A Class Act: Conversations in Data and Leadership

About A Class Act: Conversations in Data and Leadership

What does it really take to build and lead a world-class AI or data team? I'm Michael Young, founder and CEO of MBN Solutions in Scotland. After two decades placing top talent across data, AI, and tech, I've seen what actually separates high-performing teams from the rest, and it's rarely what the headlines tell you. A Class Act is where I bring you those stories. Honest, experience-led conversations with the data and AI leaders making the hard calls right now: who they hire, how they build data science capability, and what real leadership looks like when the technology never stops moving. No hype. No jargon. Just practical insight from people who've actually done it.Whether you're a data leader, a people manager, or hiring in tech, you'll walk away from every episode with something you can use. New episodes twice a month. Follow A Class Act so you never miss one.

Publisher

Michael Young - CEO MBN Solutions

Category

business · business · technology

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

13 May 2025

Latest episode

30 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

28 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   30 Sept 2026

   S3E1: AI in Customer Service: Sabio's Chief AI Officer Stuart Dorman on What Changed and What Hasn't

   Stuart is Chief AI Officer at Sabio Group, a CX consulting and technology firm that has spent two decades helping large organisations run their contact centres. He was working on speech recognition and natural language when it was still called speech technology, long before ChatGPT made any of it mainstream, so he has watched several waves of this arrive and seen which ones actually changed anything. In the second episode of season 3, Michael Young asks him what genuinely changed after ChatGP...

2. 

   16 Sept 2026

   S3E1: What Does A Forward Deployed Engineer Actually Do? With Tom McLaughlin, Forward Deployed Engineer at The OpenAI Deployment Company

   Every AI company seems to want a forward deployed engineer. Yet very few can explain what they’re actually hiring for. Tom McLaughlin was doing the job before it became one of the hottest titles in AI. He went from software engineering at JP Morgan to Tomoro, the applied AI firm OpenAI acquired in May 2026, and he’s now a forward deployed engineer at The OpenAI Deployment Company, working inside enterprise clients across the UK, Europe and the US. In this conversation, he chats to host Michae...

3. 

   14 Sept 2026

   Season 3 Trailer | Meet the People Building the Future of AI

   Season 3 of A Class Act is here. Every breakthrough in AI begins as an idea almost nobody believes in yet. But brilliant technology doesn't change anything until it survives contact with the real world. So why do some AI products transform entire organisations while others never make it past the demo? And who are the people capable of closing that gap? This season, host Michael Young sits down with the category-defining founders, the scientists moving the field forward, and the forward deploy...

Who has been a guest on A Class Act: Conversations in Data and Leadership

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Stephen Ingledew
• Elizabeth Hollinger
• Adriana Ignat
• Graeme McDermott

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Spotify

5.0 / 5

5 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 28 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

44

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

32

Contact A Class Act: Conversations in Data and Leadership

Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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