174 - Why AI Adoption Moves at the Speed of User Trust Irina Malkova on Lessons Learned Building Data Products at Salesforce

Experiencing Data w/ Brian T. O’Neill (AI & data product management leadership—powered by UX design)

In this episode of Experiencing Data, I chat with Irina Malkova who is the VP of AI Engineering and VP of Data and Analytics for Tech and Product at Salesforce. Irina shares how her teams are reinventing internal analytics, combining classic product data work with cutting-edge AI engineering—and her recent post on LinkedIn titled “AI adoption moves at the speed of user trust,” having a strong design-centered perspective, inspires today’s episode. (I even quoted her on this in a couple recent product design conference talks I gave!) In today’s drop, Irina shares how they’re enabling analytical insights at Salesforce via a Slack-based AI agent, how they have changed their AI and engineering org structures (and why), the bad advice they got on organizing their data product teams, and more. This is a great episode for senior data product and AI executives managing complex orgs and technology environments who want to see how Salesforce is scaling AI for smarter, faster decisions.