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Morgan Templar, CEO and Founder, First CDO Partners

Describe your career to date

I founded First CDO Partners because I saw companies in every industry expressing a desire to adopt new AI-based solutions, but their data were unprepared to support the transformation. Data neglect is vast, and that motivated me to invite a great partner, Robert Sidick, to use our combined experience to create a solution in the market that is a bridge to a stronger data foundation. 

Leading First CDO Partners is the culmination of more than 20 years of experience delivering data governance, data management and digital transformation programs. Transformation is where my passion for data management blossomed. Innovating solutions, leading agile development teams, establishing the first advanced analytics shop, and building and leading amazing teams are the types of activities that prepared me to start and run a data governance practice for a large health insurance company. Implementing proper governance allowed us to master data, move it to a data lake and eventually turn off the mainframes.  

Those experiences were the basis for my two published books, Get Governed: building world class data governance programs, and A Culture of Governance, as well as over 50 speaking engagements and guest lectures on a wide variety of data topics. 

What challenges do you see for data in the year ahead that will have an impact on you and on the industry as a whole?  

Many companies with large amounts of data debt will unsuccessfully attempt to implement generative artificial intelligence (genAI)-based systems. This will cause a loss of trust in new tools that is undeserved. 

Successful implementations of genAI-based solutions require a solid data foundation. The high cost to repair and bolster the data foundation is due to long-term neglect.  

The trend to toss out the Chief Data Officer to be replaced by a Chief AI Officer illustrates the lack of understanding of the criticality of improving the data. Data modernization is slow – there is no silver bullet software or AI that will fix your data. 

How do you see data literacy developing across a) your network and b) the data industry generally? 

Data literacy provides a common language to speak about data. The need is growing across all industries at an unprecedented pace. New regulations on AI, ethics, and privacy highlight the need to build automated solutions and human processes to meet these challenges.  

Data literacy is one of the primary building blocks of a well-tuned and functional data culture. I see the term data culture replacing literacy in many companies marking the maturity from speaking about data to acting on and with data. 

How do you see the industry preparing for AI adoption and change management? 

“Everyone is ready for AI except the data.”  

I see company leaders and Boards recognize the need to build up their data foundation and explicitly call for data governance programs to prepare for AI tools in the future, especially in the mid-size market. 

The need for formal data literacy programs has never been greater. Change management must be driven from the top. Change management is a proactive activity not a response to events. The cautionary tales in the market are sinking in. Companies are realizing that they must pause and reflect, prepare, and plan before jumping into AI. 

Morgan Templar
has been included in:
  • 100 Influencers 2024 (USA)

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