This week, EY announced the appointment of Joe Depa (literally who?) as Global Chief Innovation Officer. If you were hoping the press release would give you his resume, you’ll be disappointed to find out it drops no names.
Throughout the last decade, Depa has worked closely with C-suite leaders and boards to bring innovative products and services to market, improve client and employee experiences, and help enhance operational efficiencies through technology. Most recently, he served as the inaugural Chief Data and AI Officer at a leading university and health care organization. At the university, he helped to promote AI literacy, launch a responsible AI governance program and enable a secure data foundation. Prior to that, he acted as Senior Managing Director and Global Lead for Data and AI at a global multinational professional services company, where he led a team of AI strategists and data engineers in developing and implementing new products and services
Alright so they’re going to make us Google it. That leading university appears to be Emory and he was appointed to the chief data and AI guy position just last year. Emory did name names in their announcement so now we know the “global multinational professional services company” mentioned in EY’s announcement is Accenture:
Depa comes to Emory from Accenture, a Fortune 50 technology provider, where he served as the senior managing director and global lead for data and AI for the company’s strategy and consulting business. There he managed their award-winning team of global professionals specializing in data science and AI strategy, and served on the global leadership committee. He focused on helping clients in health, life sciences and across industries to leverage data to develop new clinical data products, improve the patient and employee experience and reduce operating expenses.
At EY, Depa will “lead on the discovery and deployment of emerging technologies to help address business challenges and shape the future with confidence.” Translation: “Figure out how the firm can make buckets of money from AI.”
“I’m truly excited to join an organization that is ‘All in’ on its commitment to the transformative potential of emerging technologies,” said whoever wrote this quote attributed to Joe Depa in the press release, referencing EY’s post-Vision 2020 “All In” strategy that hasn’t caught on at all yet. “I look forward to working with the EY teams and clients to help empower them to apply innovation in bold, new ways that help create value for clients through data, AI and emerging technologies to make the world a better place.”
Missed opportunity to fit “build a better working world” in there, Joe. Maybe we’re not using that anymore.
EY’s last Chief Innovation Officer was Jeff Wong who held the position from 2015 until this past summer.
Joe Depa named as EY Global Chief Innovation Officer to lead its global innovation strategy [PR Newswire]
“Transformative potential of emerging technologies” is just a fancy way for The Man to publicly masturbate to the thought of reducing headcount.
And “making the world a better place” is just a fancy way for The Man to conceptualize all the money he’s going to make (save) thanks to the “emerging technologies”.
100% of the excitement in corporate America about AI is from the thought of reducing payroll costs.