How I work
Every engagement is with me, directly. There’s no bench, no account manager, and no junior staff learning on your budget. That shapes what I take on: a small number of clients, senior-level problems, and 4 engagement shapes that cover how companies actually need this help.
All 4 start the same way: a conversation about what’s broken or what you’re building, and a scoped proposal in plain language. If I think you don’t need me, or need something cheaper than me, I’ll say that too.
Platform audit
A fixed-scope review of your data and AI estate: cost, architecture, quality, security, compliance, delivery. A few weeks, structured as analysis first, findings second.
You get a ranked findings report with money and effort attached to each item, a roadmap ordered by payback, and a working session to hand it over. The deliverable is built to be executed without me, by your team, and it’s the fastest way to find out what working together is like.
Fits when: you suspect waste or risk but can’t see it from inside, you’re inheriting a platform, or you want a second opinion on a big decision before you commit.
Cost reduction
The audit’s findings, implemented. I work with your team to capture the savings: pricing-model changes, storage lifecycle, pipeline consolidation, dead-work elimination, vendor migrations, and the chargeback model that keeps costs visible after I leave.
This is the most quantifiable engagement I offer, and the one my record speaks loudest on: more than $9MM a year removed from one company’s data spend, eight figures across my career.
Fits when: the cloud bill has grown past what anyone can explain, a big contract renewal is coming, or finance has started asking data questions the platform can’t answer.
Ongoing advisory
A standing retainer: a set cadence of working sessions, plus access between them for the decisions that can’t wait. Architecture reviews, vendor and contract calls, hiring plans, roadmap pressure-testing, and the hard tradeoffs that land on whoever owns data.
Fits when: you have a capable team but no senior data executive, or a new data leader who’d benefit from someone who’s run the job 3 times.
Fractional CDO / SVP Data
I take the seat part-time: own the data strategy, run the leadership cadence, build the org, and represent data at the executive table. The engagement is designed from the start to transfer ownership, ending with a successor profile, a structured handover, and an org that runs without me. I build organizations, and dependency on me would mean I’d failed at it.
Hiring a full-time data executive runs $350-400K a year at market rates and takes 2 quarters to fill. This gets you the function now, sized to what your company actually needs, with the hiring decision made later and better informed.
Fits when: the company needs the data function led, now, and isn’t ready to hire it full-time. Startup through enterprise; the job scales, and I’ve run it at both ends.
What happens first
Email me what’s going on. Two or three sentences is plenty. I read everything myself, and if a 30-minute call makes sense, we’ll book it. From there you’ll get a scoped proposal covering the work, the dates, and the price.