Founding Partner & Managing Director

Ana is a data management leader with 25+ years of experience helping organisations build trusted, well-governed data foundations that support real business outcomes. As the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Data Ascend, she brings a practical, hands-on approach shaped by years of delivering complex data programmers across large enterprise, telecoms, and government. Experience highlights Sasol (5 years) – Data Services COE Lead, including the setup of a Data Management Services Centre of Excellence and delivery of an analytics ecosystem platform MTN (3 years) – Enterprise Data Architect within the Enterprise Architecture team, supporting major programmes such as Converged Billing, Customer Management, and billing initiatives Local Government (7+ years) – Data Architect on key municipal systems including: Land Information System (City of Johannesburg), ISIS (City of Cape Town), and ILIS (Nelson Mandela Bay Metro) Professional affiliations Certified Data Management Professional (CDMP) DAMA Southern Africa – Founding member; served as Education Director (2008–2010) De Beers Group of Companies - Data Architect and Data Management Lead for Data & Analytics for group. Design and Implementation of Metadata driven ingestion engine for Data Lakes Architect and Enablement of Self Service Analytics Architecture and Governance for AI Solutions Data Ownership framework, processes and enablement/rollout/adoption for Reporting, AI Solutions and Self Service Analytics