Scott Sanchez is Vice President, Innovation, at First Data. Sanchez joined First Data in early 2011 to lead a user-driven approach to innovation and help enable innovation throughout First Data across products, clients, and employees. He runs the Innovation Lab at First Data, a cross-functional team of product managers, user experience designers, user experience researchers, and client innovation leaders, whose goal is to disrupt the future of commerce in collaboration with our clients.
Sanchez is also on the faculty of the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University (the d.school), a hub for innovators at Stanford, where students learn “design thinking” to tackle the world’s messiest problems together. In addition to teaching at Stanford, as a founder of Innovators Atlanta, he also spends time with companies, schools, organizations, and individuals around the Southeast and beyond nurturing and unleashing innovators of all ages.
Before joining First Data, Sanchez spent two years at Visa running Commercial Marketing and driving innovation strategy. Before Visa, he spent 8 years at Intuit (makers of Quicken, QuickBooks, and TurboTax) in product management and the innovation lab.
Sanchez grew up in Atlanta, GA and has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University.