#295 Data Shouldn't be a Four-Letter Word - Making Data a Forethought - Interview w/ Wendy Turner-Williams

Please Rate and Review us on your podcast app of choice!Get involved with Data Mesh Understanding's free community roundtables and introductions: https://landing.datameshunderstanding.com/If you want to be a guest or give feedback (suggestions for topics, comments, etc.), please see hereEpisode list and links to all available episode transcripts here.Provided as a free resource by Data Mesh Understanding. Get in touch with Scott on LinkedIn.Transcript for this episode (link) provided by Starburst. You can download their Data Products for Dummies e-book (info-gated) here and their Data Mesh for Dummies e-book (info gated) here.Wendy's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendy-turner-williams-8b66039/Culstrata website: https://www.culstrata-ai.com/TheAssociation.AI website: https://www.theassociation.ai/In this episode, Scott interviewed Wendy Turner-Williams, Managing Partner at both TheAssociation.AI and Culstrata and the former CDO of Tableau.TheAssociation.AI is "a global nonprofit business organization …focused on bridging the disciplines of AI, data, ethics, privacy, robotics, and security." It is focusing on things like networking and knowledge sharing to drive towards better outcomes including ethical AI.Some key takeaways/thoughts from Wendy's point of view:Right now, we try to break up the aspects of data into discrete disciplines - and then work on each completely separately - far too much. Privacy, security, compliance, performance, etc. Instead, we need to focus on the holistic picture of what we're trying to do and why.Communication is key to effective data work and driving value from data. Hire product managers and focus on the why. Break through the historical perceptions of data as a service organization. Drive to what matters - outcomes over outputs - and focus on delivering value."What's the point of being focused on the data if you don't understand the business that the data is supposed to be used for?"?Controversial?: "There is no transformation without automation." If you want data to play a part in transforming the business, you need to focus on automation. Data related work can't be toil work or most won't even do it."You will never be as successful as you can be as a data organization if you're not able to influence your IT partners, your product teams, your business teams."For far too many companies, data is just an afterthought. It's not the core around how they build out initiatives. When you...