Tableau Zen Masters
The spirit of Tableau is our customers. We build software for the everyday person. By listening to and engaging with our community, we not only build better software, but ultimately a better company.
From this community, a select few have risen above all the rest in their mastery of the product, their willingness to share knowledge and most crucially their desire to help us improve the Tableau solutions of tomorrow. They are, at the same time, our biggest advocates as well as our harshest critics. We are lucky to have them.
Each of these people have demonstrated, in his or her own way, the zen of Tableau.
Tableau Zen Masters are nominated by our Tableau community and our team members. Zen Masters are selected for one year based on their contributions from the previous year.
Who are the Zen Masters?
Abisola Oni
Abisola is an analytics professional with over six years experience in driving growth for technology-based businesses. Her interests lie in the intersection of technology, business, social impact and community. Currently at Paystack, a leading payments company in Africa, she is responsible for analysing business patterns, market trends and driving strategic initiatives to support the growth of its key merchants. She discovered Tableau in 2017 when she first started working in the technology sector and has since gone on to found two leading analytics and visualization communities (Lagos Tableau User group and WeVisualize) in Lagos within three years. She realised that majority of the tech communities in Lagos focused on software development and none on data visualization and analytics so she started these communities to fill that gap. Abisola is also a co-founder at Beyond A Curved Spine (an NGO raising scoliosis awareness in Nigeria). When she is not at her computer, you will find her running, traveling, exploring new restaurants or doing crazy things like jumping off a plane.
Adam McCann
Adam is the Vice President of Analytics at KeyMe. At KeyMe he is responsible for building pricing algorithms, identifying new kiosk locations, and analyzing business patterns. In addition, Adam oversees all digital marketing efforts including SEO and SEM optimization. Adam has more than 15 years of experience in data science and analytics with proven ability to transform the way organizations use data. His technical experience includes machine learning, data mining, natural language processing, and data visualization. Prior to joining KeyMe, Adam built and managed data science teams at Deloitte Consulting in Washington, DC.
Alexander Mou
Alexander is a veteran data analyst and visualization expert with a particular interest in efficient calculation techniques. As a prolific blogger with more than 250 posts (https://vizdiff.blogspot.com) filled with tips, tricks, tutorials and templates, he has been a Tableau Social Ambassador since 2016. Although, he has worked primarily in the finance industry, he’s familiar with data sets that extend far beyond into the domains of information security, sales and marketing, server logs and process management. Alexander is extremely talented with Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server and data preparation. He is also a top contributor to the Chinese Tableau community. When he’s not at work, Alexander likes hiking, travel and vizzing.
Ann Jackson
Ann Jackson is a cat and logic-loving individual dedicated to spreading her contagious passion for data visualization to the world. She is the founder of Jackson Two, a boutique analytics firm obsessed with helping businesses understand their data. Outside of work she leads Workout Wednesday, a weekly Tableau skills building challenge, as well as her local Phoenix Tableau User Group. She is also the co-host of Hashtag Analytics (#AnalyticsPodcast) with fellow Zen Master Luke Stanke, a bespoke video podcast focused on data and analytics. Ann is known for her clean and highly analytical visualizations, commitment to the community, and infinite love of all things data and Tableau.
Azusa Maei
Azusa Maei is a Business Intelligence specialist and a leader of Viz for Social Good Tokyo Chapter, and a core member of Japan Tableau User Group. Azusa loves to help people solve their problems with the use of Tableau. Her main focus is to create more opportunities for the Tableau Community and has held several large events as well as meetups in Japan. Also, she is the first graduate of "Data Saber", which is one of Japan's biggest education programs. And she had a central role in expanding and improving its program.In her free time, you can find her doing creative work, especially illustration. She loves to see how she can combine data visualization with her illustrations.
Bridget Cogley
Interpreter turned analyst, Bridget Cogley brings an interdisciplinary approach to data analytics. She focuses on ethics, data literacy, effective data communication, and functional aesthetics in design. She has been a Senior Consultant for the last 6 years and is a 4-time Tableau Zen Master. Prior to consulting, Bridget managed an analytics department, which included vetting and selecting Tableau, creating views in the database, and building comprehensive reporting. She also has experience in American Sign Language, training, HR, managing, and sales support.
Bridget sees Tableau in a fresh and inspiring way. Effective data communication is more than just putting some charts on a dashboard. Bridget holds our hands and gives us great ideas about how to turn a good visualization into an engaging one with a bit of humor along the way.
Carl Allchin
Carl is the 'Other' Head Coach at The Data School. He spent years in financial services running data functions and teams before moving to The Information Lab and specialising on data preparation and visualisation. As co-founder of Preppin' Data and author of 'Tableau Prep Up & Running', he enjoys the challenge of making data easier to analyse and accessible to all.
Chantilly Jaggernauth
Chantilly Jaggernauth is the Founder and CEO of Millennials and Data (#MAD). Through #MAD, Chantilly works to bridge the data literacy and analytical skills gap by training, mentoring, and preparing millennials to enter a data-driven global environment. Her goal is to build a community of millennials who have the analytical skills needed to become data-driven leaders within any industry. In her day job, Chantilly is the VP of Data Visualization and Training at Lovelytics in Arlington, VA.
Chris DeMartini
Chris DeMartini came to the Tableau community through his work in network graphing. He has focused on incorporating dynamic aspects to his visualizations as well as working extensively with Tableau's Embedding (JS) and Extensions APIs. He often blogs about these techniques on DataBlick and provides open access to his work and techniques through Tableau Public and GitHub. He currently runs the Data Visualization Team at Visa.
Chris Love
Chris uses his advanced skills not to blow us away with technical mastery but to teach us to keep things simple. This is a vital skill. While we get to see his mastery in his work on Tableau Public, we also appreciate his focus on helping the people who are new to Tableau, or those who just need to do the simplest thing possible to bring change in their organization. He uses his expertise to promote simplicity, not just advanced uses of Tableau.
Eva Murray
Eva Murray, Head of BI at Exasol and Tableau Zen Master, is a leader in the data visualization community, running the popular global social data project #MakeoverMonday together with Charlie Hutcheson (and previously with fellow Zen Master Andy Kriebel).
Eva is passionate about helping people understand, work with and fall in love with data by giving them a platform for learning about data analysis and visualization and for connecting with like-minded people. In her day-job Eva is responsible for engaging with the Tableau community and leads Exasol’s philanthropic engagement.
Away from her computer screens, Eva is a keen triathlete, obsessed with cooking and loves to explore new places.
Jeffrey Shaffer
Jeffrey A. Shaffer is the Chief Operating Officer and Vice President of Information Technology and Analytics at Unifund. He is also Adjunct Professor at the University of Cincinnati teaching Data Visualization where he was the 2016 Outstanding Adjunct Professor of the Year. He is an author of The Big Book of Dashboards and is a regular speaker on the topic of data visualization and Tableau training at conferences, symposiums, workshops, universities, and corporate training programs. He was the winner of the 2014 Tableau Quantified Self Visualization Contest which led him to compete in the 2014 Tableau Iron Viz Contest. His data visualization blog DataPlusScience.com and The Big Book of Dashboards were on the shortlist for the Kantar Information is Beautiful Awards and his Beautiful Trash visualization was on the longlist and featured as one of the 75 best Infographics of 2017 by Column Five Media.
Joshua Smith
Josh "Smitty" Smith grew up listening to and telling campfire stories by the light of a bonfire; today he uses those same skills to weave stories from data. He combines diverse backgrounds and interests in decision science, creative writing, folkloristics, design, and statistics to help people see and understand their data.
Ken Flerlage
Ken Flerlage is an analytics architect, strategist, and evangelist with over 20 years of experience in information technology. He is the Assistant Director of Data Analytics at Bucknell University, where he is responsible for architecture, design, and development of enterprise data & analytics solutions. Ken has been a passionate data hobbyist since he first discovered Tableau in 2016. He's an active member of the Tableau community who spends a lot of his time answering questions on the forums, engaging in data visualization discussions on social media, and blogging on www.flerlagetwins.com, a site that he shares with his identical twin brother and fellow Zen Master, Kevin Flerlage.
Kevin Flerlage
Kevin Flerlage has 15 years of professional experience in data analytics and is genuinely passionate about data. He is a Senior Analyst & Tableau Developer at Unifund / Recovery Decision Science, a financial services and technology company led by Tableau Zen Master, Jeff Shaffer. Kevin is also a Tableau Public Ambassador, has four IronViz top ten finishes and is the fourth most favorited author on Tableau Public. Kevin is an active member of the Tableau Community and frequently blogs about Tableau on http://www.flerlagetwins.com, a site that he shares with his identical twin brother and fellow Zen Master, Ken Flerlage.
Klaus Schulte
Klaus Schulte is a professor of management accounting and vice dean at Münster School of Business. He teaches data visualization and Tableau to his accounting students in MSB’s bachelor’s and master’s programs and also helps clients with implementing data-driven management & accounting. Klaus was introduced to Tableau by Tableau’s very own academic team and discovered his passion for data visualization in various community initiatives like #MakeoverMonday and #SportsVizSunday. He likes thinking about how to use Tableau in innovative ways and blogs about his findings at vizjockey.com. In 2018 he competed on the biggest stage and became the #IronViz Champion at Tableau Conference Europe in London.
Lindsay Betzendahl
Lindsay Betzendahl is a Tableau Certified Associate with over 15 years working in the healthcare industry, initially as a behavioral health clinician, but moved into data anlytics using Tableau 6 years ago. She currently works as a Consultant at HealthDataViz, a small data visualization company, and is passionate about building beautiful dashboards that deliver clear stories. Lindsay is very active in the Tableau Community and runs #ProjectHealthViz, a monthly community data visualization initiative that strives to ’tell the stories of our health’. She is currently a Tableau Public Ambassador and blogs at https://vizzendata.com. Lindsay is also a working wife/mother to two and strongly believes in connecting women in the data visualization field. Through her #MomsWhoViz initiative, she is building a network of data-driven mothers. Empowering and supporting others in the field is one of Lindsay’s top values.
Lindsey Poulter
Lindsey enjoys creating user interfaces in Tableau through features such as set and parameter actions. She combines business strategy with design best practices to build innovative dashboards. Lindsey competed in the 2019 Iron Viz contest and was previously a Tableau Public ambassador.
Lorna Brown
Lorna is a speeding tipping magician, who loves to give back to the community. She started her journey as part of the Information Labs Data School in 2015. Lorna co-leads two community projects, Workout Wednesday with Zen Masters Ann Jackson and Luke Stanke, along with other community members, and Tableau Tip Tuesday with Hall of Fame Zen Master Andy Kriebel. She also co-leads the North West UK Tableau User Group in her spare time. The community is a big part of Lorna, and she wants to do all she can to give back. Lorna loves her cats and sports, especially Rugby League.
Luke Stanke
Luke has been developing high-end, scalable data science and data visualization solutions for more than a dozen years. He is a Partner at Tessellation, an analytics consultancy. His innovative approach to visual analytics distills complex data into easy to understand, actionable data products. Luke leads Workout Wednesday, a weekly challenge where participants rebuild a dashboard from scratch using predefined requirements and a fully built dashboard as inspiration. Luke is a teacher at heart and has trained more than one thousand global users on how to analyze their data using Tableau. He is also a Tableau Social Ambassador and shares his in-depth knowledge on Data Coach YouTube–which features six minute videos called Tableau 360 and long-form discussions called How To Tableau.
Marc Reid
Marc is a data visualisation designer with a background in software engineering and business analysis. He focused on visual analytics using Tableau after joining the Data School program at The Information Lab in 2017. Marc enjoys experimenting with Tableau's new features and is a frequent contributor to the beta program. As a Tableau Public Ambassador, Marc is always learning from the creative Tableau community and shares his own knowledge of Tableau and data visualisation at https://datavis.blog. When not building visualisations, Marc enjoys travel and photography.
Mark Wu
Mark’s knowledge of Tableau server is among the best. Mark drives one of the largest Tableau server deployments in the world. He has unique skills in server automation, Center of Excellence, and enterprise Tableau governance. Mark has been a leader in Tableau Server Admin forum.
Merlijn Buit
Merlijn Buit is the founder of AppsforTableau and Senior Tableau Consultant at Infotopics. Merlijn specializes in developing top-notch Extensions like Show Me More and SuperTables. With his games like Mario in Tableau and TableauCraft, he blew the minds of the Tableau Community. And his Photoshop in Tableau dashboard became the ultimate benchmark for the Hyper Engine Dev team. Merlijn has a passion for Programming, Data Analytics, and teaching colleagues in becoming better Tableau Analysts. In his free time, he likes to cycle and speed skate.
Neil Richards
Neil is a UK based Zen Master who joins for a second stint having previously been a Zen Master in 2018. A passionate advocate of Tableau Public, he has been a Tableau Public Ambassador for over three years, regularly sharing visualisations that demonstrate the full capabilities of Tableau for data art as well as data analysis. Neil is Knowledge Director for the Data Visualization Society (datavisualizationsociety.com), a post he proudly holds despite reluctantly having to spell Visualization with a Z, and is also an active Board member of Viz for Social Good (vizforsocialgood.com). Neil regularly shares his thoughts on data visualisation and design on his blog questionsindataviz.com. Professionally, Neil has responsibility for data visualisation education and evangelism in his role within Groupon’s Analytics Center of Excellence, proving that he can equally well promote simple analytical visualisations and visual best practice, if he must!
Rajeev Pandey
Rajeev is a three times Tableau ambassador, tableau featured author and a technical book reviewer working as a senior Data Analyst with AirAsia, Malaysia. His passions include training, mentoring and empowering people gain insights and make valuable contributions to their respective firms. He's the author of two blogs, TableauLearner and https://vizartpandey.com/ helping beginners to experts find analytical solutions.
Rajeev, has consistently contributed to the development of a tableau community across firms in India, helping engage young professionals find sustainable and scalable solutions for day to day business problems. His commitment to the enrichment of content as well as exchange of innovative ideas and grooming has earned him the unique place of the only Tableau Zen Master from India.
Ravi Mistry
After falling in love with Tableau when playing with public football data, Ravi has used Tableau every day for almost 5 years. He is a consultant, trainer and works in Customer Success at The Information Lab. A huge Tableau evangelist, he also has a love for sports, media and technology.
Robert Radburn
I started working for Leicestershire County Council 18 years ago as part of the then Research team. But it was in 2011 that things really changed when I downloaded Tableau for the first time. Five (long) years later, in December 2016, we deployed Tableau Server across the Council. Currently, I'm called a Business Intelligence Development Team Leader. My job is to ensure the success of the Tableau deployment. I'm responsible for a team of developers that accesses Council data. Then wrangler it and add into our own database to allow analysts to plug in and viz. I'm also known to help with the vizzing.
In any spare time, I write data-driven stories with Tableau and Chris Love as the Data Beats on Medium (https://medium.com/@databeats), and create too many spatial treemaps.
Rosario Gauna
Rosario is a professional in Data Analytics and Business Intelligence and passionate about logic, mental challenges, and learning. She is a wife and mother based in Monterrey, Mexico. Rosario works at Tecnológico de Monterrey, the largest private university in her country.
Rosario loves using Tableau to help people see, explore, and better understand their data to make informed decisions.
She is proud to belong to the Community of Tableau, where we support, learn, share, and have fun.
Rosario's blog was born with the spirit of sharing her journey in learning and developing her technical skills, mainly those obtained by participating in the #WorkoutWednesday project. She hopes with this help, people overcome the initial problems and/or fears towards technical challenges and that by accumulating tips and tricks, they can be able to solve new challenges and enjoy their work with Tableau even more.
Sarah Bartlett
Sarah is a BI & Analytics Consultant at Slalom London and has been working in analytics for over 10 years. Sarah was introduced to Tableau in late 2014 whilst working as an analyst and soon discovered her passion for data visualisation through participating in various community initiatives including #MakeoverMonday and #VizForSocialGood. In 2018, Sarah competed on stage at Iron Viz Europe and the experience prompted her to launch #IronQuest; a community data visualisation initiative designed to prepare individuals for the Iron Viz feeder competitions. #IronQuest gives participants an opportunity to practice sourcing data, refine their design, storytelling and analysis skills whilst also providing a platform for participants to showcase their amazing visualisations. Sarah is currently a Tableau Social Ambassador and is passionate about welcoming newcomers to the Tableau Community.
In her spare time, Sarah co-leads London Tableau User Group and enjoys sharing vizzes on her favourite music genre; hip hop!
Simon Beaumont
Simon is Director for JLL's Business Intelligence Centre of Excellence and he supports a team of analysts to translate complex data into meaningful business insights for operational and senior leaders. He is passionate in his belief that a Centre of Excellence must be more than just technical excellence, it should be underpinned by a culture of continuous learning, innovation, and collaboration; beliefs that were all founded on his regular interactions with the Tableau Community.
In his spare time Simon's passion is sports; in 2018 he combined his love of data and sports to help co-found Sports Viz Sunday, a community data visualisation initiative to help showcase the amazing sporting visualisations created across the Tableau Community and to help connect like-minded individuals.
Tamas Foldi
The white-hat hacker of Tableau Server, Tamas breaks Tableau Server so you don’t have to. His extensive knowledge of Tableau Server and its APIs allows him to manipulate Tableau like no other person. Fortunately, he uses these skills to build and share incredible tips for the Server admin community. He strives to help customers and advises the Tableau development team on ways in which we can improve our products.
Toan Hoang
Toan Hoang has over 15 years of experience in Business Intelligence, Data Management, Big Data, Data Lakes, Internet of Things (IoT), Data Visualisation and the Data Analytics space; the last six years has been dedicated to delivering end-to-end solutions using Tableau.
Toan is the Founder of Tableau Magic and provides services in Data Strategy, Data Management, Data Education and Data Visualisation. For those who want to improve their Tableau skills, Tableau Magic also provides tutorials for all levels and is known for tutorials on sophisticated and bespoke (custom) data visualisations that push the boundaries of Tableau.
In his spare time, Toan is an avid programmer, Salsa instructor and events promoter, plays the piano to relax, and on top of that he loves to talk technology, data and Tableau. #TalkDataToMe
Tristan Guillevin
In 2017, Tristan Guillevin won the Iron Viz competition in Las Vegas. Since then, he helps other people grow their Tableau skills by making webinars, conferences, blog articles, and a book: "Getting Started with Tableau 2019.2" Since May 2018, he's working at Ogury as a Data Visualization Expert.
Yukari Nagata
Yukari Nagata is CEO of PATH data analytics&visualization consulting and the the founder of data owned media Data Viz Lab" and provides services in Data strategy, Data analytics, Data visualization and Data education. She supports the clients to translate complex data into meaningful business insights for leaders. She is passionate in belief that Center of Excellence and continuous learning must be more critical whenthan just individual technical excellence we think about real data culture.
She is the author of the book of data visualizaion design and the head of Japan TUG.
Yvan Fornes
Passionate Data Analytics professional with over 10 years of experience in this field in the Travel industry (Airline & Hotel).
Yvan Fornes is a former Tableau Zen Master and an Analytics Business Consultant at Amadeus, the leading IT solutions provider for the travel industry. He helps Airlines to detect revenue opportunities by analyzing and visualizing data. Yvan started his career in Hotel Revenue Management, the department that set the room prices, working for the Marriott Group and, later for the Louvre Hotels Group where he was responsible for data analysis and business intelligence.
In 2000, he started working for Air France Revenue Management and was quickly promoted to Revenue Management Team leader on Air France's domestic routes.
In 2005, Yvan joined Amadeus as an Airline Inventory Product Manager. He was in contact with the world's leading airlines such as Air France, Lufthansa, Singapore, Finnair, SAS....
In 2012, before his current role, as a consultant for 9 Airlines during 3 years, he used Digital Analytics to help his customers to optimize their websites by improving their Search Engine Optimization (SEO), their advertising campaigns ROI (PPC, display, email...) and their conversion rate.
Shinichiro Murakami
Shin is always active on the Forums and has been a Top Contributor for more than 12 months. He has more than 825 “correct answers” in the Forum just within the calendar year 2017 alone. Shin has been using Tableau since 2014 and joined the Forum from October 2015. Since then, he has continued to answer a wide variety of questions and has provided support to thousands of people. You can also find him on Twitter, Tableau public and his own blog.
Shin is a Senior Supply Chain Planner within the Semiconductor Industry. In the Tableau community, he became recognized as a Tableau Ambassador from 2016. He has gained more than 80,000 points through Forum activity, which is the 2nd highest score among more than 60,000 community participants.
Shin’s goal is to allow people to enjoy using Tableau more.
Ryan Sleeper
Ryan Sleeper is an independent data visualization designer, author, speaker, trainer, and consultant specializing in Tableau.
He is a 2X Tableau Zen Master, 2013 Tableau Iron Viz Champion, author of the 2015 Tableau Public Visualization of the Year, and author of Practical Tableau (O'Reilly).
Paul Banoub
Paul is the director of Agile Business Intelligence at UBS investment bank in London. He is responsible for the design, engineering, and support of a global, enterprise-scale Tableau Centre of Excellence supporting almost 12,000 users. Paul has developed one of the most dynamic and well-respected Tableau Server deployments in Europe, with user empowerment, community, and training at the heart of the service. Paul is highly active in the Tableau community (Twitter @paulbanoub) and blogs regularly at www.vizninja.com.
Mike Cisneros
At various times in his career, Mike has been: an editor; a software developer: a graphic designer; a data analyst; and an online community builder. Today, he uses the skills learned from all these disciplines to provide elegant, persuasive, and effective data visualizations, for fun and profit.
Lilach Manheim
Lilach blends together a background in art history and human-centered information design to tell visual stories. She is also known across the Tableau community as the world's biggest dot plot evangelist. Lilach is currently Sr Data Visualization Designer, Center of Excellence at Visa
Ken Black
Ken Black first discovered Tableau in 2008, and he has been using it to investigate business, sports, and scientific data ever since. Ken has focused on developing techniques for efficiently exploring huge data sets, with the goal of concisely explaining insights to diverse project teams. Ken is skilled in data analysis, visualization and animations, computer programming, mathematical and numerical modeling, data mining, and discovering unknown aspects of business performance hidden in large data sets. Ken enthusiastically writes articles about his Tableau usage and teaching, as well as producing specific technical training videos on his blog at DataBlends.us.
David Murphy
David Murphy, aka Datasaurus Rex, is unique. He’s a leader in the field of people tackling unexpected topics (deaths in Game of Thrones, scoring patterns on TV quiz shows) with Tableau visualizations, his YouTube channel and humour. In fact, he’s the only person in this field and it’s for this reason he’s a Zen Master.
