The Top Data Strategy Influencers and Content Creators on LinkedIn
What’s the latest in the data world? In a space that moves at a rapid-fire pace, keeping up with new trends and evolving best practices can be dizzying. But having the right network can make all the difference.
Regularly following updates from leaders in the data strategy space can go a long way toward not only helping you stay up to date on the latest and greatest, but also allowing you to join in and help shape pertinent conversations.
So who should you be following? When it comes to LinkedIn (and beyond) here are our recommendations for the top 25 data strategy influencers and content creators to keep tabs on.
Here’s the criteria we looked at when creating this list (not all need to apply):
- # of LinkedIn followers
- Passion for data strategy across disciplines (e.g. Quality, Engineering, Security)
- Frequent keynote speaker, book author, community leader (e.g. Meetups, Slack)
- Frequency of posting and engagement with content
- Diversity of representation
As a reminder, this is not a forced ranked or exhaustive list. If you think we missed someone, please comment and we’ll update it for 2023. 🙂
1) Scott Taylor
The Data Whisperer & Principal Consultant at MetaMeta Consulting
Scott considers himself “the data whisperer,” helping to calm data down. He believes in making data do the work through proper data management based on strategic rationale and business alignment. As a consultant, author, and speaker with over two decades of experience, he has partnered with countless enterprises, including Dun & Bradstreet, Nielsen, Microsoft, Kantar, and NPD, to improve their data management.
Scott is the author of Telling Your Data Story, a top thought leader in big data, digital transformation, and business strategy on Thinkers360, and recently joined an episode of Databand’s MAD Data Podcast to discuss the relevance and irrelevance of data quality. On LinkedIn, he posts frequently about big data, master data, data science, data management, and data storytelling.
2) Mico Yuk
Chief Data Evangelist at Count and Co-founder of BI Brainz Group
Mico Yuk is the Chief Data Evangelist at Count.co, Co-founder of BI Brainz, Host of the Analytics on Fire Podcast, and the mastermind behind the BI/Analytics Data Storytelling Framework (BIDS).
She’s trained thousands on how to strategically use the power of data visualization to enhance the decision-making process.
Her proprietary methodology fuses the art of data storytelling and visualization to drive users to take action. Mico’s ability to help companies gain ROI from their business intelligence investments has been sought out by Fortune 500 companies. Her book “Data Visualization for Dummies” is rated as the #7 most influential entrepreneur in BI.
Mico actively posts about data analytics, BI strategy, and data storytelling.
3) Chad Sanderson
Chief Operator at Data Quality Camp
Chad has extensive experience in data from hyper-growth startups to established tech supergiants to small businesses just dipping their toes into ecommerce. He has built everything from feature stores, experimentation platforms, metrics layers, and streaming platforms to analytics tools, data discovery systems, and workflow development platforms, and he believes that applying product thinking to holistic data challenges is the only way to make trustworthy decisions at scale.
Chad writes on data management, contracts, and products on his Substack blog and serves as an advisor and investor to several startups. He recently joined Databand’s MAD Data Podcast to talk about how his team is building one of the most advanced experimentation and machine learning platforms in the world from the ground up.
Chad also shares his views on LinkedIn, focusing on data strategy, data products, data discovery, experimentation, machine learning, and product management.
4) Ravit Jain
Founder and Host of The Ravit Show
Ravit is the founder and host of The Ravit Show, a community for all professionals, practitioners, and enthusiasts in the fields of Data Science and AI to upskill, grow, share, and learn from each other. He regularly interviews industry leaders for the show, covering topics like data science and data analytics.
He is also the Head Community Evangelist at AtScale, which enables smarter decision-making by accelerating the flow of data-driven insights. Ravit is active in data conversations on LinkedIn, posting regularly about data science, data analytics, AI, and data strategy.
5) Priya Krishnan
Head of Product Management, Data and AI at IBM
Priya is an innovative, customer-focused, data-driven product executive with over 16 years of experience in global product management, strategy, and GTM roles to commercialize and monetize in-demand enterprise solutions. Her primary focus areas are data science, data governance, artificial intelligence, advanced analytics, and multi-cloud product offerings.
From time spent at Delta Airlines, Initiate Systems, and IBM, Priya has developed algorithms required to run a $200M+ Master Data Management business, led complete business transformations, and managed product functions across banking, insurance, retail, government, and healthcare.
She regularly contributes to IBM’s Journey to AI blog and shares her advice on LinkedIn around data strategy, data science, women in AI, data and analytics, data governance, and artificial intelligence.
6) Niv Sluzki
Director of Engineering at Databand
Niv is dedicated to solving data health and data quality issues for code-intensive data engineering teams. He has over 15 years of experience as a software engineer, including nearly a decade in military intelligence with the Israel Defense Forces and most recently founding and leading the engineering team at Databand.
Niv also contributes to hatochna.com, where he writes about engineering culture and leading a product-driven engineering team. He is active on LinkedIn, contributing to conversations about data strategy, data lineage, Apache Airflow, and engineering culture.
Niv leads the Apache Airflow meetup https://www.meetup.com/tel-aviv-apache-airflow-meetup/
Niv leads the Tel Aviv Apache Airflow Community (sponsored by Databand) where users meet up and discuss usage, share stories, and swap tips.
7) Zhamak Dehghani
CEO and Founder of Stealth Startup
Zhamak is an experienced data leader with over 25 years of experience and a background in software engineering. She is a member of several tech advisory boards, a data mesh founder, author, and speaker.
She is currently leading a new startup still in stealth mode aimed at reshaping the future of data platforms. To that end, Zhamak shares her thoughts on the space regularly on LinkedIn, focusing on topics like distributed AI, data mesh, data analytics, and data strategy.
8) Kate Strachnyi
Founder and Community Manager at DATAcated
Kate is the founder and Community Manager at DATAcated, a community for data professionals to network, learn, and have fun, with a focus on innovation in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data science.
Kate has also authored several publications, including ColorWise (O’Reilly Media), The Disruptors: Data Science Leaders, Journey to Data Scientist, Data Literacy for Kids, and Mothers of Data Science. She recently appeared on an episode of Databand’s MAD Data Podcast, where she spoke about the relevance and irrelevance of data quality.
On LinkedIn, she posts regularly on topics like data, analytics, and visualization.
9) Colleen Tartow
Director of Engineering at Starburst Data
Colleen has a PhD in Astrophysics and more than 20 years of experience in data, advanced analytics, engineering, and consulting. She has led large data, engineering, and analytics teams through the development of complex global data management solutions and architecting front- and back-end SaaS and enterprise data systems. Colleen is also experienced in building and leading diverse teams through business reorganization and transforming existing data ecosystems by maturing them into modern and robust technology stacks.
Beyond her hands-on work, Colleen is determined to make engineering organizations better for both humans and business through mentoring, leadership, and streamlining processes. She is the co-founder of The Sequel, a newsletter exploring the human side of data, and recently joined Databand’s MAD Data Podcast to discuss how data-driven companies should treat their data as a product.
Colleen is also active on LinkedIn, sharing her take on topics like data analytics, data literacy, data strategy, and diversity.
10) Joe Reis
CEO of Ternary Data
Joe has over a decade of experience in software engineering, analytics, and data science. He currently serves as the CEO of Ternary Data, a team of veteran data engineers and “recovering data scientists” who have firsthand experience with the challenges of succeeding with data and now offer practical data engineering advice.
He is also the host of the Monday Morning Data Chat podcast, an adjunct professor at the University of Utah, active in the Utah Python and data engineering communities, and the co-author of Fundamentals of Data Engineering (O’Reilly 2022). Joe recently joined an episode of Databand’s MAD Data Podcast to share his take on the explosion of data tooling, the creation of data observability as a new category, and what’s next in innovation and data engineering.
On LinkedIn, he posts regularly about AI, data, data science, data engineering, and machine learning.
11) George Firican
Founder of LightsOnData Consulting & Training
George is an experienced data leader and instructor, having led data governance and business intelligence at the University of British Columbia for over a decade before founding LightsOnData Consulting & Training, where he is focused on providing useful resources to help others with data governance and data management questions and challenges.
George creates online courses, templates, guides, best practices, and more, and he hosts the Lights on Data Show, a podcast and LinkedIn Live weekly show that provides insights into the data world and showcases people that help to shape it. He recently joined Databand’s MAD Data Podcast, sharing his thoughts on what actually makes a company data-driven and why companies need to be more aware of their data quality issues.
George is also active in data conversations on LinkedIn, regularly talking about data, analytics, data governance, and data management.
12) Sudhir Hasbe
Senior Director of Product Management at Google
Sudhir is an accomplished product management leader with over 20 years of experience building industry-leading products at startup and blue-chip companies, including e-Emphasys Technologies, Sirit Inc, Microsoft, Zulily, and Google. In his current role as Senior Director of Product Management at Google, he focuses on BigQuery, Cloud Dataflow, Cloud DataProc, Cloud DataPrep, Cloud PubSub, and Cloud Composer.
Sudhir has built and led several high performing, global data teams and designed several interfaces and services across Microsoft and Google cloud products. He recently dropped by Databand’s MAD Data Podcast to discuss next gen data demands, sharing his views on why the modern data stack will take on greater variety and why tooling must adapt to real-time demands.
On LinkedIn, Sudhir contributes regularly to conversations about data strategy, product management, and BigQuery.
13) Benjamin Rogojan
Data Science And Data Engineering Consultant at Acheron Analytics
Benjamin is a data science and data engineering consultant with nearly a decade of experience working with companies like Healthentic, Facebook, and Acheron Analytics. He is passionate about simplifying data workflows and helping companies find real value in their data, whether by reducing Snowflake costs, helping develop models to detect fraud, improving customer segmentation, or determining which features a company should invest in.
He also writes the popular Seattle Data Guy newsletter, which helps companies learn how to drive value with their data, and creates YouTube videos to help new data engineers break into the space. Benjamin shares similar advice on LinkedIn, posting regularly about big data, data infrastructure, data science, data engineering, and data warehousing.
14) Jessica Larson
Data Engineer at Pinterest
Jessica was the first engineer within the Enterprise Data Warehouse team at Pinterest and previously worked as a data engineer and data analyst at Eaze and Flexport. She thrives on mentorship, solving data puzzles, and equipping colleagues with new technical skills and is passionate about helping women and non-binary people find their place in the technology industry.
She published a book on Snowflake Access Control and recently joined Databand’s MAD Data Podcast to share how Pinterest is migrating to the modern data cloud with Snowflake.
Jessica is also active on LinkedIn, posting frequently about data engineering, AI strategy and development, data strategy, and Snowflake.
15) Cindi Howson
Chief Data Strategy Officer at ThoughtSpot
Cindi is the Chief Data Strategy Officer at ThoughtSpot, host of The Data Chief podcast, and Women in Data’s Data Leader of the Year 2021.
From 2015 to 2019, Cindi served as Vice President in Data and Analytics at Gartner. She led the analytics and BI Magic Quadrant, with research in data for good, NLP/BI Search, and augmented analytics.
Prior to this, she was founder of BI Scorecard (notice her LinkedIn url), a resource for in-depth in-depth product reviews based on exclusive hands-on testing, contributor to Information Week, and the author of several books including: Successful Business Intelligence: Unlock the Value of BI & Big Data and SAP BusinessObjectsBI 4.0: The Complete Reference.
On LinkedIn, you can find Cindi posting about BI strategy, analytics tools and use cases, culture, AI ethics, data for good, women in tech.
16) Kristen Kehrer
Developer, Data Science Advocate at Comet and Founder of Data Move Me
Kristen is a Developer and Data Science Advocate at Comet, a meta machine learning platform designed to help AI practitioners and teams build reliable machine learning models for real-world applications by streamlining and connecting the machine learning model lifecycle.
She’s also the co-author of “Mothers of Data Science” with Kate Strachnyi (someone who’s also on this list).
She posts and blogs on the topics of machine learning projects, how to create effective data presentations, and data science trends.
17) Seth Dobrin
Founder of Qantm AI, President of Responsible AI Institute
Seth Dobrin is the Founder of Qantm AI and the President of Responsible AI Institute. However, a quick glance at his LinkedIn profile will show he’s a board member of multiple companies. Before founding Qantm AI, Seth was the Global Chief AI Officer at IBM.
Seth has experience in leading corporate wide strategies across complex corporate organizations. Seth champions exponential change by combining existing technologies and data science to create industrial scale processes including innovative automation, IT systems and analysis pipelines to support these.
His leadership skills include the areas of science, analytics and technical teams with an advanced understanding of NoSQL technologies and the appropriate application of these technologies to solve problems at a massive scale.
18) Huy Nguyen
Co-founder and CTO at Holistics Data
Huy is a software and data engineer with over a decade of experience. He previously worked at Facebook and Viki before founding two companies: Grokking Vietnam, a non-profit org helping Vietnamese software engineers become world-class engineers, and Holistics Data, a BI platform that brings best practices from software engineering into analytics development.
Huy was named on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list for Enterprise Technology in Vietnam & Asia in 2018 and co-authored The Analytics Setup Guidebook. On LinkedIn, Huy posts frequently about data strategy, data analytics, startups, and career advice.
19) Jon Krohn
Co-Founder and Chief Data Scientist at Nebula.io
Jon is a data scientist with over a decade of experience, currently serving as the Chief Data Scientist at Nebula, where he works across engineering, product, and users to make machine learning impactful and intuitive and to create tools that mitigate unethical biases associated with hiring decisions.
In addition to his role at Nebula, Jon is an avid contributor to the data science community. He wrote the best-selling book Deep Learning Illustrated, hosts the popular SuperDataScience podcast, leads machine learning tutorials on O’Reilly and Udemy, and advises the boards of several tech startups. Jon also won the 2021 Data Community Content Creator Award for the “AI/ML YouTube Channel” category and leads over 100 talks each year at leading universities, conferences, and companies. On LinkedIn, Jon posts frequently about data strategy, data science, data analytics, startups, and machine learning.
20) Ann K. Emery
Data Visualization Designer & Speaker
Ann is an internationally-acclaimed speaker who equips organizations to get their data out of dusty spreadsheets and into real-world conversations. Each year, she delivers over 100 keynotes, workshops, and webinars with the aim of equipping organizations to visualize data more effectively.
She has been invited to speak in 30 states and 10 countries; 7,500 people have enrolled in her online training academy; and she has consulted to 200 organizations, including the United Nations, Centers for Disease Control, and Harvard University.
You can find her most days on LinkedIn giving advice on how to transform your spreadsheets into data stories.
21) Vin Vashishta
Founder & Technical Strategy Advisor at V-Squared
Vin is the founder and Technical Strategy Advisor at V-Squared, whose mission is to guide businesses from early data maturity to generating significant new revenue and higher productivity from data. He provides AI strategy, data product strategy, transformation, and data organizational build-out services to clients like Airbus, Siemens, Walmart, and JPMC.
Vin is also a course instructor at HROI Certification Training, teaching courses in data and AI technical strategy, value-centric data, and transitioning from a tactical to strategic mindset. He also offers coaching, courses, and more on his website and posts advice regularly on LinkedIn about data strategy, analytics, innovation, and artificial intelligence.
22) Carol Kim
Executive Director, Global CDO Office
Carol is an Executive Director at the Global Chief Data Office at IBM. Her mission at The Global Chief Data Office is to deliver a trusted enterprise-wide data and AI backbone for transforming IBM into an AI enterprise.
Carol brings more than 18 years of experience in IBM leadership roles that span many different disciplines (Chief Data Officer, Finance & Planning, Pricing, Treasury), geographies (USA, Asia Pacific) and business models (Services, Hardware, Software).
On LinkedIn, Carol posts frequently on the topics of data strategy, data governance, and how companies can be more data-driven.
23) Danny Ma
Principal AI Engineer at LUMOS and Founder & CEO of Sydney Data Science
Danny is the founder and CEO of Sydney Data Science, a boutique data consultancy, as well as the Chief Data Mentor at Data with Danny, a guided data mentorship program. After spending the last 10 years working in almost every single role in the data ecosystem, Danny now focuses on solving difficult problems at scale, re-imagining data education and recruitment, and mentoring the next generation of data professionals.
Specifically, he provides specialist data consultancy services around digital customer analytics and experimentation, data and machine learning strategy, data engineering and systems design, team building for analytics and data science functions, and technical training for practitioners and management. Danny is also a regular speaker at global conferences, meetups, and podcasts and a technical author for an O’Reilly/Pearson SQL training course. He is active on LinkedIn, posting about data strategy, data analytics, data science, career advice, SQL, and Python.
24) Prukalpa Sankar
Co-Founder of Atlan
Prukalpa has a decade of experience leading data companies. She previously led SocialCops, the company behind landmark data for good projects in the world, which was named a New York Times Global Visionary and World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer. Now, she leads Atlan, a modern data workspace enabling better collaboration between diverse users like business users, analysts, and engineers to increase efficiency and agility in data projects.
Prukalpa was awarded the Economic Times Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year in 2019 and named one of 30 Global Visionaries by the New York Times in 2018. She runs Metadata Weekly, a newsletter about her experience as a data leader, lessons and best practices for building strong data culture, and her musings on metadata and the modern data stack. She also posts frequently on LinkedIn about data analytics, data strategy, data governance, and data engineering.
25) Tiankai Feng
Senior Director, Product Data Governance at Adidas
Tiankai is a seasoned data analytics professional with over a decade of experience working at companies like TD Reply and adidas. In his current role at Adidas, he governs product data end to end, from data creation through data processing all the way to data usage and enrichment.
Tiankai is also an ambassador for DataQG, the leading data governance network platform for organizations and professionals. He publishes original songs and videos about data on his YouTube channel and is active on LinkedIn around topics like data governance, data analytics, data strategy, and career advice.
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