Mike Swordy

I'm Mike Swordy, an experienced, hands-on data leader with nearly 15 experience across analytics, BI and data science.

I've worked extensively as a consultant and in-house for leading clients across retail, health, fintech, gaming and energy. That work has taken me across marketing, sales, product, operations, people and finance teams, usually close to the place where data work has to become useful business change rather than just another dashboard.

I'm passionate about driving business growth through actionable insights using data, and empowering others to do so at scale. My track record is built around building strong teams and relationships, and rolling out the right tools, training, processes and standards so good data work can compound.

What I Do

I sit somewhere between data strategy, architecture and hands-on delivery. I enjoy shaping the direction of a data function, but I also like staying close to the details: data modelling, transformation, semantic layers, governance and the everyday craft of making numbers trustworthy.

My background spans individual contributor work, leadership, consulting, agency and in-house roles. I've worked with Looker, Power BI and Tableau, and I still think of myself as a developer and builder as much as a data leader.

Recent roles have included:

• Principal consultant, manager and practice lead (analytics) at a leading data & AI consultancy.
• Head of Data at a SaaS scale-up, where definitions and decision needs moved faster than pipelines.

What I'm Interested In

I'm especially interested in the layer between raw data and decisions: how organisations define concepts, preserve context, govern meaning and make analysis reusable.

That is why much of my current writing is about analytics engineering, business modelling, semantic layers, AI, and the idea that the business model should become a first-class data artefact rather than something scattered across SQL, dashboards, tickets and people's heads.

I'm also big on democratisation - of both data and the tools that allow people to do meaningful stuff with data. For me data modelling is a means to that end. AI is empowering people like never before to use data, but I believe the context would be a lot better if we not only had a richer model that reflected the actual complexity people are trying to reason through, but also allowed their analysis and feedback to drive how that model evolves over time.