Gwen Thomas is Founder, President, and Lead Consultant/Analyst of The Data Governance Institute, which provides in-depth, vendor-neutral information about – and assistance with – tools, techniques, models, and best practices for the governance/stewardship of data and information. She is the publisher of the web’s largest Data Governance resource, www.DataGovernance.com, as well as www.sox-online.com, a Sarbanes-Oxley web resource. Gwen is an expert participant in the membership arm of the institute, the Data Governance & Stewardship Community of Practice, with a web presence at www.DataStewardship.com.

Gwen has personally designed Data Governance programs or helped existing programs become more mature at companies such Washington Mutual Bank (WaMu), American Express, World Vision International, Sallie Mae, NDCHealth/Wolters Kluwer, Wachovia Bank, Disney, and Coors. She has worked with other large and mid-sized public, private, and governmental organizations in the areas of data strategy, data integration, search, data warehouses, taxonomy development, portals, content management, document management, Master Data cleansing/standardization, and metadata collection/repository development.

Gwen is a frequent presenter at industry events sponsored by IRM UK, Wilshire Conferences, DebTech International, DAMA, the Institutional Investor, and others, and was chosen to keynote the world’s first Data Governance Conference. She contributes to many IT and business publications and is author of the book Alpha Males and Data Disasters: The Case for Data Governance.