Panelists & Speakers

keynote speaker

Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic tells stories with data. She is SWD CEO and author of the forthcoming book storytelling with you: plan, create, and deliver a stellar presentation and best-selling books storytelling with data: let’s practice! and storytelling with data: a data visualization guide for business professionals, which has been translated into a dozen languages, used as a textbook by more than 100 universities and serves as the course book for tens of thousands of SWD workshop participants. For more than a decade, Cole and her team have delivered interactive learning sessions sought after by data-minded individuals, companies, and philanthropic organizations all over the world. They also help people create graphs that make sense and weave them into compelling stories through the popular SWD community, blog, podcast and videos.

 Egbe-Etu Etu, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Business Analytics at San Jose State University (SJSU). Before joining SJSU, Dr. Etu received his Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Wayne State University, Detroit in 2021. His research interest centers on the development of use-inspired machine learning models to solve challenging business problems in healthcare, manufacturing, and transportation.  

 Sal Fadel is a Principal Business Intelligence Engineer with an extensive background in healthcare and finance. He works closely with clients to collect, organize, and analyze field data to provide business owners with current, and relevant information they can rely on to make important business decisions. Through data warehouses, ETL workflows, Tableau, Alteryx, and analytic architecture. Before joining Continuus, Sal worked primarily in healthcare business insights, supporting healthcare leaders’ ability to drive strategic decisions using real-world data. He used SQL, Alteryx, Tableau, and other data analytics tools to analyze revenue cycle, workforce challenges, and large data sets. He also has experience in agile and waterfall project development to support funding and growth.

 Katie is VP Market Insights & Analytics at The Master Lock Company in Milwaukee, WI, and has worked for other great Midwest household brand names prior to joining Master Lock in 2017.  In her current role, Katie leads teams working to implement data-driven, win-win recommendations that benefit TMLC’s customers, employees, shareholders and partners across their North American retail and commercial customer base.  Katie holds an MBA from University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a BA from Illinois Wesleyan University. She lives in Whitefish Bay with her husband, Chris, and their three girls. 

 Sherry Kreel is currently the Director of Market Insights and Analytics for the Master Lock Company.  She has worked for Master Lock for 4 years in various demand and analytics roles. Previous to Masterlock she worked in the Retail Industry holding positions at both Kohl's and the Bon-ton. 

Jessica Lyons is a Senior Program Manager for Tableau for Teaching, Adjunct Professor, Data Strategist, and more importantly a mother to four amazing individuals.  With Tableau for Teaching who partners with Educators across the World to leverage student success through Tableau software, course curricula, elearning, and a community of data enthusiasts.  Jessica has dedicated the last 8 years of life to Data Analytics and Program evaluation as the foundation to creating strategic and intentional frameworks for student academic, emotional, and behavioral success.    

 Adam Mico is the Principal, Data Visualization and Enablement at Moderna. Before that, he worked as a Tableau Evangelist for Keyrus US. He is certifiably Tableau and Tableau CRM, an advisory board member with the Data Leadership Collaborative, and a two-time Michael W. Cristiani Community Leadership Award Winner (Tableau Conference). He is autistic and supports diversity and inclusion efforts which includes neurodiversity. He is a big advocate of diversity and inclusion and strives to elevate the data platform for all. He believes learning and supporting others is a lifelong pursuit. 

 Avery Smith is a data scientist who runs his own analytics firm helping businesses use data to operate more efficiently. Some of his clients include Harley Davidson, SaasAlerts, and SmartBarrel. Previously, he was a data scientist at oil juggernaut ExxonMobil and bio-tech startup Vaporsens.

Now, he runs Data Career Jumpstart to help others start their own data careers in a world where people believe you need Master's degrees or a CS undergrad.

(Spoiler Alert: You Don't.)

 Kinga was born in Poland, migrated to the U.S. when she was 11, and grew up in Queens, NY. She earned her Ph.D. in Environmental Science and conducted research on wetland ecosystems. Recently, Kinga transitioned to data science in the climate sector and works to research and map urban flood risk.  

  Kira Wetzel is the Head of Data and Analytics for Meta Reality Labs Global Operations where she leads an organization of technical practitioners to develop data architecture, data engineering, governance, and analytics engineering solutions for all of manufacturing, supply chain, and customer operations teams.

Along with Meta, her data and analytics experience includes Apple, Kohl’s and serving various clients as a data and analytics consultant. Prior to starting in data she was a high school math teacher which is the reason she founded girls + data, a non-profit which provides middle school girls with learning opportunities in data and analytics.

Brandi Beals is a Tableau Ambassador, certified both in Tableau Desktop and Tableau Server. She has been using Tableau for over 10 years in a variety of enterprise capacities. She is focused on developing a scalable data strategy, building a data literacy program, delivering an enterprise analytics platform, and growing a community interested in data science and analytics. In addition to co-leading the Milwaukee Tableau User Group and Wisconsin Tableau User Group, Brandi runs the Data Book Club. 

 Dustin is an entrepreneurial thought leader in the analytics field, passionate about leveraging data to create new opportunities.  He has held progressive analytics roles in the corporate world, and recently launched "Data Ideas" to promote the potential of analytics.  Data Ideas shows what analytics makes possible by building a repository of analytics project ideas and hosting events honoring impactful work in the field.