In this episode of the Leaders in Talent podcast, Adriaan Kolff sits down with Annika in der Beek, Chief People Officer at Statista. A psychologist who somehow went business, Annika started in M&A, moved into HR consulting at Accenture, and joined About You in 2020 at 700 people, leaving after the IPO at 1,600. Since early 2024 she has been Statista's first CPO, hired as the founders stepped out and a new CEO took over.

Statista is moving from a media company to a data and software business, with its data now inside ChatGPT, Claude and Microsoft Copilot. Annika explains what that does to the org underneath: why silos made sense in hypergrowth, what she found on arrival (nine HR teams across 13 countries, no central HR beyond contracts and payroll), and why transformation does not end after the first restructuring. She is candid about c ...