Building Business-Focused Machine Learning Teams with Yash Desai

Sep 29, 2022

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Today Yash Desai is on the show, the Head of B2B Machine Learning @ Wayfair. He’ll be diving into how he manages a team that stretches across multiple business units.

In this episode, we cover:

Ways to manage a team that stretches across multiple business units
- Organizing a team into sub-teams or pods
- Business leaders will often expect you to know about the business.
- Importance of blocking times
- Importance of relationship for your business
Creating a strategy-based team roadmap
Using data to influence stakeholders
Having a simple alternative solutions
Understanding your roadmap timelines.
Having a mindset shift is really important.
Transition from consulting to production.
Tips for building a cohesive team culture.

About today’s guest:

Yash Desai is a seasoned Machine Learning (ML) leader driving business impact and innovation at top organizations globally. Armed with a Bachelors & Masters in Electrical Engineering and Applied Statistics from IIT Bombay, his ML journey began when it was just an esoteric buzzword. He joined McKinsey right after school and served clients for AI transformation across Asia, Europe, and North America in Energy, Finance, and Healthcare sectors. Post consulting, he took up leadership roles at healthcare giant CVS Health and the home goods e-commerce leader Wayfair. He passionately engages in the ML community by mentoring budding data scientists from under-represented backgrounds and participates in conference panels. Outside work, Yash loves exploring beer gardens, playing cricket, and binge-watching Marvel movies.

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/yashjdesai18

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whydesai

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