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Acknowledgments

In the preface, the pronoun “I” is used, but you will notice that in the rest of the book I use “we.”
This is because I was not the only person doing all of this work over the last 20 years! A lot of
battlefield experience is contained in this bookdand the people in the trenches with me contributed
immensely.
My co-workers and partners in information management and data governance are, or were, Val
Torstenson, Ellen Levin, Larry Michael, Richard Lee, John Lee, Donn Vucovich, and Jim
Hankemeyer. I must also thank Pam Thomas for educating me as to the finer points of organiza-
tional change management as a critical piece of successful information management work. Those
behavior changes I referenced in the preface do not happen by themselves. Plus, the topic has
become popular on the conference circuit since she and I embedded change management in our
classes.
It takes a lot of air cover to do a book while the dragons of commerce are circling. I would like to
thank James Kern, Amit Baghat, Michael Demos, and Martin Davies for covering my back on the
administrative and client service side of things.
Many thanks to the group who participated in the editing and finishing: Danette McGilvray,
Michelle Koch, and Marilyn Thompson for their review and feedback; and Sheila Hultgren and Pam
Thomas for their editing. Usually I get to take a span of time to go hide and finish my books. This one
required a lot of hotel room and airline time, so I really appreciate the contributions of my reviewers
and editors.
I also appreciate and extend thanks to Gwen Thomas for taking the time to write the foreword.
Gwen has the rare ability to explain abstract concepts in a clear and relevant fashion and also deliver
solutions. Gwen took a sub-discipline of information management and started to give it the attention it
required as a stand-alone subject.
I also have to thank my customers who trusted my companies enough to do data governance
and information management for them. In particular, the fine people at Erie Insurance, Wal-Mart,
and Salt River Project come to mind. Three very different data governance scenarios and very
different challenges not only made our work fun, but also really stretched our creativity. In
particular, John Collier, Steve Pettinger, Audrey Wiggins, Alan Jamison, Terry Mooney, Greg
Whicker, Jim Viveralli, and Felix Orzechowski shared some significant challenges over the past
few years.
Many thanks to the various people I get to hang with that share the label of guru or thought leader.
They create the forums and intellectual basis for the evolution of data governance as an embedded
business function. Tony Shaw has gone above and beyond the call to create conferences and forums
that genuinely add value and present great content. Rob Seiner and his newsletter have been the “go to”
site for thousands of information management practitioners. Rob and I have also proved that Pittsburgh
can turn out very smart and clever people as well as incredible football teams. Dr. Tom Redman is
another great guru to work with who is maybe more candid than I am. And thanks goes to Davida
Berger for creating the data governance conferences.
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