Humans of Data: “Proactively recognize when you need governance, build a solid foundation, and get buy-in. This article was co-authored with Otávio Leite Bastos (Global Data Governance Lead @ Contentsquare), Nandini Tyagi (Founders’ Office @ Atlan), and Prukalpa Sankar (Co-Founder @ Atlan). As any data and analytics program evolves, it’s inevitable that data leaders will have to dive headfirst into data governance. Data governance has many facets such as data quality, access policies, data security, metadata management, data management, and more. But when is the right time? Who is needed? How do you even get started? Historically, data governance was an afterthought to data and analytics architecture and use cases. This led to many organizations scrambling to reactively address problems related to data quality, data accessibility and data security, among others. In this article, we explore how data leaders can more proactively recognize when you need data governance, build solid foundations for a data governance strategy, and get buy-in for your initiative.”