Making enterprise data work harder: Q&A with Sophie Turner, Financial Times
'The most important step is taking people on the journey with you'
Ahead of Computing’s IT Leaders Summit, Sophie Turner, Senior Data Governance Specialist at The Financial Times, shares what makes organisational data useful, AI-ready and ready for transformation.
On the run up to Computing’s IT Leaders Summit on 17th September 2026 in London, we had the opportunity to talk in-depth with some of our speakers – including Sophie Turner, senior data governance specialist at The Financial Times.
Sophie's focuses on improving how the FT governs, understands and uses data and AI so the publication is better equipped to meet its goals. This includes translating governance policies and requirements into practical processes, guidance and training, and supporting a federated model of ownership across the organisation.
Sophie will be on the IT Leaders Summit panel ‘Data Governance That Delivers: Making Enterprise Data Work Harder’ along with Krishnan Chandrasekharan, Director IT Architecture at IQVIA, and Gunjeet Sandhu, Associate Director at Macquarie.
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What's the biggest barrier to making organisational data truly useful?
The biggest barrier is often how ownership of data is perceived: do the business [leaders] recognise their part to play in owning and managing their data? Once you have business stakeholders prioritising the management of data we can understand what makes their data useful from their context, which is critical in successful governance.
What does AI-ready data look like in practice?
AI-ready data has all the hallmarks of well-governed data, just spoken in a new language. We still need high-quality data that is well understood, owned and managed, we just now need that understanding to be translated into something that is also easily understood by machines.
What's the most important step IT leaders should take today to ensure their data is ready for transformation?
The most important step is taking people on the journey with you - technical controls are only effective when underpinned by genuine adoption. If people don't understand why something is important, and why they may need to change their ways of working, they will not prioritise it against all the other things they need to be doing!
Computing’s IT Leaders Summit is an exclusive event for senior IT professionals, taking place on 17th September at the Royal Garden Hotel, Kensington, London. Click here to learn more.