Jeff Baird

About Jeff Baird

Most AI projects fail.The reason has nothing to do with AI.The data underneath was never ready. Garbage in, garbage out has been true since 1957. Putting a large language model on top of bad data does not fix it.I have spent 20 years solving that problem and turning it into revenue.At Byte, solving it unlocked $15M in incremental revenue. Not from a new campaign. From finally having data the C-suite could trust.At dōTERRA, it eliminated $800K in licensing costs and cut executive dashboard outages by 69%.At a $200B global enterprise spanning investment management, banking, real estate, and humanitarian operations across 180 countries, it meant building the foundation that made all of it governable and fast enough to actually use.Here is what I do. I build the data architecture, governance, and platforms that AI initiatives need to actually work. Then I separate the investments worth making from the ones that will quietly drain budget for 18 months before someone admits it is not working.I built a 10-pillar Data Strategy Scorecard that helps organizations assess their actual AI readiness before they spend another dollar on platforms or models. Happy to share it.I have delivered 300+ keynotes and corporate training sessions at Credit Suisse, UnitedHealth Group, Lucid, Intermountain Health, Herbalife, and SHRM among others. Certified behavioral science trainer. I study how executives make decisions under pressure.That means I can build a lakehouse in the morning and present its business case to a board in the afternoon. In the same language.If you are scaling a data org, modernizing a platform, or figuring out which AI investments will actually pay off, I would welcome the conversation.

Experience

1. Director of Data Services

   Dentsply Sirona

   Jun 2021 — Present · Lehi, UT, US

   LinkedIn is tricky because it strips most formatting on paste. The most reliable method is using line breaks and blank lines, with Unicode bullets that survive the paste. Here is the entry formatted for direct copy-paste into LinkedIn:Led enterprise data and AI strategy across three distinct business units, Byte, SureSmile, and Wellspect, serving as the senior data leader for each while partnering directly with VP and C-suite stakeholders.At Byte, rebuilt the data foundation from the ground up post-acquisition. The C-suite credited reliable, trustworthy data as directly responsible for $15M+ in incremental revenue through attribution and funnel optimization.At SureSmile, resolved a 7-month ERP reporting gap that had blocked patient journey visibility and revenue recognition. Built the operational data pipeline powering public Dentist Locator functionality and designed AI-ready semantic models for sales and acquisition workflows.At Wellspect, leading greenfield data strategy and platform selection as the business establishes itself as an independent unit.Portfolio-wide impact: Developed a 10-pillar Data Strategy Scorecard adopted across business units to align platform investment with measurable business value Led enterprise AI platform evaluation across Snowflake, Databricks, Microsoft Fabric, and Google Cloud, assessing LLM agent capabilities, NL-to-SQL readiness, and governance requirements Reduced platform costs 57% through cloud architecture redesign and vendor consolidation Partnered with Dentsply enterprise data leadership to surface scalable governance and platform practices adopted across brands

Education

• Utah Valley University

  BS in Computer Science, Computer Science

  2000 — 2006

Skills

• Relational Databases
• Requirements Gathering
• Business Intelligence
• Data Modeling
• Training & Development
• Business Objects Data Integrator
• Web Intelligence
• Stored Procedures
• Sap Bi
• Etl
• Enterprise Software
• Data Quality
• Enterprise Architecture
• Data Warehousing
• Web Services
• Star Schema
• Etl Tools
• Oracle Sql
• Sap Businessobjects
• Employee Training
• Data Analysis
• Crystal Reports
• Software Development
• Data Architecture
• Performance Tuning
• Master Data Management
• Dimensional Modeling
• Sql Tuning
• Extract, Transform, Load (Etl)
• Training
• Coaching & Mentoring
• Business Objects
• Nonverbal Communication
• Data Integration
• Youth Mentoring
• Dashboards
• Database Administration
• Entrepreneurship
• Dashboard
• Data Services