Senior Director, Data Governance and Stewardship

Overview

The Senior Director, Data Governance and Stewardship leads the enterprise-wide evolution of how Cook Medical understands, owns and acts on its data. This role provides strategic leadership for data governance across Cook''s enterprise platforms - spanning traditional systems including ERP, CRM, and reporting environments - as well as Palantir Foundry, Cook''s ontology-driven intelligence and agentic AI layer. The role partners with business leaders to ensure data is consistently defined, business-owned and governed to a common standard across all platforms, while partnering closely with IT and AI on technical implementation to ensure the proper infrastructure is in place.

Responsibilities

Data Governance Strategy & Operating Model

• Evolve and advance Cook Medical's enterprise data governance framework, operating model, and policy standards to keep pace with the organization's growing data and AI ambitions.
• Strengthen the Data Governance Councils with cross-functional executive representation; serve as chair or co-chair alongside a senior business sponsor.
• Maintain and advance a data governance roadmap that prioritizes domains based on business impact, maximizing business value, managing regulatory exposure, reducing risk, and enabling AI/agentic use case readiness.
• Define and refine governance policies, standards, and processes covering data ownership, stewardship, quality, classification, definitions, and lifecycle management.

Business Data Ownership & Stewardship

• Formalize and expand Data Owner assignments across Cook's critical data domains (e.g., Customer, Product, Supplier, Financial, Regulatory/Clinical, Employee).
• Enable and grow the network of Business Data Stewards embedded within functional areas; refine roles, accountabilities, and operating rhythms to improve engagement and effectiveness.
• Maintain and expand the Business Glossary and enterprise data dictionary, ensuring shared, unambiguous definitions across business units, systems, and geographies.
• Ensure data ownership is embedded in business processes - not just org charts - with owners actively participating in quality remediation, definition management, and governance decisions.

Data Literacy & Change Management

• Partner with HR, Learning and Talent Development to support a multi-year literacy program building foundational Data/AI fluency across Cook's business functions, from frontline users to senior leadership.
• Champion the organizational shift from "IT/AI owns data" to "the business owns data, IT/AI enables it."
• Measure and report governance adoption metrics; identify where additional investment, enablement, or escalation is needed.
• Serve as an internal advocate - positioning data governance as a business enabler, not a compliance burden.

Master Data Management (Business Process Ownership)

• Partner with IT, data engineering and AI to advance Cook's MDM program, providing business-side requirements, ownership assignments, and quality standards for master data entities.
• Lead the definition of MDM domains and canonical entities, establishing golden record standards for customer, product, supplier, and related data objects while aligning business stakeholders to governance definitions.
• Oversee the business processes that create, maintain, and retire master data; identify workflow gaps that introduce quality issues and drive process improvement.
• Ensure MDM standards are applied consistently across both traditional enterprise platforms and Palantir Foundry.

Cross-Platform Data Governance

• Establish and enforce consistent governance standards spanning Cook's traditional enterprise platforms and Palantir Foundry - ensuring data definitions, quality standards, ownership assignments, and access policies are coherent across environments.
• Serve as the business-side governance authority for Cook's Palantir Foundry ontology, ensuring objects, properties, and relationships reflect business-owned definitions through a formal review and approval process.
• Partner with IT/AI architecture, data engineering, and the Palantir program team to ensure governance is designed into platform decisions, not retrofitted after the fact.
• Maintain cross-platform data lineage, enabling stakeholders to trace data from source systems through to Palantir Foundry with clear business ownership at each stage.

Cross-Functional Leadership & Stakeholder Engagement

• Build and maintain trusted relationships with senior leaders across Finance, Commercial, Operations, Supply Chain, R&D, Regulatory, Legal and HR - positioning data governance as a shared business priority.
• Partner with Compliance and Legal to ensure governance policies address applicable regulatory obligations (e.g., MDR, FDA, GDPR, HIPAA) etc.
• Report on governance program health, maturity, and business impact to executive leadership; contribute to the annual data strategy narrative.

Team & Program Leadership

• Lead and develop a high-impact governance team; define team structure and cultivate team members' capabilities.
• Provide business requirements when selecting and implementing governance tooling (e.g., data catalog, business glossary, data quality monitoring) in partnership with IT and AI.
• Manage governance program budget and vendor relationships.

Qualifications

• Bachelor''s degree in Business, Information Systems, Data Management, or a related field; advanced degree preferred.
• 12+ years of progressive experience in data management, data governance, or a related business function; at least 5 years in a senior leadership role.
• Certification in data management (CDMP, DCAM) or change management (Prosci, Kotter) highly regarded.
• Demonstrated success advancing enterprise data governance programs, including operating models, policy frameworks, and stewardship structures.
• Deep undrstanding of data governance frameworks (DAMA-DMBOK or equivalent) and how to apply them pragmatically in a complex, global organization.
• Track record of driving adoption in organizations where data literacy was low and IT historically owned data - comfortable working in a fast-paced agile environment with evidence of measurable cultural change.
• Strong executive presence and communication skills; able to translate data concepts fluently for non-technical business audiences and influence without direct authority.
• Proven people-leadership skills; able to translate data concepts fluently for non-technical business audiences and influence without direct authority.
• Master Data Management (MDM) program leadership experience: defining golden record requirements and managing master data quality with business stakeholders.
• Experience establishing data quality metrics, monitoring, and remediation processes, and report on data quality and governance health to executive leadership.
• Experience partnering with IT, data engineering, AI and analytics teams on MDM, data architecture, and data quality programs.
• Ability to establish consistent governance standards across multiple platforms or data layers, ensuring coherence between integration and intelligence environments.
• Experience with Microsoft Data platforms, Oracle Data platforms and Palantir Foundry, including familiarity with ontology concepts, data catalog capabilities, and governance roles across the platforms.
• This role requires mastery in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data concepts, including the ability to assess feasibility and risk of AI use cases, design or coordinate workflow-level AI solutions, guide teams on responsible AI governance, mentor others, and contribute to organizational policies and ethical decision-making.
• Familiarity with AI/Machine Learning (ML) governance considerations and how data governance intersects with the reliability and trustworthiness of agentic AI workflows.
• Experience governing data through a major enterprise application transformation (ERP, CRM, or equivalent), including embedding data standards and ownership before go-live.
• Background in regulated industries - medical devices, life sciences, pharmaceuticals, or manufacturing - where data integrity carries regulatory consequences.
• Sound knowledge of data privacy, security, and regulatory considerations relevant to a global medical device company (e.g., MDR, FDA, GDPR, HIPAA).
• Experience in global, multi-entity environments with geographically distributed business units.
• Experience with data mesh or federated governance models in complex organizations.

Physical Requirements:

• Requires normal range of hearing and eyesight to record, prepare and communicate appropriate reports• Requires lifting papers or boxes up to 25 pounds occasionally. Work is performed in an office environment• Occasional travel may be required (up to 50%)
• Requires prolonged sitting, some bending, stooping and stretching• Requires eye-hand coordination and manual dexterity sufficient to operate a keyboard, photocopier, telephone, calculator and other office equipment• Contact may involve dealing with angry or upset people