Founding The Data Lodge in 2019, Valerie is as committed to data literacy as it gets. With train-the-trainer bootcamps, and a peer community, she’s certifying the world’s first Data Literacy Program Leads.

In 2023, The Data Lodge was acquired as the basis of a newly formed venture, Data Society Group (DSG), aimed at fostering data and AI literacy and cultural change at scale. Valerie is excited to also serve as the Chief Strategy Officer of DSG.

Previously, Valerie was a Gartner Research VP in the CDO team where she pioneered the Data Literacy research and was awarded Gartner’s Top Thought Leadership Award (2018). Valerie has more than 30 years of experience in consulting leadership and telecommunications.

Valerie holds a B.S. in Math (SUNY College, Buffalo) and an M.S. in Applied Math (New Mexico State). She lives between the Adirondacks in Upstate NY, and Sarasota, FL with her husband Brian, and their yellow lab, Cooper, the Lodge mascot.

Alex has spent 20 years trying to answer interesting questions using data. When not sidetracked on philosophical tangents, he has worked in market research, financial services, and the pharmaceutical industry. Alex spent over 10 years leading employee engagement programs at Barclays and Otsuka, and he remains passionate about soliciting honest feedback. He recently transitioned to supporting Otsuka as an internal data and analytics business partner, and has been coming up with new ways of using AI to do the work that nobody wants to do.

Alex holds a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in psychology and communications, and is only willing to live along the Amtrak northeast corridor, having gone from Baltimore to Philly to New York to Philly and now to D.C.. He loves fantasy football, his wife Karen, his two kids, and his two cats, and the Baltimore Ravens (though not necessarily in that order).

Alex is a proud graduate of The Data Lodge's Bootcamp program, and has been leading Data Literacy at Otsuka since 2022.

Susan Gracia is the Senior Associate Director of Data Literacy at Northeastern University, where she leads the creation and execution of a university-wide data literacy program. In this role, she develops data literacy learning opportunities, assessments, learning paths, and certifications, while also providing instruction and helping foster data community across the university. Susan previously served as an Assistant Teaching Professor in the MPS in Data Analytics and EdD programs at Northeastern University, where she developed and taught graduate courses in analytics, data mining, data visualization, text mining, research design, and assessment. She is a visiting professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and formerly held the position of Associate Professor and Director of Assessment at Rhode Island College.

Beyond academia, Susan was the Lead Instructor - Corporate Data at Pragmatic Institute, where she taught business-driven analysis to data teams and data literacy to business leaders. Additionally, she has been an instructor for Data Literacy, Inc., teaching Data Literacy Fundamentals and Data Literacy 1 and authored a six-module course, "Data Strategy: Leverage AI for Business," for the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, and a Data Foundations course for Dataquest. She also has extensive experience conducting research, program evaluation, and assessment projects in a variety of settings.

A former French and English as a Second Language teacher, Susan holds an MA in Applied Linguistics, as well as a PhD in Educational Measurement, Research, and Evaluation from Boston College and certificates in Data Science from the University of California Irvine and Predictive Analytics in R from Cornell University. Her credentials also include certification as a Data Literacy Program Lead from The Data Lodge. Susan is passionate about empowering individuals and organizations with the skills to confidently understand, interpret, and leverage data effectively in today's world.