Talent as a Platform: How Yanolja Built a Data Culture Across Its Workforce

A modern data platform without data-ready people is a stranded asset. Yanolja, Korea's leading travel-tech unicorn, learned that scaling AI-driven innovation required building a talent strategy as sophisticated as its technical architecture. When Yanolja partnered with Databricks, the breakthrough was not technology deployment but C-suite commitment to train more than 1,000 employees out of a workforce of roughly 2,000. That scale of organizational investment created a cultural shift that changed how leadership, engineering, and business teams collaborated around data. In this session, data engineering leader Youngho Song, and Head of Data Sooyoung Lee share the "assess-and-architect" methodology they used to identify skill gaps, the enterprise-wide data capability framework that created a shared language across the organization, and the measurable platform ROI that followed. For CHROs, CTOs, and CDOs who understand that the bottleneck to AI maturity is human, not technical—this session is the strategic playbook you need.