Role Models:
Daria Grishna

Daria Grishina is a Business-Focused Technology Executive whose signature is driving bottom-line value, scale, and commercial revenue growth through digital solutions, business transformation, and technology innovation. With 20+ years of experience, Daria has held progressive IT leadership roles at global Fortune 500s in the consumer products market. She has built a reputation among functional business executives as a visionary leader, strategic relationship builder, change agent, and value driver with a deep understanding of all enterprise functions. In 2020, Danone’s new CIO recruited Daria to transform the IT and Data organisation for the UK & Ireland, a global Top 5 commercial region. With a team of up to 60 direct reports and a €30M budget, she drove the vision, strategy, and execution for a portfolio of 50 transformation projects that generated millions of Euros in business value and revenue growth opportunities. Key initiatives included the adoption of a global operating model for all of IT plus Agile Scrum for Digital and Data teams, a major infrastructure reset, building a digital technology stack, as well as business consolidations and M&A integrations. From 2008 until 2020, Daria earned successive promotions at BAT culminating in the role of Head of Information & Digital Technologies for all of Central Asia and Eastern Europe. In this role, she was an integral part of a global restructuring programme while leading a 100-member IT organization supporting 5K+ users, 230+ offices and retail sites across 13 commercial markets and 4 factories on a GBP 40M budget. With the focus of enabling new product category launches, Daria transformed the business model, modernised the digital and business technology ecosystem, drove Cloud and Big Data capabilities, and created a unified consumer experience across all omni-channel touchpoints. Her efforts resulted in 12x digital channel revenue growth and 15% productivity gains, all while strengthening governance and compliance across the value chain. Before joining BAT, Daria served in Business Analyst and Project Manager roles for Renaissance Capital, BAT, and P&G supporting major SAP ERP, CRM, and enterprise application initiatives. She holds a Master’s degree in Mathematics and Computer Science along with the PRINCE2 Practitioner certification.