CEO Insights Magazine

Maureen Tan

Head - AI CoE

When Maureen Tan stepped into the role of Head of AI CoE at NTT DATA, Inc., she brought something rare to the table: the strategic instincts of a deal-maker and the technical depth of an AI practitioner.

She is not evangelising AI from the sidelines, she is deploying it at enterprise scale, measuring every outcome, and building the governance structures that let innovation move fast without breaking trust.

The gap between AI ambition and AI execution is the defining challenge of this decade. Only 15 percent of organisations successfully scale AI. Maureen sits firmly in that minority and she is now building the blueprint for the rest.

Under her stewardship, early success in NTT DATA Technology Solutions has already translated into measurable, enterprise-wide impact: millions in savings, faster cycles, higher win rates, and elevated client satisfaction.

How did you pivot into AI? What does it take to scale it successfully?

The pandemic was not a pause for me. It was a turning point.

While the world stood still, I leaned into hackathons, explored emerging AI, and developed a deep conviction that technology could be a genuine force for good. I pursued a Master's in AI at NUS and emerged just as generative AI ignited, ready to lead transformation at scale.

What I carried into AI was not just technical knowledge, but a strategic lens sharpened over years of navigating high-stakes decisions in energy: M&A, business development, long-cycle strategy. That duality understanding both boardroom priorities and deep technical domains gave me the instinct to identify where AI creates real value, not just excitement.

Only 15 percent of organisations successfully scale AI. True success rests on three pillars: strategic alignment, modular and secure technology architecture, and top-led governance with cultural buy-in. AI must reshape business models, not just automate processes.

What role does AI governance play in scaling innovation responsibly across an enterprise?

Most people treat governance as a brake on progress. I treat it as the accelerator.

Without governance embedded from the outset, AI initiatives get trapped in endless pilot cycles proof of concepts that never reach production. Governance gives AI the licence to scale. It creates the organisational confidence to innovate with integrity.

The framework I work on is designed around a core principle: freedom at the edge, accountability at the core. Teams practice self-governance before formal reviews, building a culture of responsibility early. Unified standards and tested frameworks form the foundation. Risk-based tiering separates low-risk use cases, where we move fast, from high-stakes applications, where scrutiny is non-negotiable.

The trust layer is not a barrier. It is the infrastructure that lets organisations move faster, safer, and with greater long-term success.

How do you ensure that the tech strategy aligns with customers and market needs?

Alignment begins from within. At NTT DATA, Inc., we operate on the "Client Zero" principle: prove value internally before introducing solutions to market.

We go deep before we go wide. We understand the domain, the pain points, the outcomes that actually matter. Technology follows insight, not the other way around. When AI is applied with that level of intent, it stops being a tool and becomes a sustainable competitive edge.

Technology must also remain modular and adaptive. With both demand and capability evolving at speed, we leverage our full-stack strengths across cloud, security, connectivity, data centres, and application services to deliver end-to-end AI solutions. This gives clients a meaningful competitive advantage and builds lasting partnerships grounded in trust.

How would you describe your leadership style?

Resilience, that is the foundation. AI involves uncertainty, resistance, and relentless rapid experimentation. If you cannot absorb setbacks and keep moving, nothing else matters.

In practice, this means setting a fixed destination while keeping the route flexible. I use the iterative methodology, Agile to prioritize and deliver incremental value. The goalpost never moves; the path always might.

But beyond strategy, leadership is about building people. I actively create space for curiosity, questioning, and growth, even under delivery pressure. I have pulled engineers out of execution cycles to explore emerging technologies, betting that a team that keeps learning will outperform a team that merely ships. That bet has paid off.

Great leadership, to me, doesn’t just drive outcomes it multiplies future capability.

What future destination are you heading toward?

The next frontier is AI-native implementation, organisations that move beyond traditional human SOPs toward processes fundamentally redesigned with AI at the core. This is not automation with a better interface.

AI agents reason, collaborate, and orchestrate across functions, managing multi-step workflows that once required entire teams, while humans augmented with AI intelligence focus on judgment and the decisions that matter most.

I am building toward this at NTT DATA, Inc. now, embedding agentic intelligence into the operating model itself, not purely wrapping it around legacy processes. The results are already tangible: faster decisions, shorter lead times, higher win rates, and measurably stronger client outcomes.

The organisations that will lead the next decade are those designing with AI at the centre today, not retrofitting it tomorrow.

AI for Good: Technology in Service of People

Beyond the boardroom, Maureen's conviction that AI can be a force for good is rooted in two decades of personal commitment. For over 20 years, she has volunteered with organisations supporting chronically ill and autistic today, a calling that has shaped her belief that the most powerful applications of technology are not found in enterprise dashboards, but in the lives of people who need it most.

She sees AI as a transformative frontier for healthcare: accelerating medical discoveries, enabling earlier diagnosis, personalising treatment for conditions that have long resisted standardised care. For children navigating chronic illness or neurodivergent pathways, AI-powered tools could mean better outcomes, more responsive support systems, and a quality of life that today's medicine cannot yet fully deliver.

Maureen is actively open to collaborations at the intersection of AI and social good working with researchers, healthcare institutions, NGOs, and innovators who share the belief that the best version of AI is one that changes lives, not just bottom lines.

"AI's greatest measure of success is not in the savings it generates for enterprises; it is in the lives it transforms for people."

Maureen Tan, Head of AI COE, NTT Data, INC.

Results That Speak: Delivering Value at Scale

Under Maureen's leadership, NTT DATA, Inc.'s Technology Solutions Business Operations has deployed an agentic workforce of more than 10 AI agents across finance, procurement, and support operations enabling stakeholders and the enterprise to succeed at scale.

The outcomes are concrete:

• Vendor queries resolved in hours instead of days

• Purchase order validation reduced from 25 minutes to near-instant

• Invoice cancellation rates cut significantly

• Real-time fraud detection preventing spend leakage before it occurs

• Millions in tangible annual savings

Every agent was built for enterprise-grade scalability, zero-trust security, role-based access control, and end-to-end encryption. These are AI agents that reason and orchestrate across multiple enterprise systems, not isolated task automators.

The work earned five industry awards in 2025, from SSON, Deloitte, and NTT DATA, Inc.'s own Innovation programme with early recognition in 2024. Recognition that responsible AI, executed with precision, delivers measurable impact.