My Experience with the Chief Data Officer Certificate at Carnegie Mellon
My Carnegie Mellon CDO certificate.
Recently, I completed the Carnegie Mellon Chief Data Officer Certificate Program (CDataO)! I was fortunate to be part of the 2nd cohort of CDataO students, completing in April 2022. The program provides current and future Chief Data Officers (CDOs) with the strategic insight, management techniques, and analytical capabilities you need to set up a 21st century data program. Since completion, a number of people have asked me about my experience, so I’m sharing my views on the program in this blog.
CDataO Program Highlights
Entering the program, I hoped to expand my thinking about effective data practices, learn from Chief Data Officers in the field and connect with other data leaders. Upon completion, I’d say that my goals were achieved through the excellent program structure that David Ulicne and the Carnegie Mellon delivered! I’ll outline some of the key benefits below.
My CDO team: Michael Brazys, Alejandro Canete and our coach, Alison Sagraves.
Carnegie Mellon CDO program swag!
Connecting with Peer Data Leaders
The certificate program welcomed 30+ practicing data leaders into our cohort. Over the course of 6 months, we had a chance to interact with other class members through educational sessions and slack.
In the first week, we were assigned into small teams. Each team worked together for the duration of the program to complete the cumulative, case study style assignments. Teams were comprised of 3-4 members and a coach. Because of this ongoing partnership, my teammates and I were able get to know each other quite well virtually and form a great bond during the face to face onsite graduation. We’ve even decided to keep in touch by meeting up on a monthly basis to discuss data ideas and challenges.
Coaching from CDO’s in the Field
One of the exciting aspects of the program is that it’s guided by practicing Chief Data Officers. The CDO’s help shape curriculum, deliver lectures and serve on the review panel for our presentations. Best of all, they provide coaching and mentorship for our team assignments. My group was incredibly lucky to have Alison Sagraves as our team coach. I learned a great deal from her, she inspired me to elevate my thinking and challenge the status quo. She encouraged our team to approach data programs with bold and courageous new ideas. Alison kept our group honest and pushed us to take advantage of every learning opportunity offered.
Beyond your assigned coach, as a CDataO student, you have access to all of the CDO’s guiding the program. Even if they are not your coach, they are typically more than happy to meet with any CDataO students one on one.
Great Content
The CDataO program is jam packed with excellent content. They provided 14 interactive, educational modules on a variety of topics from data privacy, to data monetization and more. Each module was approximately 5 hours long, delivered by an expert working in the field. For every module, high quality, speaker-curated pre-reading was made available.
Applied Learning
Aligned with the sessions, our group was tasked to create the overall data strategy and execution plan for a company of our choice. We developed this strategy leveraging our collective industry experience, module learnings and coach feedback. The strategy was developed over 5 assignments with 2 opportunities to present to a panel of CDO’s and industry experts.
Swag
Who doesn’t love some good swag? When I committed to the program, they sent me a hype kit with a laptop bag, book from one of the speakers, coffee mug and more. At the graduation we received even more goodies, and they are sending a copy of another speakers book when it becomes available.
Thank you!
As you can probably tell from this article, I greatly enjoyed the program and found it to be an enriching experience. As a word of advice, before committing you should ensure that you are able dedicate enough time to enjoy the program. Course content and assignments easily required 15 hours a week and sometimes more.
I hope that this post is useful to those interested in the program. Please feel free to reach out with any questions!
