Richard Benjamins

Dr. Richard Benjamins is Data & AI Ambassador at Telefonica, LUCA where he is responsible for making Data & AI sustainable from a societal and ethical perspective. He is among the 100 most influential people in data-driven business (DataIQ 100, 2018). He was Group Chief Data Officer at AXA (Insurance) and worked for 10 years at Telefonica occupying several management positions related to Big Data and Analytics, touching all areas of the value chain. His passion lies in creating value from data. Business value, but also value for the society: he is the founder of Telefonica’s Big Data for Social Good department. He currently works on how to make Data & AI sustainable from a business, societal and ethical perspective. He is member of the B2G data-sharing Expert Group of the EC, and a frequent speaker on Data and Artificial Intelligence events. He is also a strategic advisor to BigML – “Machine Learning made easy”. He was co-founder and director at iSOCO (1999-2007) and has held positions at the universities/research institutes in Madrid, Amsterdam, Sao Paulo, Paris, and Barcelona. He holds a PhD in Cognitive Science / Artificial Intelligence from the University of Amsterdam.