SEBASTIAN KLAPDOR, FORMER EVP, CHIEF DATA & TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, VISTA, FORMER PARTNER MCKINSEY
Sebastian Klapdor’s mission is to fundamentally transform businesses through AI/ML, data, and technology for a step-change in value creation. In his former role at Vista (aka VistaPrint) he joined the company as the CDO to transform it into one of the world’s most iconic data and analytics-driven institutions. Core element of his vision is to treat data as a product and build scalable data products in cross-functional teams on a data mesh architecture. Early 2023, Sebastian was appointed CTO/CDO at Vista and merged the former technology and data organizations to accelerate scaling of AI/ML applications. Since then, the team has built ML-based experiences and data products across the value chain: real-time personalization on site and mails, optimizing paid search spend, dynamic pricing, and LLM-based chatbots. The investment in these and other data products paid off with $100M incremental profit realized and a continuously increasing incremental run-rate. Sebastian is active in the community with podcast appearances, panel discussions and presentations, incl. at 2022, 2023, and 2024 MIT CDOIQ. He received the 2023 Top 100 Global CDO Award and the 2022 Top 100 Global Data Activators award. Sebastian holds a Ph.D. from Technical University of Munich.
