Nadia Zaheer

Nadia Zaheer is Group Head of Data Science and AI at Vanquis, where she leads the enterprise-wide adoption of Machine Learning and Generative AI to deliver measurable commercial and customer outcomes. Recognised as the UK’s Global Exceptional Talent & Proven Leader in Data Science (2020) and an IBM Data Science Thought Leader (2019), she holds a PhD on why people don’t share data. With 18 years of cross-industry experience spanning banking, fintechs, telcos, retail, and airlines, Nadia has built and scaled eight data science teams from the ground up. Her work includes open banking products, customer retention models, acquisition targeting, ML forecasting, and GenAI applications — driving tens of millions in commercial uplift. She is at the forefront of Vanquis’s customer-led MLOps/AIOps transformation, embedding AI into decisioning, retention, operations, and digital customer journeys. Beyond her technical and strategic leadership, Nadia is passionate about diversity and inclusion: