Jess Lachs
Jessica Lachs is the global head of analytics and data science at DoorDash, where she’s built one of the largest and most respected data organizations in tech. In her more than 10 years at DoorDash, she has served as the first general manager, responsible for launching new markets; the head of business ops and analytics; and the VP of analytics and data science. Previously, Jessica founded GiftSimple, a social gifting startup, and started her career at Lehman Brothers as an investment banking analyst.
Strategy & Positioning Skills
High-impact teams identify and optimize for short-term input metrics that are proven to be strong proxies for long-term strategic outcomes.
"Retention is a terrible thing to goal on. It's almost impossible to drive in a meaningful way in a short term. Ultimately, you want to find a short-term metric you can measure that drives a long-term..."
Team & Organization Skills
Using a standardized evaluation rubric across a centralized organization prevents talent silos and ensures all data hires possess high-level technical and business-partnership skills.
"I think this is something I saw when we would have some pockets of analytics folks embedded is having a consistent bar for talent in terms of what we're looking for, what are the technical skills, wha..."
A centralized data organization structured into pods provides the best balance of consistent talent standards and deep alignment with business unit goals.
"I believe a central model, a center of excellence is superior and I'm happy to talk about why, but that's something that I feel quite strongly about. We've tried it or I shouldn't... well, we've exper..."
True ownership in data science means going beyond the keyboard to interact with the real world and ensure the ground truth is understood.
"Yes, you are a data scientist, but your goal is to figure out what's happening. And if that means that you're going to pick up the phone and call customers, then that is what you're going to do to rol..."