 Hello and welcome to My Career in Data, a podcast where we discuss with industry leaders and experts how they have built their careers. Today we have a special episode recorded at the recent data governance and information quality 2023 conference in Washington, D.C. With a robust catalog of courses offered on demand and industry leading live online sessions throughout the year, the Dataversity Training Center is your launchpad for career success. Browse the complete catalog at training.dataversity.net and use code DVTOX for 20% off your purchase. Hello and welcome. My name is Shannon Kemp and I'm the Chief Digital Officer at Dataversity and this is My Career in Data, a Dataversity Talks podcast dedicated to learning from those who have careers in data management to understand how they got there and to talk with people who help make those careers a little bit easier. To keep up to date in the latest in data management education, go to dataversity.net forward slash subscribe. Today we have a special episode for you to end season one of the My Career in Data podcast. In this episode, we will hear the recorded keynote panel from the Data Governance and Information Quality East 2023 Conference, which recently took place in Washington, D.C. The keynote was titled, The Forks in the Road, Career Journeys of Data Governance Professionals. The panel was moderated by Jeanette McGoveray, President and Principal of Granite Falls Consulting and included Mark Horseman, Data Evangelist at Dataversity, Monica Kapoor, APJ Enterprise Technology Solutions Head at Thermo Fisher Scientific, Akradi Agraw, Manager of Data Governance at American Express, Valerie Calvo, Data Governance Manager at CBRE Investment Management, and Diane E. Schmidt, Chief Data Officer at the Government Accountability Office. I hope you enjoyed this discussion as much as I did and we'll see you after the holiday break in 2024 with season two starting January 10th. Stay tuned and stay curious everyone. All right, so maybe a quick intro from me because I had asked Danette and Akradi to, as the follow-up panel to their presentation, to talk about career journeys of data professionals, obviously in talking about entrepreneurialism. In your roles, we're talking about jobs, skills and orientation that are going to be helpful in your long term career. So we wanted to have a number of experienced professionals here talking about the different paths to success, some specific, some sort of by design, some by by chance, but back to back to our experts here, Danette and Akradi. Yeah, thank you and thank you panel members. We are going to let you introduce yourself. Yep, we've got the name tags going up here. So say your name in case people can't read the tags from the back and tell us something about how you came to be in this field. Were you volunteer? Was it a conscious choice? Did it evolve in some way? And so yeah, tell us a little bit about yourself as you answer that question. How did you get here? And let's start here with Mark and we'll just go right across. Yeah, so I started my career in data as a plucky young intern and I was a rather technical person, but the first project I worked on was master data management. And then over the years, I became enamored with data, discovered a part of data that wasn't really technical at all. And for the betterment of society, I could stop writing code. And so that's what I did. I'm Valerie Calvo. Like many of us, I found myself in governance by accident. I started my career as a litigation attorney, both in complex corporate litigation and I was miserable there. So I thought maybe I'll be happier in family law. I was even more miserable there. And thought I was taking a sharp left turn as I called it actually on the interview when I was applying for a legal data analyst role with Bloomberg on their legal research platform, Bloomberg Law. I thought it was going to be completely different than what I was doing, but would allow me to at least feel better about making my student loan payment every month. And it turned out to be just a wonderful career and data that grew over time. But what I learned was essentially the skills that I had as an attorney or really the mindset that I had as a part time therapist, part time social worker wearing so many different hats became so helpful for a career in governance. Hi, I'm Monica Kapoor. So after spending, you know, a few years in application development, somehow, you know, I hit the wall. I left my job. I started learning new technologies that maybe, you know, the technologies that I'm working on, that is not satisfying my passion. So I started exploring, you know, different fields. And I hit the topic on data mining. Unfortunately, there were no courses available on data mining back then. So I'm talking about about two decades back. So there was none, only way to get in over there, to make your hands dirty and take full baths on lean data mining. So I started searching out and to my surprise, as your destinies lead you, I got into the job and in advertising agency. Although, you know, I kept on wondering that what I am going to do with data mining and advertising agency, but I was not having anything to lose, but to gain. And soon I actually discovered that advertising agencies, be it above the line communication or below the line communication, they need data research. Otherwise, everything goes untargeted way. So ever since I will say that two decades back, actually I got married to my partner that is called Data and how the relationship is continuing. Because me and my partner Data keeps on traveling, traveling the world of data entry. Can you beat that? I started with data entry. Why not? Let me understand the nuances of that. Got myself into BI, validation, preparation of the data, migration, data modeling, data governance, master data management, like all fields. And what saved our marriage? That is also important. What saved the fights? Of course, we also, you know, have fights, me and my partner. It's only communication. So I keep on communicating whatever you are thinking and you thought it to be world. No, there is something new to it always. So it is continuing and I'm happy. No children though. Thank you. That's awesome. Hi. Good morning. My name is Diane Schmidt. Right after my undergraduate degree is in international affairs and in my mind I thought I was going to be some, you know, fabulous international person flying all over the world. It didn't quite work out. But so I actually worked on Park Avenue in an ad agency for a year. Had to do that, check that box. I actually then decided to come back to Northern Virginia and a friend of mine worked at the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. That show on TV, that's real. So I worked at headquarters. I had a top secret clearance. I worked in anti-terrorism. I worked at the anti-terrorism alert center and did drug analysis. That was interesting, not super interesting after a while. I did some work on the hill and decided that also wasn't for me. So I started to take more classes at night. Back then it was MIS reporting and things like that. And I walked into a class and the very first class, this woman stood up and said, hey, we're hiring for data modelers. And I had absolutely no idea what that was, but I thought to myself, that's for me. So it took me the entire semester to present my resume to this woman and said, listen, would you hire me? She said, let's bring in for an interview. And I think I was making, I don't know, $29,000. And I actually had to take a pay cut to take this job, but a new something inside of me said, this is for me. So my career started in data over 30 years ago as a data architect. So the fundamentals, the foundation, the relationships amongst data is kind of my learning and not so I sort of ended up here. Thank you so much, panelists. I think the really cool part of all of your journeys is the amount of passion that you've shown for what you're doing and kind of your next steps. So we have, our panelists are all at different stages of their career and have been in the career for different points in time. So the question we wanted to ask you next is, what is or was the hardest part of your career? And we'd love for you to answer with what was hard at the beginning as well as what is hard right now. So whoever would like to start. Well, I guess I guess one of the biggest challenges that I had was trying to get engagement, get footing, get communicating across an organization. I was working at a university at the time. Of all the weirdest things I've ever done in my life, those of you who know me, I'm quite eccentric sometimes. I just started a blog like back in the early 2000s when everybody was blogging. And from that experience, I just told data stories much like crimes against data or this weird thing happened with data. And I was getting some traction on Twitter at the time and other social media sites. And I became inspired by meeting folks on Twitter. So I drew a lot of inspiration from Gwen Thomas, from Karen Lopez, both of whom are here. At the event. And it kind of really changed my outlook. So I was challenged to communicate and talk in words that made sense and get people excited. But then I was able to draw inspiration from thought leaders in the space by just trying to communicate outwardly. So for me earlier in my career, it was a challenge getting used to working on a team and working incrementally. As a former attorney, I was used to the mindset of working alone. And really, my credo was do it once, do it right, do it never again. Your job was to get in and get out and to be as precise as you could and move on. And that is entirely different than how governance works. It's focused on continuous improvement. It's incremental. So that was quite a shock for me. And it's what really I think kind of woke me up to the opportunities. There were certainly synergies in my previous life that crossed over. But that was a shock for me. And I'd say currently the biggest challenge is, as I'm working more with senior leadership now, is getting them to understand the journey to the destination they're working towards. Whether it's data lakes, master data, data marketplace, any of the things that are front of mind for them, getting them to understand that it takes work to get there and how we educate them on what those incremental steps look like. It is as much about the journey as it is the destination. And they don't always understand that. So I find that to be particularly challenging. It's not unique. I think many of us in this room have these same challenges. But that's what certainly keeps me busy now. So back then, so I'm talking about again, almost two decades back, I think data, at least in Indian market, or I will say, yeah, soon I got into global market as well. It was always the last option. When the budgets are getting decided, data is not considered that way. Okay, 80% budget goes to technology, maybe 10, 20, you know, that's also I'm talking more. But data was always getting treated as stepchild. How many of you fell that back then? Stepchild. Yeah. So yeah, data. Oh, that's fine. Yeah. And then we kept on. And many people, many people over here, we kept on reemphasizing the fact that it, there is I in it. It's not only T, it's it. And what is I stands for information? What is information? Technology cannot work without data. No, they didn't understand. And they kept on focusing on technology, technology and technology. And imagine what they have done. Through these technologies only silos of data got created. Exponentially, incremental growth in data, we actually, you know, have seen. And then business started realizing the potential value hidden in that. And everybody would like to, you know, play on that competitive edge that data is holding upon. And then that was the age of BI. And then, you know, now it's AI flourishing. Now data is up in the race. So people used to think same people are same side of people. And it's very funny to meet them again, in different setup. Now they used to think that data is a byproduct of business operations. But now they have realized that you were thinking byproduct of business or technology. Now, if that data is not right, your technology can stop because everything is integrated using data. You corrupt the data elements, which is flowing from one system to another. Flights get canceled. Yeah, you will not get the hospital bed. And obviously, we all have seen, you know, use cases. Now, there are many tools, technology, people have understood, you know, their bed. Sometimes, you know, they are into the rejection mode. That's fine. But I think another name of data governance is change management and change management in any field is about culture. So if you don't hit on the culture, you will not be able to bring any change. Yeah. And we are too much focused right now on tools and technologies, though I'm not against tools and technology, but definitely it's like, you know, getting into the airplane and then thinking where this airplane can take me. Are you kidding me? Yeah. Or if this airplane will take me somewhere, somebody else will decide, by the way, that and then now tell me what should I do over here? Right? So we are investing too much in tools and technologies. First, we need to go behind our why. So this I think many organizations are lacking. And I think if we first start with why, as Simon Sinek always says, I think it can help us. More and more companies are considering investing in data literacy education, but still have questions about its value, purpose, and how to get the ball rolling. Introducing the newest monthly webinar series from Dataversity, Elevating Enterprise Data Literacy, where we discuss the landscape of data literacy and answer your burning questions. Learn more about this new series and register for free at dataversity.net. I would say the biggest challenge when I was first starting out as a less seasoned data professional were two things, fear and lack of confidence. What am I doing? Is there anyone I can talk to that I can sort of get guidance from? The data communities didn't exist back then. You know, LinkedIn learning and all those courses and certifications didn't exist. So a lot of what I had to do at that point was self-taught, you know, creativity. I'm a practitioner so I had to go create it, but what was it right? Is it, does it make sense? So I was fearful that I was making mistakes and I was going to be fired or what have you. So I was and I wasn't confident. But as you build your toolkit, as you build your repertoire of failures and successes, you really do build your confidence because your decision-making gets better, your ideas are more clear, your communications are more or more clear also. So working through that and has been certainly a tremendous opportunity through the years to really overcome fears and certainly build my own confidence in the space. I think now the biggest challenge that I have is I'm now with the federal government and I come from mostly the private side and financial services where things are very different. So how am I going to do this? Am I going to have the patience? Am I going to be able to invoke the sort of change that I've been so successful at before? So the challenge in my opinion in data management is not the data, it's the people. People are very complex and not just certainly where I work, it's everywhere. So the biggest challenge is really being not only strategic but invoking that change and impacting the organization the way that you want to. So how am I going to do that? And I'm still asking myself that question. I'm still new to this particular role. I'm employee number one. So a lot of it is a lot of thinking, a lot of ideas, a lot of memorialization of strategy and plan. So that's my challenge is to be able to communicate how this strategy impacts our ability to you know, to really, I think, obtain more savings for the American public because that's what the GEO is there for. So, Ocrity, I know I'm not on the panel. I'm a moderator. I'm going to put on a panel hat, please. Absolutely. I know we'd love to hear you. Because the thing about the confidence, you know, triggered this for me. So when I first started in my career, I was so afraid to ask questions because I was afraid people would know I didn't know something. And I particularly remember the first high tech company I worked for. And I thought, you know, these people spend a lot of money to move me out here and recruit me and do the salary. And if I ask a question and they find out that I don't know something, they're going to think they made the wrong hire. And they're going to be thinking they made a big mistake. But then I realized as time went on that I don't know when the shift came. I couldn't even tell you how long it had happened. But I realized that I was asking questions. I could say, oh, I don't know about that. Can you tell me about that? And I realized that I felt inside that I had really matured in my own confidence because I could ask questions and not feel shy about that. So anybody who knows me now, I'm totally the question queen. So you would never think that I started out that way. But I really saw the difference in my own. Then the other second thing real quick. So remember how I said in the keynote, I said, don't all go out and quit your jobs because we need good people like you. Don't all go be entrepreneurs. Take the entrepreneurial mindset, of course. The flip side to that is I have had times in my career where it was a great job. Things worked. Things worked. And then situations changed. It wasn't working. I couldn't get anywhere. And I'm a really loyal person. So I will stay with the situation and try to make it work for a long time. But if it's really not working for you, go find something that works for you. So I'm giving you both sides of that equation and only you can decide if you're really happy where you are or if you feel like it's time to move. And every good step in my career, I actually had to get really frustrated before I took the next important step. Thanks to Nat. Thanks, panelists, for all of those great thoughts. We're going to ask the panel a question about what the best thing they ever did for their career is. But because we want to get to your questions in a bit, we're actually going to table that question, panelists. Everybody in the room as well as panelists, we'd encourage you to add your thoughts to a board that will be outside this room. So over here, there's a board. We'll have post-its outside the room. And you can add to the board what your best piece of professional advice is, particularly for somebody new to the field, but really for anybody. And then any resources that you would recommend that might have helped you learn or grow your skill sets. So this will be up over by the registration desk all day today. And then at the end of the day, Danette and I will ensure that a picture of it is taken and the slides for this session are updated, but we'll also have it on both of our LinkedIn's. So feel free to stop by the board all day and check out what people are putting in, start conversations around that and learn more about what people are doing. But also if you're looking for it at the end of the day and don't get a chance to take a picture of it, we'll do that for you. Danette, would you like to ask the panelists a question? Yeah, so the last question is what makes you hopeful and what makes you excited? And I will say all of you make me hopeful and make me excited. I have given, you should give yourself some applause. I have literally given my whole 30 years of data career to this career and data that I very honestly feel is one of the most important careers in the world and that we can all go and knock it out of the park and really make a difference in this world. So I'm telling you, you guys make me hopeful. So keep at it. Now they can tell you why they're hopeful. Yeah, and I guess we'll start this way again. The thing that makes me most hopeful, I don't want to steal Danette's answer, but it's everybody here. And really there's so many... Oh, I stole his answer. Sorry. There's so many people learning, new to this space, learning in this space, contributing to this space and being part of the community that it really makes it easy and wonderful for new ideas to flourish in the space, which as an avid reader and consumer of everybody's thoughts, I enjoy personally. So thank you, everybody. There's also a push in society now where people are engaging with and interacting with data in their normal non-work lives. And I think that's fascinating. I think people closing their rings on their Apple Watch or fitness device or whatever is amazing to me because people are interacting with data as a way of being a person, which changes the nature of how people engage with us, which makes me excited as well. So there's more people reading, learning outside of data as a data job. And then there's all these wonderful new people and ideas that are being shared in our community. And our community is stronger than I've ever seen before. Yeah, Mark, that reminds me of the Spotify RAPT and how Gen Z millennials are celebrating Spotify having their data. And then I always see on Instagram, I'm like, that's so accurate. I'm like, yeah, it's literally... I'm in the top 1% of Pearl Jam fans. And I think just a follow up on what we're all saying here, but I think it's exciting that the data culture and the data generation that Tom was talking about yesterday continues to grow. It's now part of curriculums. It's where many of us found ourselves there accidentally, I think in the next generation truly, who are just much more aware of data, they're much more connected than we ever were. I think it's going to make the adoption a bit easier for us. It's not going to eliminate some of these hurdles, but I think that's particularly exciting as the next generation is just so much more data aware than we ever were. The other thing I'll point out is you can't have a panel if you don't talk a little bit about AI and why I'm excited about it is because I think it's going to make it a bit easier to have the conversations where I said, one of my challenges is framing the conversation for senior leaders. The fervor around AI feels unlike anything we've ever seen, whether you're looking at marketplace, whatever it may be, this feels a bit different. And the hope is that, and what I'm excited by is that it facilitates better conversations from the governance perspective, from the data management perspective, to really understand that you can't get there unless you start here. I'm hoping that that's going to make for much better conversations and we've got the ear of leadership in a way that we hadn't before. So yeah, I absolutely shared the emotion that I'm super excited to see you all over here. Those were the days when technology forums were having a lot many people like this, but then data people few. So it definitely gives me hope. And not only that, you know, your desire to make your lives better, and not only yours, even going back in your respective businesses, and also making their life better. Who is there here? People. It's always about the people. That is one part of it. And secondly, I would also like to pass certain hope to you. So this is what I am hopeful about and excited about data governance, whatever, however, anywhere is government. Howsoever good work they will do, but people will always grieve about it. Secondly, it's a thankless job. We all agree to it. We never liked our dieticians when they were telling us, hey, this food is bad for you. And have you gone through that, you know, that particular emotions that why I started that until I happen to start losing my weight or start gaining my healthy goals. Yeah, your parents teachers stopped you doing certain things. You never liked them until you get the good marks or other way around. Right. It's human nature that if somebody else pushes us to the corner, we don't like it. The data you your department created. Oh, it's not so good. It is actually halting another department. You are the producers, you are the consumers, you don't tell us back, all of that. Right. So it's a human nature when we get pushed to the corner, we don't like it. And here, you know, all the fight starts happening. And thanklessness starts coming. But I think we ask custodians and some radians data governance and radians, right? We need to go back, keep pushing each other until the best comes out of it. So this is the hope that I would like, you know, to give you and there is data governance is no monologue, it's dialogue skin in the game. As you know, Gwen was also telling me yesterday, skin in the game. If business partners are not in, it's a monologue. So bring them in and their goals, make your goals and see the relationship will flourish. At a very young age, I decided that there are three things that I really wanted to live by. Educate yourself, work hard and save your money. Those are the things that are important, at least of course, there's family and a lot of other things. But growing up in a single parent household where we didn't, you know, I had to pay for everything and I knew education was a path forward for me. So when I see, I'm so hopeful because I see so many remarkable educational programs that are specific in certainly not just data management, data science, but the whole industry. And it's just being, you know, really saturated isn't the right word, but so many people are interested and it's so thrilling to see. So I'm hopeful that that certainly continues and we leverage those programs to make change. The other thing is, I'm excited about, is a long time ago I worked for a government sponsored enterprise. I was a data architect and we had a big launch party and they forgot to invite me. I'm the one who actually architected the whole thing, but forget about me. They saw me in the hallway after the big party and threw me a t-shirt and said, oh, sorry, I forgot to invite you. Okay, thank you. Now that doesn't happen anymore. I'm excited because we have not only a subject matter expert seat at the table, we have leadership seats at the table. We are hired because our leaders want and need direction on where to take us. Two things, good friend of mine, data is everything. You know, he always said that. And then, you know, data makes it possible. That's what we're now realizing. It's not a byproduct. It is the product. It underpins almost everything that we do. I'm excited that that is now surfaced, that we're all now in a great, have great opportunities to really see some of those things happen. Thank you so much, panelists. I think adding to that a lot of what you've said, the really cool thing about this industry is that the people who have been tenured in it are so excited to see up and coming people join and really giving, you guys are doing so much to give opportunities to younger people like me to learn in this field. So with that, we are going to open it up to, we have about five minutes, maybe a little longer. I don't know if we can bleed into coffee break, but we have five minutes. There's another session in here. Okay. So raise your hand if you, you know, while Diane was speaking, I realized your Chief Data Officer is the biggest data governance organization probably in the world. Government Accountability Office. Any particular burden or opportunity you see in that? Oh my gosh. No, absolutely. So for those of you that, so I did just join the GAO over the summer. I'm their first Chief Data Officer. Thank you. GAO has been around for a century. And if you think about the GAO, for every dollar that's invested in us, we give $84 back. We, so we're self-funding. We are really, we're really the investigative arm for Congress. We really want to make the federal government a more effective and efficient place to be and see changes there. So all of our products that go to Congress are all supported by good data. We have to have good data. We are an absolute trusted partner to our client, which is Congress. Ultimately though, it is about savings. We alone, just this year, provided 88, not million, but billion dollars in savings for the U.S. taxpayer. So look us up. It's, it's, you know, if you, if you pay taxes, you should probably, you know, it would be great to really know who we are. We are in the legislative branch. So, you know, we've got a lot of interesting challenges, especially me and my role and what the relationships, it does make it a little tougher. But we just, like I said, I'm the first CDO there. So, and I'm dealing with certainly lots and lots of data, not only data that we ask for from our partners, data that we buy, and really surfacing data management and a best practice, you know, data management program. And it's the first one. So, again, employee number one. So I see opportunities everywhere. And it's really about, and I think someone mentioned this, it's about educating our executives to really see, see those opportunities. Our engagements are, again, sort of the primary, have been the primary focus. So I'm really pulling out the, the, the data piece and want, you know, I want it to stand alone, want the practices to be, you know, excellent. I think that's what, you know, I think that's what the American public deserves. So. Okay. Anything that Danette and Acrety would like to wrap up with? I just want to say thank you for this panel. I think they, you've given some amazing answers and really appreciate you being here today. And just adding to that, Danette and I, but also all of our panelists here are happy to connect with any of you. We're all attending the conference here, but also we're all on LinkedIn. So please reach out if there's anything any of us can assist with. I think that's the core tenant of all six of us. We are all really excited to watch the field grow and something that Tony were really excited for you to give us, thankful that you give us these opportunities. Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you for listening to Dataversity Talks, a podcast brought to you by Dataversity. Subscribe to our newsletter for podcast updates and information about our free educational webinars at dataversity.net forward slash subscribe.