Private equity giant KKR has hired Emilia Sherifova, the top technology officer at Northwestern Mutual, to develop a data-driven approach she says will play a "central role" in KKR's next stage of evolution. Private equity executives are seeing data strategy as a way to analyze investments and juice returns. Blackstone said last February it had created a data platform to support decision-making. Matt Katz, hired from Point72 Asset Management in 2015, heads up data scientists who work with the firm's dealmakers. Data insights help create opportunities and avoid mistakes, said Patrick Davitt, an analyst at Autonomous Research who covers KKR.