The Data Goddess has started a company.
Today Sparkline Advisory officially launches – a consultancy for universities and colleges that want to manage their data well, meet their regulatory obligations without drama, and adopt AI with something other than panic or blind enthusiasm. If you have followed my work for a while, very little about the mission will surprise you. The structure around it, though, is new, and worth explaining properly.
Why a company?
For years I have worked with institutions on the things that sit in the awkward gap between “important” and “anyone’s actual job”: data governance, data protection, HESA and ILR returns, OfS conditions, and lately the question of what staff are actually doing with AI (the honest answer at most institutions: nobody is entirely sure).
That work kept growing, and it kept growing in three distinct directions. Some clients needed hands-on help with a specific problem. Some needed their people trained so the problem stopped recurring. And some needed tools and frameworks they could pick up and run with themselves. Doing all of that under one personal brand was starting to feel like running three businesses out of one handbag.
So now there is a proper home for it, with three rooms.
The three divisions
Sparkline Consulting is the hands-on part – governance reviews, data protection support, regulatory returns, AI policy, and the rest of the work that keeps your data trustworthy. The aim is always to leave your team more capable, not more dependent. I would rather build your confidence than your reliance on me, which I accept is an unusual business model for a consultancy.
Sparkline Academy is the training arm. Data fluency and AI literacy for everyone from front-line staff to executive boards, in plain English, designed for people who have day jobs. No fear, no jargon, no death by slide deck.
Sparkline Data Lab is where the thinking happens – the frameworks, tools and dashboards that power everything else. It is already home to the ICE/BERG AI maturity model and the Data Fluency Framework, with more on the way.
The three feed each other. The Data Lab builds the ideas, the Academy teaches them, Consulting delivers the bespoke version. It is less a company structure and more a flywheel, and watching it start to turn is the most exciting part of all this.
Why “Sparkline”?
A sparkline is a small, simple chart – the little line you see next to a number in a dashboard or a spreadsheet. No axes, no legend, no clutter. It exists to make a trend instantly visible.
That is the job, in miniature. Institutional data is genuinely complicated – the regulation, the systems, the politics, the seventeen different versions of the truth in seventeen different spreadsheets. The work is taking all of that and making the important things visible, so that people can act on them. Small chart, clear signal. It also helps that it is a lovely word to say.
What happens to The Data Goddess?
Nothing, is the short answer. The Data Goddess is not being retired, rebranded, or quietly walked out of the building. She is me – the speaking, the writing, the thinking, the strongly held opinions about date formats. Sparkline is the company; The Data Goddess is the person running it. The two get along very well, mostly because they share a diary and a bottle of wine.
What’s next
The website you are reading this on is live and growing. Over the coming months you will see the Data Lab products start to appear, the Academy training offer take shape, and a steady stream of the practical resources and sector commentary you are used to – now with a new logo on them.
If you work in HE or FE and any of this sounds useful, have a look around the site, follow the new Sparkline Advisory LinkedIn page, or just get in touch. The kettle is, metaphorically speaking, always on.
Thank you to everyone who has supported the work so far. This is day one, and there is a lot coming.