational. It’s personal. It’s drawn from years at the center of both architecture and leadership—where data isn’t just a resource, it’s a reflection of every choice a team makes.
Working at the C-level, I asked Georgy if he ever gets his hands dirty with actual analytics any more?
“Not as much as I’d like,” he said, “but it’s a daily thing for me.” It’s something he requires of other members of his leadership team too. “You’ve got to have street cred with your own tech team,” he laughed, adding that he has to have an authentic understanding of the analytics in order to help Experian’s clients.
Georgy’s early education took place in Southern California, first at Loyola High School in Los Angeles, and then at Loyola Marymount University where he studied for a B.A. in information systems. His M.A. in organizational leadership came from nearby Biola University. In his career prior to joining Experian, he seems to have consistently ridden two horses: technological expertise and business leadership.
He’s been a director of technology and director of software development, but he’s also been a business architect at a series of companies.
He joined Experian Marketing Services in 2010 as VP and Chief Architect for Global Product Development, and today serves as the brand’s CTO, leading software engineering, development and product management in over 30 countries. Among his achievements has been leading the team which developed the industry’s first digital linkage platform for marketers built on HBase and Hadoop.
I asked when he first became personally convinced of the importance of data and analytics, and the answer drew connections between his software and business architecture roles. “After leading a number of organizations,” he said, referring to positions he held prior to Experian , “you start seeing a pattern.”
For example, he kept hearing, “We need to embark on a multi-million dollar project to rewrite an architecture.
I started thinking about that: Why? How did we get here? And then, what if we figured out a way to predict how we would get to that place?”
It was clear that, over a number of years, small decisions can lead to a point where major fixes to architecture are required. Georgy realized that data was available which could be used to predict technical debt; to project the “future impact of decisions made every day.”
The other driver for Georgy’s commitment to data analytics has been interactions with clients. Again, he recognized “a regular pattern—retailers, airlines, hotels; they’re only as good as their last interaction. Customer loyalty is dissipating. Data can help brands “uniquely understand customer behavior. At Experian, with all of our expertise, we can play a role in getting data to a position where it’s actionable.”
In practice, Georgy told me, that means clients can bring data to the Experian Marketing Services platform “as is.” It’s a game-changer, he said. “We don’t dictate a strategy. We’ll make sure that the data is ready to use and actionable.”
But that’s only part of the puzzle.
The tech world loves complexity. The language of “data lakes,” “clean rooms,” and “AI enablement” makes companies sound advanced. But beneath that surface, many are still struggling to do the basics: unify data, trust it, use it.
The result?
A new kind of paralysis.
Not due to lack of information—but because the flow of it is constant, shapeless, and often misaligned with the actual decisions people need to make.
“People always talk about the big data piece,” he said, “but don’t always talk about asking the right questions of the data.”
This is especially true when it comes to the growing field of predictive analytics. A lot of businesses, he said, are still figuring out basic reporting on attribution.
This is especially true with predictive analytics. It’s easy to be seduced by the promise—forecasting customer churn, recommending offers in real time. But Georgy’s team often finds itself in a surprising role: slowing clients down.
“They’re still in this place where the data has got to be right. Then although they’re starting to get the taste for predictive capabilities, they realize that it’s not sexy when you really have to do it. Building (capabilities) is slow going.”
What’s missing in those moments isn’t tooling. It’s design.
“The focus should really be on design: What questions are we trying to answer?”
That’s the part that doesn’t fit on a dashboard. That requires thinking beyond automation. It requires purpose.
The Direct Message
Data isn’t what drives value—clarity of inquiry does.
That shift in mindset—toward better questions, not just better answers—isn’t just technical. It’s cultural.
It’s the difference between using data to prove and using it to learn.
It’s the difference between “data-driven” as a status symbol and “data-informed” as a practice of humility.
And in a world where brands are racing to make everything real-time and AI-assisted, Georgy’s approach stands out for its simplicity: ask smarter questions. Design better hypotheses. Don’t confuse the depth of your dataset with the depth of your insight.
That’s why, when people misunderstand what Experian Marketing Services does, Georgy doesn’t correct them with jargon.
“Actually,” he laughed, “the more you learn about what we do, we’re really doing the exact opposite of that. We build relevant experiences every time.”
Relevance, after all, isn’t found in the data.
It’s found in how well you understand what someone really needs—before they even say it.
And that’s not something you mine.
It’s something you listen for.
