1097: What It’s Like to Work as a Chief Data and Analytics Officer With Tom Warden, Employers [Main T4C Episode]

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Tom Warden is the Senior Vice President, Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Employers*, which provides America’s small businesses with cost-effective workers’ compensation insurance. He is responsible for data science, business intelligence and data governance across the company. He works closely with business partners and information technology to improve revenues and profitability through the application of predictive modeling, analytics and business intelligence to decision making. Tom has 30 years of insurance industry experience from working at companies like Allstate, AIG and through private consulting.  He has a B.S. degree in Accounting from The Ohio State University and an MBA from Harvard University. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst and is a member of the board of directors of Junior State of America.

*Since his Time4Coffee interview Tom is no longer with Employers and is currently Chief Insurance and Science Officer at CLARA Analytics. 

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN IN THIS EPISODE:

• How Employers has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic (6:01)
• How unexpectedly moving to the Bay Area to accommodate his (ex-)wife shaped Tom’s career path (8:02)
• What Tom has focused on in artificial intelligence (13:44)
• Why Tom says it’s important to be able to solve a problem with a computer program you’ve developed if you want to work in the data science field (16:17)
• What Tom does on a daily basis as the manager of 16 different employees (21:32)
• What Employer’s eight core values are and how they apply it to their employees (23:46)
• How Tom sees his job as navigating the space between data scientists and insurance adjusters (29:08)
• How Tom’s work history has proven that working in the insurance industry brings an exciting “never-ending set of problems” (31:52)
• How Tom’s Sunday School teacher helped inspire Tom’s interest in the investment field (34:45)
• How Tom learned to stop comparing his career to other people’s (42:26)
• Check out these websites and newsletter recommended by Tom:
  • O’Reilly
  • KDNuggets