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Agents are about to hit data systems and governance frameworks at a volume, velocity, and variety they were never designed for. Bolting AI onto the old model may turn out to be the riskier bet. 📌 In this episode: Why agents bring back the three Vs of big data, and why even Google-scale systems weren't built for that much concurrency Winfried's first-principles view of governance: negotiation, direction, and accountability Why longer guardrail lists make agents worse at following rules, and why "human in the loop" is too passive a role Why data governance belongs inside corporate governance, not beside separate AI, IT, and risk frameworks 💬 The takeaway: "So much of what we've built over the last thirty years has become so monolithic and so big and so inflexible... I think we may be better off just starting from scratch." — Malcolm Hawker About the host + guests Malcolm Hawker is a former Gartner analyst, Chief Data Officer at Profisee, Editor-in-Chief of CDO Matters on Substack, and host of the CDO Matters Podcast. Guest: Joe Reis is [Owner, Data Engineer + Architect ] at ThinkQuick, LLC. Author of Mixed Model Arts, which rebuilds data modeling from first principles for both humans and AI agents. Guest: Winfried Etzel is [Sr Specialist Data Management and Podcast Host with DAMA Norway] at Equinor. Author of Data Governance in the Wild, which rethinks governance from first principles. Subscribe to CDO Matters Monthly → https://profisee.com/cdo-matters-community/#join-community Follow Malcolm on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/malhawker/ Guest → https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephreis/ Guest → https://www.linkedin.com/in/winfried-adalbert-etzel/

Companies are handing agents real decision-making authority. Almost none of them have figured out who's accountable when the agent gets it wrong. 📌 In this episode: Why "the business owns the data" was never a real governance strategy and why AI autonomy makes that obvious The case for formalizing data decision frameworks into agentic decision frameworks, RACI matrix and all Why every automated decision still needs a human name in the "accountable" column, and what regulators are already demanding What "governance as code" really means: front-loading human judgment into system design, then codifying it to move at machine speed 💬 The takeaway: "It should be that someone ends up uncomfortable and they start asking questions — because the more questions you ask, the more thought goes into what possibly could go badly." — Kelle O'Neal About the host + guest: Malcolm Hawker is a former Gartner analyst, Chief Data Officer at Profisee, Editor-in-Chief of CDO Matters on Substack, and host of the CDO Matters Podcast. Guest: Kelle O'Neal is CEO and founder of First San Francisco Partners. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelleoneal/

Most data teams think they're too busy to slow down. The real problem is they're too busy taking orders to ever be seen as anything but a cost center. 📌 In this episode: The real difference between a "product owner" and a "product manager" and why most data teams are stuck playing the former Why Nick Zervoudis argues data democratization isn't automatically good, using a peanut-butter-aisle analogy for customer segmentation The vendor-funded origin story behind the entire "data literacy" movement traced back to a Qlik-commissioned report Nick's "shift left, shift right" framework for product thinking, and why you need both to serve human and AI-agent customers alike 💬 The takeaway: "If you run your organization as a service desk and an order taker, then you are a tax on the business." — Malcolm Hawker About the host + guest: Malcolm Hawker is a former Gartner analyst, Chief Data Officer at Profisee, Editor-in-Chief of CDO Matters on Substack, and host of the CDO Matters Podcast. Guest: Nick Zervoudis is a data product management consultant, trainer, and founder of Value from Data and AI. https://www.linkedin.com/in/nzervoudis/

Executives at the World Economic Forum in Davos are asking for data governance but the data profession wasn't in the room to answer. The gap isn't the business's understanding. It's ours. 📌 In this episode: Why Donna Burbank found business leaders, not data teams, driving governance conversations at Davos this year The flip from "data literacy" to "business literacy" and why the old term is judgmental Donna's "Semantic Pedanticism Feedback Loop" and how jargon fights kill credibility in front of executives Why "assume positive intent" isn't enough on its own. You have to assume positive intelligence too 💬 The takeaway: "We tend to sit in our own little silo and say, how come the business isn't hearing us? Because we're talking to ourselves about others." — Donna Burbank About the host + guest: Malcolm Hawker is a former Gartner analyst, Chief Data Officer at Profisee, Editor-in-Chief of CDO Matters on Substack, and host of the CDO Matters Podcast. Guest: Donna Burbank is founder and managing director of Global Data Strategy, a firm focused on data strategy and hands-on implementation.

Every CDO is being told to make their data AI-ready. What that actually requires is a harder conversation — and this episode gets into it. 📌 In this episode: Why vector embeddings alone aren't enough for enterprise AI — and what knowledge graphs provide that vectors fundamentally can't How the Semantic Web's original vision for open metadata standards maps directly to what CDOs are being asked to build for AI today Why knowledge graphs aren't as technically heavy a lift as most CDOs assume — and what a practical starting point looks like How MDM and knowledge graphs can work together to get CDOs beyond the 360-degree view they've been chasing for decades 💬 The takeaway: "The knowledge graph is kind of a translator between natural language and the data and by that, far more people can make use of the data and ask questions across different data silos." — Andreas Blumauer About the host and guest Malcolm Hawker is a former Gartner analyst, Chief Data Officer at Profisee, Editor-in-Chief of CDO Matters on Substack, and host of the CDO Matters Podcast. Andreas Blumauer is SVP Growth & Marketing at Graphwise and founder of the Semantic Web Company. 🔗 Watch + full transcript: [profisee.com/podcast/making-data-ai-ready-with-knowledge-graphs-summer-replay] Subscribe to CDO Matters Monthly → https://profisee.com/cdo-matters-community/#join-community Follow Malcolm on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/malhawker/ Guest → https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreasblumauer/

Most CDOs talk about data products. Very few approach them the way a product manager would starting with customer need, validating demand, and building only what people will actually use. 📌 In this episode: Why scalability without proven demand is a bridge to nowhere and how CDOs fall into that trap constantly What "outside-in" product management looks like in a data function and why it changes everything about how you prioritize How Jonathan Reeve's team at BetaNext links financial data assets to create insights clients didn't know they needed Why influence and storytelling aren't soft skills for data leaders they're the job 💬 The takeaway: "You hold the keys to the kingdom. If you're managing data better, you've got the power to influence innovation, product direction, and where investment goes." — Jonathan Reeve About the host and guest Malcolm Hawker is a former Gartner analyst, Chief Data Officer at Profisee, Editor-in-Chief of CDO Matters on Substack, and host of the CDO Matters Podcast. Jonathan Reeve is Chief Product Officer at BetaNext, a financial services data company. 🔗 Watch + full transcript: profisee.com/podcast/data-as-a-product-summer-replay Subscribe to CDO Matters Monthly → https://profisee.com/cdo-matters-community/#join-community Follow Malcolm on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/malhawker/ Guest → https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-reeve-5a62271/

A Delaware state court ruling rewrote the rules on corporate liability and CDOs are directly in the crosshairs. This is our most-played episode ever, and if you haven't heard it, now's your moment. 📌 In this episode: What the Delaware Chancery Court ruling means for data leaders and why fiduciary duty now extends to every corporate officer, not just the board and CEO Why bad data quality is no longer just an operational problem it's a legal and reputational one, with real personal liability attached Why AI is rapidly eliminating the "zone of ambiguity" that data leaders have operated in for decades Why aligning your data function closer to the CFO might be the smartest career move a CDO can make right now 💬 The takeaway: "Compliance and audit and regulatory risk drives a lot of investment in business. It always has. Don't be afraid of using this as a lever." — Malcolm Hawker About the host and guest Malcolm Hawker is a former Gartner analyst, Chief Data Officer at Profisee, Editor-in-Chief of CDO Matters on Substack, and host of the CDO Matters Podcast. Mark Stouse is CEO of Proof Analytics and a former Fortune 500 CMO with extensive experience as an expert witness in data-related litigation. 🔗 Watch + full transcript: [profisee.com/podcast/a-state-court-ruling-just-changed-the-game-are-cdos-ready-summer-replay] Subscribe to CDO Matters Monthly → https://profisee.com/cdo-matters-community/#join-community Follow Malcolm on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/malhawker/ Guest → https://www.linkedin.com/in/markstouse/

Most CDOs are still measuring AI readiness with a BI-readiness checklist and it's costing them. 80 to 90 percent of enterprise data is unstructured, sitting outside every governance program built over the last three decades. 📌 In this episode: The split Malcolm calls "the world of measurement vs. the world of meaning" and why Gen AI lives entirely in the latter Why only 25% of the data feeding AI models today is actually governed (per Dresner Research) Why a product manager and a value engineer might matter more right now than any new governance policy Why the 30-year-old model of data ownership breaks down in an AI-driven world and what it needs to become instead 💬 The takeaway: "You get budgets of millions of dollars to solve this problem but every day we disempower ourselves by saying 'garbage in, garbage out.'" About the host: Malcolm Hawker is a former Gartner analyst, Chief Data Officer at Profisee, Editor-in-Chief of CDO Matters on Substack, and host of the CDO Matters Podcast. This keynote was recorded live at the CDO Magazine CDO/CAO Summit. If you liked this episode: Check out "Beyond Data Catalogs: Building Context for AI and Data Products (Ep. 87)" Subscribe to CDO Matters Monthly → https://profisee.com/cdo-matters-community/#join-community Follow Malcolm on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/malhawker/

Most organizations are committing serious capital to AI and can't answer a basic question: how much are we actually spending, and on what? That accountability gap is about to close, whether data leaders are ready or not. 📌 In this episode: Why fewer than 5% of large companies can accurately track AI spend as a distinct category — and what happens when the CFO gets involved The Vane Loop framework: a quadrant-based approach to scoring data and AI investments on feasibility and impact across 70+ factors Why AI architecture decisions are now financial variables — and why most product managers aren't equipped to make them The strategic case for decommissioning: why building a library of reusable skills beats running 200 half-finished use cases 💬 The takeaway: "If you don't manage your costs, your costs will be managed for you." — Malcolm Hawker, Episode 104 About the host + guest: Malcolm Hawker is a former Gartner analyst, Chief Data Officer at Profisee, Editor-in-Chief of CDO Matters on Substack, and host of the CDO Matters Podcast. Karl Ivo Sokolov is Managing Director at Specific Group Austria and co-author of Finance, Grade Data and AI Products. He sits on the US Institute of Management Accountants board and is the creator of the Vane Loop framework for AI portfolio steering.

Every organization is told they need context for AI to work. Almost none of them know where to start. The answer has been sitting in their metadata all along — but most CDOs haven't connected those dots yet. 📌 In this episode: Why your data catalog is already a source of context — and how to expose it to agentic workflows today The semantic layer problem: definitions living in BI tools instead of governed catalogs, and why that creates risk Why engineers and library scientists think about language completely differently — and why that gap matters for AI Malcolm's argument that CDOs are in a unique position to make a "land grab" on unstructured data before someone else does 💬 The takeaway: "CDOs are in a unique position to make a land grab: the ontologists, the taxonomists, the library scientists are all over the organization without one single leader. That's your moment." — Malcolm Hawker About the host + guest: Malcolm Hawker is a former Gartner analyst, Chief Data Officer at Profisee, Editor-in-Chief of CDO Matters, and host of the CDO Matters Podcast. Ole Olesen-Bagneux is Chief Evangelist at Actian and O'Reilly author of Fundamentals of Metadata Management (2025) and The Enterprise Data Catalog (2023) — the practitioner's reference for anyone building or governing a data catalog. Subscribe to CDO Matters Monthly → https://profisee.com/cdo-matters-community/#join-community Follow Malcolm on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/malhawker/ Guest Ole Olesen-Bagneux → https://www.linkedin.com/in/ole-olesen-bagneux/

Most organizations default to replicating data: copying it from source systems into warehouses and lakes so their tools can reach it. Anu Jain, founder and CEO of Nexus One, thinks that's the wrong answer. Malcolm isn't so sure and that's where it gets interesting. 📌 In this episode: Why the official count of data sources is always an undercount: shadow data, unstructured data, and legacy systems mean the real number is far higher than anyone reports The case for virtualization over replication: bring the compute to the data, leave it where it lives, and collapse deployment timelines from months to days "Information yield" — the metric Walmart once reported publicly and stopped, and why AI is about to force every CDO to bring it back Why centralize-vs-decentralize is a false choice: the Venn diagram reality of golden records, distributed data, and why you need governance across all of it regardless 💬 The takeaway: "Think of CDOs as refineries. You have all this raw data. The question is: how are you enabling your organization to extract value and can you put a metric to it?" — Anu Jain About the host + guest: Malcolm Hawker is a former Gartner analyst, Chief Data Officer at Profisee, Editor-in-Chief of CDO Matters, and host of the CDO Matters Podcast. Anu Jain is founder and CEO of Nexus One, former CEO of Think Big Analytics, and a veteran of IBM Watson and Teradata. He publishes in Fortune and is active on LinkedIn. Subscribe to CDO Matters Monthly → https://profisee.com/cdo-matters-community/#join-community Follow Malcolm on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/malhawker/ Guest Anu Jain → https://www.linkedin.com/in/anujain/

The data and AI landscape shifted more in the last six months than in the three years prior and most data teams are still operating off roadmaps that predate it. Malcolm Hawker goes solo to give data leaders an honest read on where things stand and what to prioritize for the rest of the year. 📌 In this episode: Why Gartner's keynote message — that it's okay to be a late AI adopter — is advice Malcolm thinks is negligent, and why you don't have three more yearsHow agentic AI and tools like Microsoft Foundry and OpenAI Studio are finally connecting the dots between data foundations (MDM, data quality, governance) and real AI business outcomesWhat SAP's acquisition of Reltio means for MDM customers and who should be paying close attentionProfisee named a leader in the new Gartner Magic Quadrant for MDM: what it means and why it took four years to get here💬 The takeaway: "If you don't have some idea of how you need to adapt your governance model to support AI, you don't have three years to figure it out because you already had three." About the host: Malcolm Hawker is a former Gartner analyst, Chief Data Officer at Profisee, Editor-in-Chief of CDO Matters on Substack, and host of the CDO Matters Podcast. 🔗 Watch other episodes + read the transcripts on the CDO Podcast page Follow Malcolm on LinkedIn

For a hundred episodes, the data world has been told data is the center of the universe. It isn't — and three of the most credible voices in the industry are finally saying so out loud. Malcolm Hawker sits down with Scott Taylor, Juan Sequeda, and Samir Sharma for a milestone roundtable: why AI isn't Hadoop, why CDOs keep failing for the same reasons, and what it's going to take to survive what's coming.

Data science teams are delivering results — so why do so many projects never make it to production? Malcolm Hawker and Kristen Kehrer, founder of Data Moves Me and former data science leader, dig into the organizational failures behind the disconnect: governance that blocks data access, business stakeholders who hand scientists solutions instead of problems, and why product management may be the missing layer in your data org. They also get into what AI actually means for data science careers, whether junior roles have a future, and how staying relevant now means building things — fast.

The market for data leaders is growing - but the CDO role itself may be under pressure. In this episode, Malcolm Hawker and Kyle Winterbottom explore why organizations are questioning data leadership value, how AI is reshaping career paths, and what separates those who advance from those who stall. If you’re navigating your next move in data, this is a conversation you can’t afford to ignore.