Elan Panneerselvam
Elan Panneerselvam
Chief Data & Technology Officer
Data & Technology Executive

Where Data
Becomes
Advantage

Building the platforms, governance, and cultures that make data the most trusted asset in any organization — across any industry.

Chief Data Officer Chief Data & Technology Officer CDAO VP Data & AI
$110M+
Business Value
Delivered
20+
Years of
Data Leadership
$54B+
Portfolio Assets
Overseen
Platforms Built
From Zero
01 About
Elan Panneerselvam

The bridge between strategy and execution

I have spent 20 years solving one fundamental problem across multiple industries: how do you make data the most trusted, most reliable, most valuable asset in an organization — not just technically accurate, but trusted enough that every team builds on it instead of building around it?

The answer is never purely technical. It is a people challenge, a governance challenge, and a cultural challenge as much as an engineering one. I bring all three.

"The technology migration is the visible part. The real transformation is when every team stops building their own workarounds and starts relying on a single source of truth."

From building complete data platforms from zero as the first hire at Fair Square Financial — through acquisition by Ally Financial — to leading enterprise data strategy as SVP and Chief Data & Analytics Officer at Merrick Bank, I have consistently delivered transformations that generate measurable outcomes and lasting organizational change.

Industries & Domains
Financial Services Fintech Healthcare Enterprise Tech Consumer Products Payments Capital Markets Regulated Industries
02 What I Bring

Six disciplines.
One integrated vision.



CDO —
Enterprise Data Strategy & Governance

Defining multi-year data roadmaps aligned to organizational priorities. Building governance frameworks, MDM/RDM platforms, data contracts, and stewardship models that earn trust across the enterprise — and satisfy the most demanding regulatory and audit standards.

CTO —
Cloud Platform Architecture & Engineering

Hands-on expertise designing and building cloud-native data platforms on AWS, Azure, and Snowflake. dbt transformation layers. Kafka event pipelines. Spark distributed processing. From greenfield build to enterprise-scale production — with full engineering accountability.

CDAO —
AI/ML Enablement & Responsible AI

Building production AI and ML infrastructure — feature stores, model deployment pipelines, LLM integration, and agentic AI workflows. AI governance and explainability built in from day one. Actively using Claude Code and agentic tools to accelerate data organization productivity.

CDO —
Data Quality, Lineage & Trust

Master data management, entity resolution, golden record design, and reference data governance. Automated quality observability, SLA management, and data contract enforcement. The foundation that makes every downstream analytics and AI use case reliable.

CDAO —
Analytics & Self-Service Intelligence

Self-serve analytics platforms that genuinely raise data literacy. BI enablement across Tableau, PowerBI, Looker, and Sigma. Canonical datasets. KPI standardization. Decisions made faster, with higher confidence, by business teams — not the data team.

CTO —
Transformation Leadership

The hardest part of any data transformation is never the technology. It is the organizational change — evangelizing the vision, bringing teams along, phasing out legacy systems with minimal disruption, and building the culture that sustains the transformation long after the platform is live.

03 Experience

A career built
on transformation



Apr 2025 — Present
Merrick Bank
San Jose, CA
SVP, Chief Data & Analytics Officer

Leads enterprise data strategy, AI/ML platform, governance framework, and analytics organization for a federally regulated $6B institution. Full P&L and hiring authority. Reports to executive leadership.

Enterprise Data StrategyAI/ML PlatformMDM/RDMAWSSnowflakeData Governance
Dec 2021 — Mar 2025
Ally Financial
Wilmington, DE
Sr. Director, Head of Data & Analytics

De-facto CDO for Ally's $2.5B consumer portfolio. Led post-acquisition platform integration, 4× faster model deployment, 7× workload reduction, and 10× FTE ROI through cloud modernization and AI/ML automation.

M&A IntegrationdbtKafkaSparkML Platform$2.5B Portfolio
Mar 2019 — Dec 2021
Fair Square Financial
Acquired by Ally Financial
Sr. Director, Head of Enterprise Data & Analytics

First data hire. Built complete cloud-native data platform from zero — Snowflake, dbt, Airflow, Python. $100M+ in gross bookings through AI/ML. Platform became core acquisition asset in Ally's due diligence.

Built From Zero$100M+ ImpactStartup to AcquisitionSnowflakeAirflow
Sep 2015 — Mar 2019
Barclaycard US
Wilmington, DE
Vice President, Head of Credit Risk Data & Analytics

Led global team of 20 across US and UK for a $25B portfolio. 75% reduction in report time. Governed under BCBS 239, CFPB, CCAR, DFAST, PRA simultaneously — zero regulatory findings across three audit cycles.

Global Team$25B PortfolioBCBS 239Regulatory ComplianceUS & UK
Apr 2010 — Aug 2015
Barclaycard US
Wilmington, DE
AVP — Credit Risk & Finance Data

Built credit risk data infrastructure, Finance MIS, and account-level P&L database. Directed CCAR stress testing infrastructure and federal regulatory reporting for a $27B lending portfolio.

Finance MISCFPBCCARETL Architecture
Sep 2003 — Apr 2010
Chase Card Services
Wilmington, DE
Risk Data Manager

Architected risk data infrastructure. Built SAS-based models for P&L forecasting, loss analysis, vintage analysis, and pricing. Macroeconomic correlation models using Moody's Analytics data.

SASRisk AnalyticsP&L ModelingData Architecture
04 Impact
$110M+
Business Value
Delivered
Faster AI/ML
Deployment
75%
Report Cycle
Time Reduction
10×
FTE Return
on Investment
$54B+
Portfolio Assets
Overseen
$8M
Annual Redundancy
Eliminated
Analyst Workload
Reduction
Zero
Regulatory Findings
Across 3 Audit Cycles
05 Education & Credentials
CTO
Chief Technology Officer Program
Wharton Executive Education — Philadelphia, PA
PM
Advanced Product Management
Stanford Continuing Studies — San Francisco, CA
MBA
Master of Business Administration, Finance
Delaware State University
BE
Bachelor of Engineering, Electronics & Communication
University of Madras, India
Open to talk
Ready to build
something extraordinary

Connect with me to discuss data strategy, AI transformation, and technology leadership — always happy to explore how data and AI can drive meaningful outcomes at scale.