SCOTT TAYLOR - The Data Whisperer

Let me help you TELL YOUR DATA STORY 

I can be your voice for Data Management 

Partnering with Enterprises and innovative Data Brands that want to change the nature of data management - and help them tell their story!

As **The Data Whisperer** I help "calm data down" 

I am a firm believer in “making your data do the work,” and have enlightened countless business executives to the value of proper data management by focusing on the strategic rationale and business alignment rather than technical implementation and system integration. 

I'm more of the strategic WHY than the technical HOW. 

I have spent over two decades solving master data challenges with large global enterprises as well as guiding Tech Brand owners to leverage their reference data and taxonomy assets.  

In a variety of strategic marketing, GTM, innovation and consulting roles, I have worked with some of the world’s most iconic business data brands including Dun & Bradstreet, Nielsen, Microsoft, Kantar, NPD as well as start-ups such as Qoints and Spiceworks.  

I'm an avid business evangelist and original thinker, and continually share my passion for the strategic value of foundational data through public speaking opportunities, blogs, videos, whitepapers, podcasts and all forms of marketing content. 

Highly effective strategic Subject Matter Expert/SME working directly with sales and alliances to reinforce the value of data management.

If you are an innovative Tech Brand looking to change the very nature of data management let me help you tell a better story!

The Data Whisperer & Principal Consultant

MetaMeta: "It's about what it's about"

We are a strategic marketing consultancy focused on partnering with innovative Tech Brands that seek to change the nature of enterprise data management - and want help to tell that story.  Our experience is rooted in helping countless business executives understand the strategic value of proper data management.  Data has never been hotter but Tech Brands can't always break through the clutter.  We are proponents of compelling messaging that is also technically accurate. 

Honestly have not been thinking too much about data recently 😎  


Princess Di Beach, Barbuda 🏝️

SCOTT TAYLOR

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Due to…ahem…local weather, yeah local weather 😎 I won’t be able to make it to Data Day Texas and will miss seeing a bunch of my data friends. 

BTW When is Data Day Antigua? 🇦🇬

Joe Reis Jordan Morrow Matthew Housley Jean-Georges Perrin Ole Olesen-Bagneux Sanjeev Mohan  Dylan Anderson  Ryan Dolley 🎯 Mark Freeman II  Tim Gasper Bill Inmon Winfried Adalbert Etzel  Alex Merced  enjoy the snow ❄️ 




#datastorytelling 



Jolly Harbour, Antigua 🇦🇬

If your hair is on fire every time you upgrade Apache Spark… 🔥

You’re not alone. For many teams, Spark upgrades set off a full on fire drill: chasing deprecated APIs, fixing dependencies, and validating data, all while keeping production running.

At AWS re:Invent they announced an AI-powered Spark upgrade agent for Amazon EMR that changes everything. It works inside your IDE to:

📈Analyze and modernize code
🛠️Fix build and runtime issues
✅Validate tests and data outputs

What used to take months of engineering effort can now be done in hours, or even minutes.

Less fire. 🔥 More warmth. ☺️

If you’re running Spark on Amazon Web Services (AWS) EMR, this is worth checking out.

Read all about it here : https://lnkd.in/gePZcTck

Carol Meyers

Independent Board Director | Go-to-Market Advisor | Executive Coach

I am an independent board director and former public-company C-suite leader with experience navigating growth, transformation, and governance complexity. I have served on 11 public and private company boards, including NYSE-listed companies, with experience spanning audit and compensation committees, CEO succession planning, and enterprise risk oversight.As an operating executive, I held senior leadership roles at four public companies—Rapid7, LogMeIn, Unica, and Shiva—supporting IPOs, acquisitions, and large-scale business transitions. My impact focused on rapid growth, category creation, operational restructuring, and public-company maturation.In the boardroom, I am often sought out for my ability to translate complex issues—cybersecurity, AI, data, and go-to-market disruption—into effective strategy and board-level governance. I focus on helping boards ask better questions, align incentives, and achieve growth ambitions balanced with risk, resilience, and long-term value creation.I began my career in finance and audit at General Electric, which continues to shape my approach to governance, capital allocation, and controls. Today, I serve on multiple boards, advise CEOs and leadership teams, invest in early-stage AI technology companies, and act as a board coach for Deloitte’s Board Ready Women program. I am also a trustee of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council (MTLC).

Partner

We fund visionary entrepreneurs harnessing the power of AI and frontier technologies to transform markets and revolutionize industries.

We partner with founders to help them assemble powerhouse teams, acquire first customers, and secure the right foundation to launch and accelerate their startups to their full potential.

I am kicking off 2026 with an in depth discussion about marketing in the Boardroom with my colleagues Joe Sawyer and Negin Kamangar.

This is a topic I care deeply about.  Having now served on a nearly a dozen boards of both public and private companies, and as a former CMO myself, I know I made many mistakes in the boardroom.

As a board member, I am actively involved with the GTM executives of the companies I serve. In addition to mentoring and serving as a sounding board, I often review the team's slides in advance or share what I think the perspectives, concerns, and hopes of the board are.

This is going to be an active discussion - not a spectator sport.  Together, with all of Stage 2 Capital CMO LPs who join us, we will learn and grow!

Want in? DM Erin Olsen.

Independent Director | Audit & Compensation Committees | Former Public-Company CMO | AI, Cybersecurity & Growth Expertise

I had a great conversation with Mandy Walker for her Growth Activated Podcast.  Mandy let me expound on why now is an important time for marketers to step boldly into company strategy and take the lead in designing a new customer experience for the age of AI.

Here's how Mandy summarized our conversation:

"AI isn’t just a productivity lever for marketing teams.
It’s a market disruptor.

And CMOs are uniquely positioned to see it first - because we sit at the intersection of:

-Customer behavior
-Buying journeys
-Competitive differentiation
-Brand perception

The CMOs who are thriving right now aren’t just using AI to move faster internally.

They’re asking harder, more strategic questions:

- How will our buyers research and decide differently?
- Where could AI change how our value is perceived?
- How should our strategy, brand, and GTM evolve before the market forces us to react?

🎙 We go deep on this in the new episode (#36):
The CMO’s Role in an AI-Driven Market: Customers, Competition, and Change
Link to the full episode in comments.

#MarketingLeadership #CMO #B2BMarketing #MarketingStrategy #GrowthActivated

Does AI actually work?
Can it really improve go-to-market and customer experience?

Over the past several weeks, I’ve been deep in conversations about AI products and AI-driven initiatives. A common refrain keeps coming up:

“AI isn’t ready for primetime—especially when it comes to interacting with customers.”

Here’s where people say it fails:
·      It can’t answer deeply technical or edge-case questions
·      It relies on outdated information because documentation isn’t current
·      It’s only useful for early-stage research or top-of-funnel conversations
·      It struggles when customers don’t know exactly what they need
·      It lacks nuance, judgment, or an understanding of real-world context
·      It doesn’t know when to escalate to a human
·      Bots are annoying. Customers want to talk to a person

I’ve heard all of these complaints (and more).

Here’s my take:
This is not fundamentally an AI problem.
It’s an implementation, data, and operating-model problem.

People don’t perform well either when documentation is outdated, tribal knowledge lives in a few heads, and context is missing. In most companies, only a small number of employees truly understand how things work, and that knowledge doesn’t scale. Whether you’re using people or AI, customers feel the gaps.

We tend to expect AI to be magical. Better than humans. Instantly competent.
But AI is much more like a new hire.

It needs:
·      Clear context
·      High-quality, current information
·      Training and reinforcement
·      Guardrails around what’s acceptable and what isn’t
·      Ongoing monitoring and adjustment

These are the same things we (should) do for new employees. When we don’t, performance suffers. The difference is humans can sometimes mask the gaps. AI can’t.

I’d argue that many of the frustrations with AI today are really:
·      Data problems
·      Context problems
·      Training problems
·      Feedback and governance problems

And let’s be honest, we often “solve” these issues with a few heroic, resourceful people who don’t scale. That slows growth. It also means customers are likely getting inconsistent or inaccurate answers anyway — we just don’t have visibility into it.

Personally, I now get more reliable answers from tools like Perplexity, ChatGPT, or Gemini than I do from many call centers or frontline support teams at banks or software companies. That’s not a knock on those teams, it’s a reflection of how hard it is to keep humans continuously up to date.

Yes, AI-driven experiences can be incredibly annoying when implemented poorly.
But I remain convinced the promise is real.

When done well, AI can become a powerful engine for improving customer experience, increasing consistency, and scaling go-to-market in ways that simply weren’t possible before.

The opportunity isn’t to replace people (or Rome).
It’s to design better systems for both humans and AI.

P.S. No apologies for my em dash.

#Customerexperience #AIinGTM #Humanpotential

One of common question CEOs bring to the boardroom as they scale is whether Customer Success should own expansion—or whether that responsibility should remain with Sales.

I’m an avid reader of CJ Gustafson "Mostly Metrics," and this week’s post on #CustomerSuccess metrics mirrors the customer success related questions I frequently hear CEOs bring to the boardroom as they rethink their GTM models.

Many companies experiment with CS-led upsell, but over time, CEOs often conclude it’s hard to make work consistently. CJ’s survey reinforces that experience—nearly two-thirds of organizations assign expansion revenue ownership to Sales.

CJ’s survey asked:
* How should the CS team be compensated?
* Where should CS sit on the P&L?
* What staffing ratios make sense at different stages?
* How large does the team need to be as the business scales?

What stood out to me was not a single “right” answer, but the degree of variation across companies. Reporting structures, team size, and incentive models differed widely, with no clear performance advantage tied to any specific approach.

CJ’s conclusions are:
* Commission-heavy CS teams don’t renew better than MBO-driven teams.
* CS teams reporting to a CRO don’t outperform those reporting to a CCO.
* Staffing based on revenue vs. customer count shows no meaningful difference in retention.

For me, the real takeaway is how often these structural debates mask deeper questions CEOs are trying to answer with board input: 
* How are we defining Customer Success? 
* What truly drives retention and expansion?
* Are we making the right investments?

In CJ’s survey, gross retention appears to be the primary benchmark.

I’ll share a link to the full post in the comments.

I’d love to hear thoughts from CS leaders, CEOs, CROs, and CFOs. How are you thinking about CS today? How is AI changing your thinking about staffing, metrics, and cross-team collaboration?

Parker Chase-Corwin Victoria Nichol Laurie Long Marc LeCours Dayton Semerjian Jay Leader Todd Lefkowitz Eric Speciel

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SCOTT TAYLOR - The Data Whisperer

Carol Meyers

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Carol Meyers

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