Gabriel Ogunkola

Senior data governance leader with 13+ years building, embedding, and operating enterprise data governance capabilities across financial services, energy, and telecoms. A builder-operator: over four years in-house at NineOil Limited, established an enterprise data governance function from the ground up — operating framework, governance council with formal decision authority, data ownership and stewardship model, and metadata catalogue — building controls into business-as-usual workflows so effectively that the capability continued operating for years after handover. Since 2022, has served as design authority for enterprise governance operating models across multiple regulated organisations, presenting risk exposure and programme posture at executive and senior leadership forums, and advising divisional leadership on adoption, accountability structures, and compliance posture.

Equally credible in the boardroom and on the operational floor: translates regulatory obligation into decision-ready reporting for executives while working directly with delivery teams to embed controls into day-to-day execution. Governance practice grounded in DAMA DMBOK and DCAM, applied within GDPR, SOX, and ISO/IEC 27001 obligations, with working fluency across the regulatory agenda shaping financial services data — BCBS 239, DORA, the EU AI Act, and the CBI Individual Accountability Framework. Consistently converts governance into outcome metrics executives and risk committees act on: incidents reduced, adherence lifted, audit findings closed, and revenue enabled.

Data Governance & Quality Lead at Berkeley Data Strategist UK (2022-01 – Present)

Design authority for enterprise data governance operating models across regulated organisations with low governance maturity: fragmented practices, undefined ownership, inconsistent incident management. Accountable for framework design, executive engagement, and adoption outcomes at divisional and enterprise level.

• Designed and embedded enterprise governance operating models — policies, standards, stewardship roles, data ownership mandates, and accountability structures spanning business divisions — and presented programme risk exposure and compliance posture at senior leadership and risk forums.
• Built and scaled data stewardship communities across divisions, converting resistant business unit leaders into governance advocates by solving their operational pain points first — moving policy adherence from below 40% to 85% within six months at one financial services organisation, and 45% improvement across the portfolio.
• Established structured incident monitoring, escalation, and governance reporting disciplines, reducing data quality incidents by 35% and giving executives a single, decision-ready view of enterprise data health.
• Developed OKR-aligned governance dashboards for executive audiences, deliberately reporting outcomes — risk reduction, compliance posture, residual exposure — rather than governance activity.
• Deployed and operationalised enterprise data catalogue and metadata tooling, integrating governance into delivery workflows rather than layering it on as a standalone compliance function.
• Built enterprise business glossaries and data dictionaries establishing a shared business language across divisions, underpinning consistent regulatory reporting and cross-functional decision-making.

Data Governance Lead at NineOil Limited (2018-05 – 2021-12)

Four-year, in-house enterprise build. Joined a siloed data environment with no formal governance capability and increasing regulatory scrutiny; left behind a fully operating governance function — framework, council, ownership model, catalogue, and embedded controls — that survived the transition and continued running years after handover.

• Designed and enforced the enterprise data governance framework end to end — data ingestion, lifecycle management, quality standards, and reference data integrity — embedding governance checkpoints directly into change management and release workflows, reducing processing errors by 30% and compliance inefficiency by 40%.
• Established the governance council as the organisation's formal decision and arbitration authority: resolved a four-month, cross-divisional ownership dispute through data lineage evidence and a council ruling, unblocking risk committee reporting and creating the enduring precedent for ownership conflict resolution.
• Created data owner and steward roles across all business domains with documented decision rights — pairing accountability with genuine authority — so ownership became a role leaders sought rather than avoided, and quality issues were raised proactively rather than discovered in audit.
• Spearheaded metadata adoption and catalogue implementation, increasing enterprise data discoverability by 50% and creating a traceable, auditable view of critical data assets consumed directly in risk committee reporting.
• Shaped cloud data governance policy as part of the enterprise cloud migration, designing classification, access control, and lineage requirements into the target architecture rather than retrofitting them post-delivery.
• Embedded AI-driven analytics into financial reporting workflows, improving reporting accuracy by 20% and strengthening audit transparency.

Data Governance Consultant at Onecomm Limited (2017-06 – 2018-04)

Engaged to resolve systemic metadata inconsistency in enterprise financial reporting and establish a GDPR-compliant governance foundation ahead of regulatory enforcement, concurrent with a cloud migration programme.

• Aligned Finance, IT, and business divisions — each operating with competing definitions of the same financial data — around a jointly built enterprise data dictionary, improving financial data accuracy by 35% with no repeat findings across the following two audit cycles.
• Designed a GDPR-compliant governance framework defining steward roles, critical data element definitions, and standardised metadata management, achieving full alignment with regulatory standards ahead of enforcement.
• Directed financial data migration to Azure with automated metadata tagging and lineage tracking designed into the architecture, improving reporting efficiency by 30% and reducing compliance risk by 25% through robust audit trail controls.
• Facilitated executive workshops with business and IT leadership to establish governance ownership structures and resolve enterprise data accountability conflicts.

Data Quality Analyst at Best Offshore Support Services Limited (2016-06 – 2017-04)

HR data governance and quality for Mobil contract staff datasets, focused on regulatory compliance and operational accuracy.

• Enforced Nigerian Labour Act and SOX compliance across HR data for Mobil Nigeria's contract workforce, achieving 100% regulatory alignment and embedding stewardship responsibilities into compliance processes so accountability survived personnel changes.
• Built foundational data quality processes — profiling, cleansing, and consolidated workforce records — reducing payroll discrepancies by 15% and enabling consistent, SOX-compliant reporting.

Data Governance Analyst at Terra Energy Services Limited (2013-01 – 2016-04)

Connected enterprise governance to commercial strategy — the proof point that trustworthy data is a revenue asset, not only a compliance obligation.

• Developed and governed the enterprise data governance roadmap, establishing strategic priorities that made customer data reliable enough to drive pricing strategy optimisation — contributing to 25% revenue growth.
• Implemented the enterprise governance framework — policies, quality metrics, and tooling — improving data quality and protecting sensitive customer information.
• Served as the enterprise escalation point for governance, quality, and data protection issues, partnering with leadership to grow the value of core data assets and strengthen audit readiness.

Risk & Quality Compliance Analyst at Santander UK