From Regulation to Reality: Trust, Compliance and Scaling AI Where It Matters
Week 17 of the Data Innovation Summit XI Edition dives into the hard, necessary work of making AI operational in the real world. This week’s sessions tackle regulatory pressure, trustworthy autonomy, enterprise enablement, and the organizational mechanics required to move from experimentation to sustained impact.
New Speakers and Sessions
We are pleased to welcome Adeiza Yisa, Business Information Security Office (BISO) Advisor at Shell, with his session What DORA, CRA & the EU AI Act Mean for Enterprise AI Infrastructure. Drawing on deep experience in cybersecurity, governance, and IT/OT security, Adeiza breaks down how emerging European regulations translate into concrete requirements for enterprise AI infrastructure, and how security leaders can align risk, resilience, and business objectives without slowing innovation.
From the public sector, Martijn Bauters, Chief Data Officer at the Belgian National Employment Office, presents How We Set Up a Compliant Hybrid Cloud Platform at the Belgian National Employment Office. The session offers a practical walkthrough of building a modern hybrid data platform in a heavily regulated environment, enabling secondary use of employment data for fraud detection, national statistics, and strategic decision-making.
In the autonomous systems domain, Sahar Tahvili, PhD, Head of Verification and Validation at Einride Autonomous Technology, joins with Trustworthy Autonomous AI at Scale: Ensuring Safety, Reliability and Accountability in Decision Systems. The session explains how structured validation, scenario-based testing, and continuous monitoring work together to surface weaknesses early, manage risk, and maintain reliable autonomous decision-making in complex, real-world environments.
On the data engineering front, Nina Alias, Head of Data & Analytics Engineering at NOBA Bank, shares Modernizing Data Engineering: From Tech-Lean to Data-Driven. The talk focuses on the strategic evolution of data engineering teams, balancing regulatory expectations, legacy constraints, and innovation, while building resilient platforms, modern workflows, and a culture of curiosity and efficiency.
The Adoption stage welcomes Lana Kader, AI and Strategy Manager at Matas Group, and her session From AI Hype to Shared Reality: Scaling an AI Academy to 650+ Employees and Building an Enterprise Use-Case Pipeline. Based on a 10+ month, company-wide AI Academy, the session explores how to align vastly different maturity levels, build shared AI literacy, and convert learning into a governed, value-driven use-case pipeline.
From retail and analytics, Deniz Minican, VP Data & AI Office, and Mathias Holm, VP ML Engineering & Data Science at H&M, present Separating Myth from Reality in Conversational Analytics. This session cuts through the hype to reveal the technical and organizational foundations required to deliver trusted, production-ready conversational analytics across complex enterprises. Also from H&M, Mathias Holm delivers Unifying Text & Images: Multi-Modal AI as H&M’s Engine for Search and Creativity. The session explores how multi-modal AI connects imagery and text to improve search, recommendations, creative workflows, and commercial outcome, while scaling responsibly and measuring real business impact.
Rounding out the week, the Industry Stage features the panel How Can AI Reshape Retail and Logistics to Deliver Smarter, Sustainable Customer Experiences, with perspectives from Elkjøp Nordics and DoorDash, examining how agentic and data-driven AI is transforming customer experience across the value chain.
New Stage Moderators and Partners
We welcome Dácil Hernández, Credit Analytics Director at Resurs, as a new Stage Moderator for the Finance, Telecom, and Digital Services Stage. With over 20 years at the intersection of data, AI, and business strategy, Dácil brings deep expertise in responsible AI, scalable data foundations, and enterprise transformation. We are also happy to introduce Luiza de Lange, CRO Enthusiast, as Stage Moderator for the Gaming, Media and Entertainment Stage. With a strong background in experimentation, personalization, and analytics across multi-brand environments, Luiza brings a sharp, outcome-driven perspective on data-powered growth.
Warm welcome to SODA, as our Stage Sponsor Partner for the Databases and Data Quality Stage (M9) during the Foundation Days, followed by a range of new partners joining: Broadcom, EnterpriseDB, Matillion, FX Analytics, SAAB and Bosbec, further strengthening the ecosystem around scalable, enterprise-grade data and AI. Week 17 reinforces a central DIS26 theme: AI only becomes transformative when regulation, trust, data foundations, and people move forward together, not in isolation.
More insights ahead!
The Data Innovation Team