Chelsea B. Smith

Since starting my career in technology consulting, I have gradually expanded the breadth of my skills in the data space. I began with a focus on infrastructure and solution delivery, went deep into data and analytics, expanded into data engineering and data science, moved into cloud and modern data architecture, and scaled up into enterprise architecture, data strategy, AI, and organizational leadership.

This chart shows how my working time divides between building and leading. Hands-on delivery has steadily given way to strategy, architecture direction, and running teams. The two cross in 2020 — the first year more of my time went to leading than to building — and today roughly three quarters of it is leadership. What has not changed is the appetite for the technology itself — staying close to new tools is how I keep the technical judgement that the leadership work depends on.

Over the course of my career, my capabilities have both compounded in depth and shifted in breadth. Each shape covers everything the one before it did, plus whatever I picked up in between.

In 2016, I deviated from my leadership trajectory and, with a desire to deepen my technical range, opted to leave my director role at FTI to work as a principal data engineer at Slalom. This decision gave me the foundational experience needed to architect solutions and lead teams in the future.

Within every capability area, I've worked across a variety of tools. I consider myself tech agnostic — my expertise lies in the underlying patterns, which carry over when a platform changes. In data and AI, platforms change every few years. Picking up a new one is a short ramp for me.

My industry breadth, shown as density.