Scaling Data Analytics in Internal Audit: An Executive Panel

"Are you using analytics?" is quickly becoming the wrong question — three chief audit executives say the real one is "how, and can you prove the value?" In this panel, Martin Espinosa, Rachel Tressy, and Sanjay Sharma — CAEs with a combined 40+ years across tech, financial services, and life sciences — join IAC's Jim Tarantino to unpack why embedding analytics matters more now than it did five years ago, even though the case for it hasn't fundamentally changed. Panel includes: Jim Tarantino, 30-year risk & data analytics practitioner Martin Espinosa, former Head of Internal Audit at Sun Microsystems, Yahoo, Avago, Polycom, Electronic Arts, Symantec & Juniper Rachel Tressy, Chief Auditor, Voya Financial Sanjay Sharma, Chief Audit Executive, BioMarin (previously Amgen, Moderna) You'll learn how to get past the "perfect data" paralysis that stalls most analytics programs, why behavior change matters more than any single project, how to scale capability instead of just technology, and where master data management and continuous auditing fit into a mature analytics program. Real examples throughout include shifting T&E testing to exception-based dashboards the business runs itself, badge-swipe vs. timesheet analysis catching falsified hours, vendor and channel risk dashboards built from revenue system data, and how each panelist is actually using Copilot and Gen AI agents in their day-to-day audit work today — not hypothetically. Whether your analytics program is a single spreadsheet macro or a dedicated data science team, this conversation gives you language and frameworks for the next stage of maturity. 👉 Join the Internal Audit Collective, the community where 1300+ Internal Audit and SOX practitioners connect in real time: internalauditcollective.com Subscribe for more practical, no-fluff internal audit and SOX content. internalaudit #dataanalytics #generativeAI #riskmanagement #CAE #SOXcompliance