Female spotlight - Jila Bahri

Jila leads Consulting in the US at Kubrick Group, where she helps organisations turn Data and AI into meaningful, scalable business value. Her career has centred on translating data and emerging technology into real-world outcomes. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she led cross-government, multidisciplinary teams developing and deploying new diagnostic products at national scale, helping make lateral flow tests a widely used household product across the UK. She also led the development of the digital solution for reporting test results, alongside an AI-enabled reader designed to detect the presence of COVID-19 better than the human eye.

Jila’s route into Data and AI was not a traditional one. She first discovered the power of data early in her career in publishing, using it to inform commercial decisions across sales, pricing and inventory and significantly improve margins, before moving into consulting and increasingly working at the intersection of business, data and technology. That journey shaped her belief that Data and AI should be accessible, and that the opportunity to understand, use and create value from them should not be reserved for those with traditional technical backgrounds.

She is passionate about democratising AI safely: equipping people and teams with the skills and confidence to engage with it, while building an understanding that trusted AI starts with strong data foundations, governance and a clear connection to the insights, decisions and ROI it is intended to enable. She is equally passionate about widening routes into the industry and ensuring diverse perspectives, particularly more women, have a meaningful voice in shaping how Data and AI are designed, governed and used.