My guest today is Sree Krishna Kumaraswamy, known more popularly as Krishna, a data and analytics leader with over 20 years of experience spanning consulting and large enterprise technology companies
In this conversation, Krishna
- traces his journey from growing up in Chennai with an expected engineering path to discovering mathematics and statistics through the Indian Statistical Institute
- Talks about his early work in applied statistics and computer vision,applying concepts of machine learning before “data science” became a mainstream term.
- Describes how Carnegie Mellon’s Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining program deepened his exposure to algorithms, natural language processing, unstructured data, and the business applications of predictive modeling.
- Emphasizes that generative AI is powerful but costly, and the need to use it thoughtfully
- Stresses that responsibility for ethical data use is shared across organizations, including data scientists, engineers, governance teams, risk leaders, executives, and users.
- Touches on data poisoning, cyber threats, and the growing need for systems that can detect fast-moving patterns without overreacting to every small data change.
- His career advice for those aspiring to enter or switch to data science roles
- Shares his grounding principle is the “so what, who cares?” test: work on problems that matter to someone, find partners who care about the outcome, and focus on impact rather than technology for its own sake.
Krishna is a data and analytics leader with over 20 years of experience spanning consulting and large enterprise technology companies. With an academic background in statistics and machine learning, he has spent his career turning data and AI into tools that help businesses make better decisions.
Most recently, he led data and AI product teams at Salesforce, where he built self-serve analytics and AI tools used by tens of thousands of employees, and predictive systems that helped the company better serve its customers. Throughout his career, he has focused on bridging the gap between technical teams and business needs, bringing a product mindset to data science and AI.
He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and two kids.
His profile : https://www.linkedin.com/in/kkumaraswamy/
