When talking about machine learning was something like talking about science fiction for most mortals, she was already working with data, statistics and predictions with the aim of identifying patterns. She started doing it when she was just an intern at a computer company, when she was still studying Mathematics at the Complutense University of Madrid.
He continued, now as a recruit from Banco Santander, where he worked alongside Dr. Ho, a Vietnamese guru with whom he shared an office in the so-called special projects department.
There he began working with algorithms and what was then called data mining to understand behavioral patterns, consumer trends or even credit risk profiles. Beatriz Sanz Saiz (1973), that “mathematical girl” who collected data unintelligible to most, is today one of the Spanish authorities on Artificial Intelligence.
A whirlwind of a woman, just over five feet tall, intelligent, insightful and empathetic, who today leads a team of 22,000 professionals as lead partner of EY’s global Artificial Intelligence program, a consulting firm with which she has been linked for more 15 years old and which has led her to occupy a position in the discussion group on Technology and Sustainability at the US National Academy of Sciences.
“We were the weird ones,” he remembers of those years at Santander, when his job consisted of researching how to apply neural networks and machine learning algorithms in banking, one of the first sectors to adopt them. “Talking about this now is very normal but back then – we are talking about 1997 – it was pioneering in Spain and in the world to work with algorithms to identify consumer trends, behavior patterns… Begin to understand and apply statistics in areas of innovation and growth, rethink business models, advice and customer management.”
Sanz’s extensive professional career has also spent a few years in Australia and at BBVA, where he established data, AI and innovation as core competencies. But most of her professional career has been spent at the consulting firm EY, where she became the youngest partner in the company at just 30 years old.
From here he has worked and works with companies mainly in the financial sector, in what he calls advanced client management, guiding them to the challenges and opportunities opened by AI, as well as other emerging technologies. In fact, he created a space for EY in Madrid that he named the Artificial Intelligence Center, nothing innovative if it weren’t for the fact that it was born in 2014.
“When I was little, if you wanted to leave a legacy they told you to become a doctor, professor or lawyer. Today, and being an AI professional, the legacy I can leave is the opportunity to transform the world, to make a better world.” Hence, one of the projects she is most proud of is the launch of the EY Open Science Data Challenge, which involved satellite imagery, machine learning and the use of artificial intelligence to analyze the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals to address to find solutions.
Beatriz Sanz, who still dedicates an hour a day to her training today, firmly believes in the benefits of AI, although she does not turn her back on the ethical issues that surround it. “It can really help drive social equity, which is inspiring and encouraging. It is also said that AI is going to take away jobs, but so far I have only built new ones.” She announces that the other new technology of the 21st century is going to be quantum technology, which she, as a curious and analytical mind, awaits impatiently: “When these two technologies come together, I believe we will be facing a historical transformation never seen before, and I even believe that we will be able to talk about new ways of life.”
Beatriz Sanz’s personal life has been just as intense as her professional life, and in both she has been constantly breaking the mold. For better and for worse. Although the good certainly weighs much more, as her three magnificent children attest.
