Heidi Lanford

Vice President of Enterprise Data & Analytics, Red Hat

Heidi Lanford is the Vice President of Enterprise Data & Analytics at Red Hat. Her responsibilities include Red Hat’s data, business intelligence, and analytics strategy and practice; sponsoring enterprise data governance; and growing Red Hat’s data science community of excellence. Some key advances for Red Hat in her tenure include the implementation of the first enterprise data science platform for collaboration and a framework for certifying enterprise data.

Joining Red Hat in 2017, Lanford brings expertise from an extensive consulting and agency background with PricewaterhouseCoopers and KnowledgeBase Marketing (a WPP firm), where previous clients included McDonald's, Harley-Davidson, The Limited, Sprint, United Airlines, and HP. Her experience also includes building and leading global business intelligence and analytics functions for technology companies, where collaboration between marketing, sales, strategy, product development, and channel functions was a key success factor. Lanford also founded the analytics consulting company, Go2Market Analytics, which served a number of technology and education companies.

Lanford is a frequent speaker and guest lecturer, recently delivering the keynote session at the Global Women in Data Science (WiDS) conference and serving on a panel at the Department of Defense Analytics Symposium. She guest lectures at the University of Virginia, Elon University and the Kenan-Flagler School at UNC. She is a board member with the University of Virginia’s Data Science Institute and serves on the customer advisory boards for Dun & Bradstreet and Tableau. Lanford holds a bachelor's degree in Mathematics with a minor in Statistics from the University of Virginia.