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Kala Iyengar

  • Chief Data Officer
Kala Iyengar is chief data officer for Delaware North, a global leader in hospitality and entertainment. In this role, she is responsible for overseeing enterprisewide data utilization, governance and analytics as well as shaping and implementing a strategy for how data and analytics will advance the company and derive maximum value.

Iyengar has over 20 years of experience driving data-related transformation and business value for organizations. She joined Delaware North after two years as chief data and analytics officer for Cognizant, a global IT consulting firm. In that role, she led pricing analytics solutions that provided clients with insights about $605 million in unrealized revenue.

With a background in software development and analytics, data security, privacy and governance, Iyengar has a deep understanding of the importance of data management and the need to promote data literacy and accelerate the transition to a data-centric culture. She is passionate about the utilization, governance and protection of data and is a driving force behind data democratization and responsible and ethical stewardship of consumer data.

From 2010 to 2020, Iyengar held senior-level roles at the credit bureau Equifax, culminating in three years as vice president of data privacy and protection. She joined Equifax as a senior director of core software engineering and later served as senior director of technology – data and analytics.

For the first seven years of her career, Iyengar was a development manager and software engineer for GMR Technologies. She also spent three years as a senior manager of technology with World Financial Group, which is now known as Transamerica.

Iyengar earned a master’s degree in physics from the University of Jabalpur in Central India and a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt certification from Georgia Tech.