How data leaders are balancing innovation and compliance in 2025: insights from our event season

Data leaders today are navigating a landscape that is as exhilarating as it is demanding. AI-driven innovation is accelerating, new data products are reshaping how teams deliver value, and regulatory pressure continues to rise. What became clear across every conversation this season is that innovation and compliance are no longer competing priorities, they’re now deeply intertwined, and both depend on trusted data.

Over the past two months, we connected with hundreds of data leaders across four major events: Transformational Data Assembly Austin, CDAO Chicago, the Gartner C-level Community Executive Summit in NYC, and Corinium CDAO Dallas. Across all of them, the same theme emerged: data trust has become the foundation for safe, scalable, transformative AI.

What we heard across the events

Leaders are moving quickly, but not recklessly. They are embedding governance, quality, and lineage directly into the way data flows, not treating them as side programs. AI readiness now demands strong foundations – business-ready data, reusable rules, reliable lineage, and automated controls. And automation is shifting from efficiency booster to essential infrastructure, helping lean teams scale oversight without sacrificing speed.

The CDAO role is evolving in real time. Today’s CDAO is no longer just a steward of data, they are becoming the architect of enterprise AI strategy, shaping how innovation happens while ensuring the organization can trust every decision it makes.

Our contributions to the conversation

Two Ataccama leaders helped shape where the industry dialogue is heading, each highlighting how trust and innovation fuel one another.

Jessie Smith: turning compliance into a catalyst for growth

In New York, Jessie Smith, VP of Data Quality, led a roundtable on a topic many leaders feel acutely: compliance isn’t a constraint anymore – it’s becoming a competitive advantage. Her discussion centered on how organizations that invest in strong, unified data foundations are actually accelerating innovation. Leaders shared how operationalizing data quality, lineage, and governance inside their cloud and AI pipelines is removing friction, speeding up delivery, and creating newfound confidence in scaling AI safely.

Jessie’s message resonated because it reframed the conversation: when compliance produces trusted, high-quality data, it unlocks AI – not slows it. That is the essence of data trust.

Larry Hunt: how the CDAO role is transforming in the age of AI

At CDAO Dallas, Larry Hunt, Field CDO, led a dynamic panel exploring how GenAI is rewriting the expectations placed on data leaders. CDAOs are shifting from guardians of governance to strategic orchestrators of AI-driven value. Larry’s discussion highlighted how leaders are balancing AI opportunity with risk, redesigning team structures, and forging deeper partnerships across IT, risk, finance, and innovation.

His message was simple and powerful: the future CDAO is the executive responsible for trust in every AI-enabled decision. And that requires platforms that unify data quality, governance, lineage, and automated intelligence so trust is embedded, not inspected after the fact.

The road ahead: responsible innovation becomes the new standard

The leaders we spoke with are embracing a dual mandate: move faster, but with confidence. That’s only possible when data is accurate, understood, governed, and continuously validated – everywhere it flows.

This is exactly why Ataccama ONE was built: A smart, unified, agentic platform with data quality at its core so organizations can automate the heavy lifting, scale governance, and deliver AI with trust from day one .

Teams are now:

• Operationalizing AI governance
  
• Making data quality non-negotiable
  
• Automating controls across their hybrid environments
  
• Empowering the business with accessible, trustworthy data
  

And they’re doing it not because they have to but because it accelerates their ability to innovate.

Our biggest takeaway?

Data leaders aren’t choosing between innovation and compliance; They’re designing operating models where both fuel each other because both depend on trusted data.

Thank you to everyone we met across Austin, Chicago, NYC, and Dallas. Your candor, energy, and optimism continue to shape the future of data management.

Let’s keep building the foundations for AI that is safe, scalable, and transformative today and in the years ahead.