Charlotte Kepadisa

Head of Big Data & AI at Safaricom

Speaker

Charlotte Kepadisa is currently Head of Big Data and AI for Safaricom PLC, previously Executive Head: Vodacom Business CVM and Analytics.

Charlotte leads multi-disciplinary teams to create and execute data-driven business value and growth. She achieves this through developing passionate data science talent, machine learning assets and digital capabilities to deliver high impact use cases for the business.

Her professional experience spans blue chip companies in Financial Services, Insurance and Telecoms.

Through the bold approach to her work, Charlotte is a recipient of several awards including Group CEO Award and Chief of Sales Awards.

To keep abreast of the ever changing Artificial Intelligence and Technology landscape, Charlotte has amongst others certificates in Data Science, Fintech from the University of Cape Town, AI from MIT Sloan School of Management. She is currently enrolling for her Doctorate studies while pursuing a Chief Digital Officer certification. She has BSc Honours in Applied Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics, and Masters of Business Administration from the University of Stellenbosch.

Charlotte is intentional about educating his teams and the broader society about second-generation biases to unlock opportunity for change in perspectives and organisational practice. She actively creates a safe “identity workspaces” where young leaders in her teams takes charge in creating and delivering value boldly through data science. Most in particular, she discourages the upcoming female leaders downplaying their femininity and encourages a healthy hard-charging style of engagement.

Together with her husband, Charlotte volunteers in Data2Innovate projects for underprivileged students where they support traditional IT graduates to enroll for new cloud technologies (i.e. AWS, AI & IBM) and building practical AI solutions that can be used in rural farming to improve the students’ prospects of employability and small businesses success.