Richard Masters is a vice-president at Virgin Atlantic who is responsible for data and artificial intelligence. His career began in space. Masters earned a PhD in Astrophysics at Oxford University, where he worked on two major projects.
“One involved building an instrument for the Very Large Telescope, in the Atacama desert in Chile, that weighs galaxies. The other was looking at dark matters in galaxies based on Hubble Space Telescope data,” he says.
From the outside, it might seem that there is no connection between high-level scientific research and developing customer-focused services at major companies. Masters says that his work in observing the magnificence of the cosmos prepared him to deal with the minutiae information of Virgin.
You have a lot noisy data coming in from these telescopes, he says. “You spend the majority of your time removing the noise so that you can look at galaxies, and stars.” After you remove the noise, you are left with a signal you can analyze to gain insight.
This approach echoes in his current role. Masters’ long-standing focus on fine detail has become an obsession for him as a data manager: “Can I remove as much noise from anything we do?”
Leading Data Initiatives
Masters, after leaving academia, applied his experience to a variety of industries. He worked as a data analyst consultant at Detica, focusing on cyber intelligence and graph network. He worked as a data scientist manager for consultant EY, before his first three year stint at Virgin from 2018 to 2021. During this time he rose to the position of head of data science.
Masters returned to EY to work as an assistant director, building products for compliance and behavioral analytics. After spending two and a half years at EY honing his skills, he returned in November 2023 to Virgin Atlantic. He was eager to take on a senior data management role at a company that he knew and trusted.
What brought me back to Virgin is that they have the right platforms and mindsets within their teams”
Richard Masters, Virgin Atlantic
“I came back because of the conversations with the executive team. Richard Masters, Virgin Atlantic (19659009): “What brought me back to Virgin was that they have the right platforms and mindsets in the teams. We looked at the ways in which AI could be used across the industry. He says they weren’t thinking, “We want you to build a chatbot”, but rather that they wanted him to consider the foundational elements and make their data right.
It was more like: ‘We know that this technology can be used to improve the quality of delivery pipelines and to speed up the delivery process, but we want to also consider the foundational aspects and make our data correct’. This focus on multiple areas was appealing. I returned to Virgin to focus my attention on customer behaviour, optimisation and decision-making in the airline industry. “I want people to understand me and trust me, so I want to build these things with them,” he says. “What brought me back to Virgin was that, just like EY, the teams have the right mindsets and platforms. But the opportunity to own this end-to-end system was fantastic.
Looking at his career, Masters says that focusing on the fine details allowed him to help executive peers see benefits of data-led changes. He summarizes the characteristics of a successful data manager in the age AI by saying that clarity of thought is crucial.
You need to distill everything that is going on. Even at the strategic levels, there is noise, opinions, nomenclature, and obfuscation. The technical people use a lot of acronyms. You want to simplify everything as much as you can at all levels. You should ask yourself, “Do I understand what he is saying ?’,”?”
I can do this by providing clearer explanations. You can benefit from an academic background because you are used to simplifying complex concepts. This simplification is important when you speak to your team. You can translate it and say “If we can boost Net Promoter Score for example, we could show how we are using data to improve the people’s experience on the plane.”
Managing New Implementations
Masters states that his responsibilities include all aspects of data usage across the organization, from the analytical data engineering and maintenance to the operation control center and customer and commercial application. His role also includes leading AI development and asking important questions about implementations.
He asks, “So how are we using AI?” What platforms should we use, and with whom should we partner? How can we ensure that our investments are in the right places and that technologies are effective? What does responsible AI mean to us? For me, the answer to that question is our use of data, augmentation, and that human loop that provides assurance about data lineage.
Masters states that the importance of strong AI practices in business processes continues to grow, especially for governance and ethical considerations.
AI has become a part of our data protection processes. “We ensure that focus is crucial to our work,” says he.
Even before the recent developments in generative AI (19459039), bias in machine learning was always a consideration when building or using models. You must educate people about the potential for bias, and explain that when they use these tools they generate more data. Our people are then responsible for managing this data.”
Masters claims that some of his biggest achievements in the past 18-months at Virgin were centered on data-enabled decisions for key business areas. He says that insight is used to boost operations, improve customer service and develop new capabilities in knowledge management.
He says, “Our ability to ensure the data and models were correct was a big accomplishment for us.” “I’ve gotten the team to ask, ‘Is this right?’ and build capabilities. We’ve built this factory on the platform. I’m proud because I can see how we can continue to extend that approach.
Data foundations is one area where significant progress has been made. The executive team at Virgin was eager to use AI when Masters returned in late 2023.
During his first stint with the company, he helped implement the Databricks Platform. Masters returned to the firm and explored how the technology can be used as the foundation for generative AI apps that optimize services and speed up decision-making.
Virgin uses Databricks and its Unity Catalog to centralise information from disparate sources. This is the basis for the AI-enabled service offerings of the firm. GenAI, which includes Databricks interface Genie, is used by the airline for a variety of initiatives.
Summarisation and categorisation is one example. The health and safety team uses AI to identify priority issues rather than trawling a long list. This approach is used to sort and prioritise issues in other areas of business, such as customer care messages sent via email.
Knowledge management is the latest application of this approach. Virgin’s employees use different systems such as Genesys, Dynamics, and apps to store data. Databricks allows data to be stored in one place. The employees then run language models in order to search for and summarize information. Masters says that you can maintain a single dataset as policies change and ensure everyone is singing from the same sheet of music when it comes to different systems. GenAI can also help you manage your data.
Delivering seamless experienceMasters recognises the endpoint of data-enabled traveling in the next few years will be more personalisation and better-quality, seamless experiences. To get there, you’ll need to answer some difficult questions.
He asks, “How much information do you want as a consumer about AI?” “No, you don’t. You just want a better experience.” We want to get to a place where you don’t have to check in anymore [for your flight]. We should be able to tell you enough about yourself that we only need to make sure you show up for your flight. Everything else is handled by identity and the system.
Masters hopes to augment airline professionals with AI, digital experiences, and data. Virgin’s staff will be able to combine these technological capabilities with their experiences to provide better services to customers without AI being involved. He notes that AI-enabled automated systems are becoming more common in the industry.
We want to get to a place where you don’t have to check in anymore [for your flight],” he says. “We should already know enough about you to only need to make sure you show up for your flight.” Everything else is handled by the identity and system. This is where the industry’s moving. AI can actually help us in this transition, rather than building big solutions that become obsolete or prevent us from moving rapidly.”
Masters states that reaching this stage will require alignment between the industry on frameworks, terminology and tools, especially when it comes integrations with other aspects of the passenger journey such as connecting transportation to destination hotels. He expects rapid progress as the promise of emerging technologies is realized.
He says that you’ll see more industry alignment in the next few years. “At Virgin Atlantic that progress will be around how we can use data in order to let our team unleash more of what makes Virgin Atlantic special.”
