E57 - Ben Chan - Skills Required to Successfully Navigate Industries as an Analytics Professional

Ben Chan is the Chief Product & Data Officer at Sportsbet, an online wagering company that brings excitement to life for millions of customers in Australia.

At Sportsbet, Ben leads 200 people responsible for Product, Data, Risk and Trading. His group pioneers incredible betting experiences for millions of customers, by bringing together betting markets in great sporting and racing events, building data science models that ensure the customers are receiving personalised experiences, while proactively managing the risk and liabilities that come with the business, and building all of that into a beautiful easy product.

Before Sportsbet, Ben was the Chief Operating Officer and Acting CEO of Envato, where he led 600 people to grow the world's leading online marketplace and ecosystem for digital content and creatives. He was also previously at McKinsey & Company in Australia/Taiwan/UK and at Goldman Sachs trading Foreign Exchange on Wall St in New York.

Ben has Bachelor’s degrees in Engineering (Civil) and Commerce (Actuarial Mathematics) from the University of Melbourne where he graduated top of his class in both degrees. Ben also has an MBA from Stanford University where he graduated in the top 10% of his class.

In this episode, Ben shares about career growth in technology and the most important skills required to be successful in your career.

• Importance of giving more attention to people and empowering people for organizational growth.
  
• Lessons from the trading floor and how it helped Ben in his later career.
  
• Unless you are losing blood or millions of dollar by the second, there’s nothing to stress about.
  
• Dealing with disruption and preparing for the future.
  
• Ben’s experience at McKinsey and how McKinsey supports and fosters employee development.
  
• The insider story of growing Envato from 100 to 600 people.
  
• Tips for developing and growing digital marketplaces from Ben’s real-life experience.
  
• How to manage large analytics teams.
  
• Why the most important skills for navigating job & industries are people & leadership skills.
  
• How to develop leadership skills – how it’s important for whatever role you are in.

So, this episode would be helpful for anybody who is thinking about career growth or changing their job or any analytics leader or manager who wants to focus more on developing their people and teams. Tune in right now!

BusinessAnalytics, CareerGrowth, ProfessionalDevelopment, CustomerExperience, DataScience