EY Names Richard Clough as Global Chief Data Officer

Enterprise AI implementation faces a paradox: while AI models become more sophisticated, organisations struggle with the challenge of data preparation.

This means that the gap between AI capability and data readiness has become a critical bottleneck in digital transformation efforts across industries – and the challenge requires leadership that can bridge technical capabilities with strategic objectives.

As a result, EY has named Richard Clough as its new Global Chief Data Officer to address these challenges as EY's research indicates 83% of senior leaders report their AI adoption would increase with enhanced data infrastructure.

“Data is key to applied innovation in the AI era,” says Richard.

EY's data strategy evolution under Marco Vernocchi

During his tenure as EY's first Global Chief Data Officer, Marco Vernocchi established frameworks for managing Gen AI.

"Gen AI is an additional operating model that has to be managed," he explained at Tech & AI LIVE London.

Marco introduced five dimensions for AI integration to EY: 

• Value
• Trust
• Intelligence
• Data
• Technology

Stemming from his experience from when he joined EY five years ago, the first task was to define a clear data strategy.

Under his leadership, EY developed what he terms a "Trusted Data Fabric" - an architecture that integrates independent platforms through a semantic layer managing metadata and data policies.

"It's not a single product or solution available as is," he says, noting that market solutions remain fragmented and require careful integration.

The firm also implemented knowledge graphs - structures that represent relationships between data points - to provide context for AI applications.

"Knowledge graphs help set the type of questions that can be asked," Marco explains, emphasising their role in connecting relationships and semantics for AI solutions.

Data readiness challenges in enterprise AI

Marco also acknowledges that data is rarely fully “AI ready” for applications.

Instead, he advocates for a targeted approach where data readiness focuses on specific use cases, requiring a balance between improving data quality and embracing real-world business contexts.

As a result, the development of EY's data fabric enables organisations to share and connect data in a secure and governed way and this infrastructure supports the firm's value-first approach, which emphasises practical outcomes over technical specifications.

Richard Clough sets course for EY's data future

Richard is taking the helm to accelerate AI adoption that will increase with enhanced data infrastructure at EY.

He outlines his priorities in a LinkedIn post: "As the Global CDO, I look forward to driving our AI Ready data strategy to deliver tangible value for EY and our clients.

“This includes building a strong AI Ready data foundation, leveraging synthetic data and partnering with stakeholders both external and internal across our ecosystem including our tech alliances."

Richard will work for Joe Depa, EY’s Global Chief Innovation Officer, responsible for advancing innovation strategy and integrating practical innovation for clients and Raj Sharma who serves as Global Managing Partner for Growth and Innovation, focusing on accelerating technology transformation through collaboration.

“Histoically, data has been seen as a back-office technology. It’s more than that," says Joe.

"We believe data will enable all the AI and agentic workforce innovation of the future." 

Meanwhile, Marco moves to Global Innovation Commercial Leader, focusing on scaling priority innovation investments as his experience spans three decades in digital and analytics leadership positions across technology companies and startups, complemented by an engineering and industrial management degree from Politecnico di Milano.

Richard says: “These are exciting times, with more recognition than ever of the importance of data as fuel for the new frontier of Agentic AI and emerging technology convergence.

“What will distinguish the leaders from the followers is robust, AI Ready data foundations.”

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