--- title: "ROI Before AI: How Leaders Make the Business Bet on Foundations" url: "https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/roi-before-ai/" description: "Leaders from EasyJet, Nasdaq, and Invitation Homes reveal how they turn data foundations into strategic investments boards actually understand." keywords: "atlan, data governance, regovern 2025, regovern watch center" --- > Atlan is hosting Context Conference, bringing together the leaders and builders at the frontier of giving AI the context it needs to understand their business. It runs online on October 28, 2026, from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM ET. Atlan co-founder Prukalpa Sankar opens and closes the day. Leaders from AstraZeneca, BNY and Verizon share why they invest in context and what they get from it. Registrants get early access to The AI Context Gap, a new study from MIT Technology Review Insights. Register: https://atlan.com/context-conference/ Re:Govern 2025 session recording from Atlan's [Re:Govern watch center](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/): **ROI Before AI: How Leaders Make the Business Bet on Foundations**. Leaders from EasyJet, Nasdaq, and Invitation Homes reveal how they turn data foundations into strategic investments boards actually understand. Speakers: Michael Weiss (AVP, Product Management, Nasdaq); Shivaprasad (Shiv) Nayak (Head of Enterprise Data, Analytics and AI Architecture, EasyJet); Chris Durham (Director of Enterprise Data Products, Invitation Homes). Watch: the recording plays on the page, and continuing past the preview requires an email - [watch at https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/roi-before-ai/](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/roi-before-ai/). ## Speakers - **Michael Weiss**, AVP, Product Management, Nasdaq. Michael runs a hybrid platform model with centralized infrastructure with embedded teams, and proves that metadata isn't overhead, it's the multiplier that scales advanced analytics globally while building board-level credibility. - **Shivaprasad (Shiv) Nayak**, Head of Enterprise Data, Analytics and AI Architecture, EasyJet. Shiv leads EasyJet's data transformation with application-first pragmatism. He's revolutionized crew scheduling, driven company-wide AI literacy programs, and delivered agentic systems across flight and business operations. - **Chris Durham**, Director of Enterprise Data Products, Invitation Homes. Chris transforms invisible work into business impact by attesting KPI validity, automating SOX compliance, and building single sources of truth - showing how data products deliver measurable ROI for enterprise operations. ## Companies - **EasyJet**: EasyJet is a British low-cost airline operating 1,207 routes across 38 countries and 164 airports. With flight operations and customer care generating massive data volumes, EasyJet is deploying AI and agentic systems to transform customer experience, crew scheduling, and operational resilience at scale. - **Nasdaq**: A $49B company operating 30+ exchanges, Nasdaq is the intelligent fabric of finance. Nasdaq deploys AI across 50 exchanges globally - from generative AI surveillance detecting market manipulation to machine learning accelerating bank risk calculations. - **Invitation Homes**: As an S&P 500 company operating \~100,000 single-family rentals, Invitation Homes combines scale with technology - deploying data analytics for dynamic pricing, smart home systems for resident control and efficiency, and digital platforms streamlining leasing. The result: $2.6B in 2024 revenue. ## What's inside Every CEO wants AI results, but few want to fund the foundations that make them possible. This panel shares how leaders evolved the AI conversation by linking governance, data quality, and metadata to business outcomes, building executive alignment through board-level storytelling that proves the smartest way to lead in AI is starting with trust and resilience. Key takeaways: - Selling invisible work requires translating governance and quality into business outcomes executives recognize and value - Foundation investments prevent AI failures and reduce risk, but communicating that ROI demands clear storytelling - Board-level conversations need metrics that connect data quality to revenue protection, compliance, and resilience - Data products and marketplaces make foundation work visible by showing how trust enables faster decision-making - Leaders who frame governance as strategic infrastructure rather than cost centers secure budget and executive buy-in ## More from Re:Govern 2025 - [Virgin Media O2: Context for All](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/virgin-media-o2-context-for-all/) (session recording) - [DigiKey: Context Readiness](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/digikey-context-readiness/) (session recording) - [CME Group: Context at Speed](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/cme-group-context-at-speed/) (session recording) - [Mastercard: Context by Design](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/mastercard-context-by-design/) (session recording) - [Workday: Context as Culture](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/workday-context-as-culture/) (session recording) - [How Regulated Business are Moving Governance Beyond Compliance](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/regulated-industries-beyond-compliance/) (highlight) - [How Workday Embraced a Data Product Mindset](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/workday-data-product-mindset/) (highlight) - [Why Workday is Building a Semantic Layer](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/workday-building-semantic-layer/) (highlight) - [Workday's Learnings From its First Talk to Data experiment](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/workday-talk-to-data-learnings/) (highlight) - [How Workday Connects Context Across Business Tools](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/how-workday-connects-context/) (highlight) - [How Mastercard Designs Context at Scale](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/how-mastercard-designs-context/) (highlight) - [Mastercard's Federated Architecture for Agentic Commerce](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/mastercard-federated-architecture/) (highlight) - [How Protocols and Tools are Evolving for Agentic Governance](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/protocols-agentic-governance/) (highlight) - [How CME Group Evaluated Vendors for its Context Layer](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/cme-group-evaluation/) (highlight) - [How DigiKey uses Atlan as a Context Operating System](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/digikey-atlan-context-operating-system/) (highlight) - [How Data Roles are Evolving: From Modelers to Context Engineers](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/data-modelers-to-context-engineers/) (highlight) - [Why VMO2 Invested in Business Layers and Context Before Conversational AI](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/vmo2-business-context-layers/) (highlight) - [How VMO2 and Atlan are Partnering on AI-powered Data Discovery](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/vmo2-ai-powered-discovery/) (highlight) - [How VMO2 Built a Data Product Flywheel for 16,000 Employees](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/vmo2-data-product-flywheel/) (highlight) - [How EasyJet Scaled Governance with an MVP Approach](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/easyjet-mvp-approach/) (highlight) - [Nasdaq's "Anchor Client" Rollout Strategy](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/nasdaq-anchor-client/) (highlight) - [How Invitation Homes Measures Data Product Success](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/data-product-success/) (highlight) - [Nasdaq's Core Governance Reporting Metrics](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/nasdaq-reporting-metrics/) (highlight) - [Mastercard's Team Model Behind Modernization](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/mastercard-data-governance-blueprint/) (highlight) - [Contracts, Context, and Cars: General Motors' Governance Blueprint for the Agentic AI Era](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/contracts-context-and-cars-general-motors/) (session recording) - [How Mastercard is Building AI-Ready Data Products](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/mastercard-ai-ready-data-products/) (session recording) - [The Evolution of Trust: Building the Foundations for Future-Readiness](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/evolution-of-trust/) (session recording) - [Top-Down or Bottom-Up: The World's Largest Exchanges Show Two Paths to AI](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/top-down-or-bottom-up-cme-dbg/) (session recording) - [What Forced Mastercard to Modernize Its Context Stack](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/mastercard-context-stack-modernization/) (highlight) - [How Invitation Homes De-Risks the Business by Certifying 350 KPIs](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/invitation-homes-data-product-success/) (highlight) - [How Nasdaq Measures Governance ROI: Time to Insight, Time to Resolution, and Adoption](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/nasdaq-governance-metrics/) (highlight) - [AI-Ready Tech Pioneers Share their Single Most Effective AI Readiness Strategies](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/ai-readiness-strategies-pioneers/) (highlight) - [GitLab's Learnings from its First Experiment with Conversational AI](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/gitlab-conversational-ai-learnings/) (highlight) - [How CME Turned Vendor Selection into a Data Strategy](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/cme-vendor-selection-data-strategy/) (highlight) - [Workday's Semantic Layer Strategy](https://atlan.com/regovern-watch-center/workday-semantic-layer-strategy/) (highlight) - [Modern Data & AI Governance Blueprint](https://atlan.com/blueprint) (resource) Talk to Atlan: [book a demo](https://atlan.com/forms/talk-to-sales-contact/) or [see the product tour](https://atlan.com/demo/).