Gus Tomlinson
Chief Product Officer, GBG
"Leadership, growth, and business performance:
Gus Tomlinson is an outstanding female leader in business and an influential voice within the digital identity industry. Over her decade at GBG, the leading global expert in digital location, identity verification and fraud prevention software, Gus has been instrumental in shaping the business’ data and product strategy, driving both innovation and revenue growth, as well as leading and inspiring a team to deliver on business objectives with her passion, expertise, and results-driven attitude.
Her ambition, intelligence and excellent leadership skills are reflected in her hugely successful professional development and growth in responsibility during her career at GBG. Gus has achieved seven promotions to become a senior leader and role model within the business. Last year, Gus was promoted to join GBG’s global leadership team as Chief Product Officer and is the youngest professional to be promoted to this team.
In this role, Gus is responsible for ensuring GBG’s global data sets empower its solutions, bring innovation to market, and build trust in a digital world. Her strategy and leadership have resulted in direct business growth:
•Gus’ data strategy has expanded GBG’s data coverage from three markets and one million identities to over 40 global markets and access to four billion identities. However, Gus’ nuanced understanding of the digital identity industry enabled her to identity that leveraging only traditional identity data may unfairly exclude some individuals from accessing the digital economy. As such, Gus has driven the launch of GBG Trust, world’s most powerful identity network, and has set a target of accessible access for all digital identities globally by 2030.
•Identifying the business potential of integrating mobile data into the business’ product portfolio and launching GBG’s flagship Mobile Intelligence product. Under her leadership, GBG’s mobile data coverage has grown from UK-only to five additional territories across North America and Europe.
•Developed and implemented GBG’s Multi Bureau product.
•Recently launched two flagship products, GBG Trust and GBG Identity Score, both of which are fuelling digital identity inclusivity.
Development of company culture:
Gus expertly leads a team of 50 and has built a culture of trust. She has grown the product team from UK-only to a global team with location and schedule flexibility, empowering people to work to their strengths and balance work and life responsibilities.
She is a champion of talent development; Gus is a long-term mentor and peer-mentor to multiple women at GBG and facilitated business-wide knowledge sharing by establishing a ‘Centre of excellence’, providing team members with dedicated space to share successes and learning, encouraging collaboration and inspiring innovation.
Sector impact:
Gus is driven by a sense of purpose and leverages her influence both internally and in the identity industry to utilise alternative data to democratise access to digital identities and ultimately make society more inclusive. Her work to develop innovative products has had a direct impact on the accessibility of digital identity."