Jenna Jordan
About
I am a Senior Data Management Consultant with Analytics8, where I advise clients on dbt best practices (especially regarding dbt Mesh and the various shifts in governance and strategy that come with it). My experiences working within a dbt Mesh architecture and all of the difficulties organizations could run into with such a major paradigm shift inspired my peer exchange (role-playing/simulation game) at Coalesce 2024: "Governance co-lab: We the people, in order to govern data, do establish processes." I also experimented with bringing role-playing scenarios to data problems at the September 2024 Chicago dbt Meetup, hosted by Analytics8. I occasionally write long blog posts on my website, if you're up for the read.
When did you join the dbt community and in what way has it impacted your career?
My dbt learning journey kicked off with the CoRise (now Uplimit) course Analytics Engineering with dbt, with Emily Hawkins and Jake Hannan, in February 2022 – less than a month after starting as a data engineer with the City of Boston Analytics Team. About a year later, I spearheaded the adoption of dbt at the City and got to build the project and associated architecture from scratch – which is probably the best learning experience you could ask for! I saw the value dbt could bring to improving data management processes at the City, and I knew there were other cities and local governments that could benefit from dbt as well, which motivated me to find my fellow co-speakers Ian Rose and Laurie Merrell to give a talk at Coalesce 2023 called "From Coast to Coast: Implementing dbt in the public sector". As a part of our goal to identify and cultivate a community of dbt practitioners in the public (and adjacent) sectors, we also started the dbt Community Slack channel #industry-public-sector. That experience allowed me to continue to grow my career and find my current role - as well as connect with so many amazing data folks!
What dbt community leader do you identify with? How are you looking to grow your leadership in the dbt community?
There are many leaders in the dbt community that I admire and identify with – I won’t list them all out because I will invariably miss someone (but… you probably know who you are). Technical prowess is always enviable, but I most admire those who bring the human element to data work: those who aren’t afraid to be their authentic selves, cultivate a practice of empathy and compassion, and are driven by curiosity and a desire to help others. I’ve never set out to be a leader, and I still don’t really consider myself to be a leader – I’m much more comfortable in the role of a librarian. I just want to help people by connecting them to the information and resources that they may need.
What have you learned from community members? What do you hope others can learn from you?
Pretty much everything I’ve learned about dbt and working in a mature analytics ecosystem I’ve learned from dbt community members. The dbt Community Slack is full of useful information and advice, and has also helped me identify experts about certain topics that I can chat with to learn even more. When I find someone sharing useful information, I usually try to find and follow them on social media so I can see more of their content. If there is one piece of advice I want to share, it is this: don’t be afraid to engage. Ask for help when you need it, but also offer help freely. Engage with the community with the same respect and grace you would offer your friends and coworkers.
Anything else interesting you want to tell us?
Library Science is so much more than the Dewey Decimal System (seriously, ask a librarian about Dewey for a juicy rant). RDF triples (for knowledge graphs) are queried using SPARQL (pronounced “sparkle”). An antelope can be a document. The correct way to write a date/time is ISO-8601. The oldest known table (of the spreadsheet variety) is from 5,000 years ago – record-keeping predates literature by a significant margin. Zip codes aren’t polygons – they don’t contain an area or have boundaries. Computers don’t always return 0.3 when asked to add 0.1 + 0.2. SQL was the sequel to SQUARE. Before computers, people programmed looms (weaving is binary). What? You asked!! On a more serious note – data teams: start hiring librarians. No, seriously. No degree could have prepared me better for what I do in the data field than my M.S. in Library & Information Science. I promise, you want the skillset & mindset that a librarian will bring to your team.