Malik Ellams

Senior Data Governance professional with 7+ years of experience leading data governance initiatives across large-enterprise and high-growth technology environments, spanning data quality, stewardship, business metadata, controls, and data management. Hands-on experience administering enterprise governance and cataloging platforms, including Collibra and Microsoft Purview, to operationalize data standards at scale. Proven track record directing Critical Data Element (CDE) programs, data ownership models, and quality-control frameworks that support regulatory obligations under GDPR, CCPA, and SOX.

Trusted to own governance strategy end-to-end and drive adoption across business, analytics, technology, legal, and executive stakeholders, translating enterprise requirements into scalable processes that strengthen data trust, audit readiness, and responsible data use including AI governance, data readiness, and AI risk and controls.

Data Governance Manager - Arrivy - Plano, TX

(2024-12 - 2026-08)

Owned the design and execution of Arrivy's data governance program within a high-growth startup environment, establishing foundational governance processes, data standards, ownership models, and controls across business-critical data.

• Directed the enterprise Critical Data Element (CDE) program, defining business definitions, ownership, validation rules, quality thresholds, and usage requirements adopted across business, analytics, and technology teams.
• Administered the organization's Microsoft Purview environment, serving as primary steward for business glossaries, data dictionaries, lineage documentation, and metadata standards.
• Leveraged Microsoft Purview to implement data classification, sensitivity labeling, and access-control alignment, strengthening the organization's readiness to meet GDPR data-protection and data-subject-rights requirements.
• Designed and owned data-quality controls spanning completeness, accuracy, validity, consistency, uniqueness, and timeliness, improving adherence to defined data standards by 27%.
• Built and owned issue management and remediation workflows plus governance KPI scorecards, giving executive stakeholders real-time visibility into data health and standards adherence.
• Drove standardization of enterprise metric definitions and business rules with analytics and reporting leadership, cutting reporting discrepancies by 22%.
• Directed Master Data Management standards for record creation, matching, deduplication, normalization, and enrichment across governed business records.
• Built and led the organization's AI data-readiness framework, evaluating 10+ candidate AI/ML use cases against data quality, lineage, and access-control criteria prior to model development.
• Defined AI governance controls and risk requirements, data quality, access, traceability, and human oversight, establishing the foundation for the organization's AI risk and controls posture.
• Identified and implemented automation across governance monitoring and remediation activities, reducing manual effort by approximately 15 hours per month.

Data Governance Lead - Spectrum - Garland, TX

(2019-01 - 2024-12)

Directed enterprise data governance standards, controls, and stewardship practices across customer, account, product, contract, and territory data domains supporting CRM and downstream business processes.

• Owned the enterprise CDE inventory within Collibra, documenting business definitions, ownership, acceptable values, and validation requirements adopted across analytics, sales, and operations functions.
• Administered governance artifacts in Collibra business glossaries, data dictionaries, data standards, ownership matrices, and control procedures as the primary platform administrator for the governance program.
• Ensured governance documentation and CDE controls met SOX audit-readiness requirements for financial and operationally material data, supporting internal and external audit cycles with no material findings.
• Partnered with legal and compliance stakeholders to align customer and account data handling, retention, and access practices with CCPA and state privacy-law requirements.
• Performed recurring data-quality assessments across 250K+ records, identifying and resolving completeness, accuracy, duplication, validity, and timeliness issues; reduced recurring defects by 25% through root-cause-driven remediation.
• Reconciled conflicting definitions, calculation logic, and source data with reporting and analytics leadership, resolving discrepancies affecting management reporting and business KPIs.
• Owned MDM standards for record matching, survivorship, validation, and maintenance, cutting duplicate records by 20%.
• Built governance reporting and data-quality scorecards used by leadership to track exceptions, remediation SLAs, and standards compliance.
• Trained and enabled 40+ business users on data standards and stewardship expectations, driving a 30% improvement in data consistency org-wide.

Bachelor of Science - Business Administration and Management - The University of Texas at Arlington