Hi, I’m Mike O’Toole. Here’s How I Got Here

I’m Mike. I help teams turn data into decisions people actually use. I’m the guy who asks the “dumb” question early so we don’t do dumb work later. I listen, connect the dots, and leave things simpler than I found them. My brain doesn’t like chaos; it starts sorting the room the second I walk in.

I grew up—and still live—in Boise, Idaho (not Iowa—think potatoes, not corn), home of the Boise State Broncos and the famous blue turf. Idaho is an outdoor playground—mountains, whitewater, camping, hunting, fishing, hiking—but I somehow grew up a city boy. While most people were out in the wild, I was tinkering with tech, learning to program, and playing sports. My first internship taught me something that changed my trajectory: I’m an extrovert in a world of engineers who like the lights low, headphones on, and the world tuned out. For a minute I wondered if I was in the wrong industry because I genuinely like engaging with people.

It took a few years to realize that a genuine desire to connect—leading with curiosity and building real relationships—paired with technical ability is a real advantage. I learned to translate business needs into actionable work for engineers, and then translate delivered work back to the business in plain English. I also discovered early that mentoring and coaching others is the part of the job that brings me the most satisfaction.

After a few years as an IC in software engineering and business intelligence, I achieved a goal and became a manager—right as our Fortune-150 company picked Tableau to modernize BI (moving off Microsoft SSAS and IBM Cognos). I went to Tableau Conference 2015 to learn new tricks but came home with something more valuable: a new way to lead. Daniel Pink’s keynote on Motivation 2.0 hit me on the most human level. I immediately ordered his book Drive, which finally put words to what I’d felt about leadership but couldn’t explain: autonomy, mastery, purpose.

• Autonomy: Give people context and trust. Assume they want to show up and do great work—especially on more heuristic tasks. 
• Mastery: Feed curiosity. Let people go deep in the areas that excite them. 
• Purpose: Tie the work to a clear “why”—company, department, team, and individual—and people’s natural altruism starts to show up.

I took a risk and quietly implemented these concepts with my team. The culture around me was command-and-control, so I kept it under the radar. If it worked, I’d highlight the wins. If it didn’t, no harm done. It worked. People felt their work mattered, and several grew into top-tier technical roles—not because of me, but because I got out of their way and built an environment they wanted to show up for. That still beats any software or dashboard I’ve shipped.

Eventually, I took everything I’d learned about people, leadership, data warehousing, and BI and became a director at a mid-size internet marketing SaaS company, owning the buildout of the data pipeline end-to-end. We replaced fragile, underperforming direct-to-app reporting with managed ingestion, Snowflake for the warehouse (migrating off Amazon Redshift), dbt for modeling and automation, and a BI layer powered by Tableau—I wanted to keep building on what I knew well. Over five years we stood up a fast, reliable warehouse and reporting that ran the business and laid the foundation for customer-facing analytics. One number I can share: moving from Redshift to Snowflake cut platform cost ~40% and improved speed and reliability.

I love coaching and mentoring. I like seeing people “get it,” take off, and become the best version of themselves. I also like saying, “Hold on—I don’t understand. Walk me through it,” because listening and curiosity fix more problems than any clever solution. This applies to people and projects. If you don’t know where you’re going, any path will do—and that’s not a plan.

Why I Chose Sigma

In my last role at a leading debt settlement company I ran a head-to-head to replace Salesforce CRMA. We evaluated Microsoft Power BI, ThoughtSpot, Tableau, and Sigma against what actually matters: self-service, performance, governance, and cost.

ThoughtSpot had interesting NLP but gaps for our use cases. Power BI struggled on warehouse performance in our environment and would have needed heavy tuning and change-management lift. Tableau—the platform I’d used for almost 10 years—felt stalled. More importantly, I had to admit I never successfully unlocked democratized data and self-service at scale with it; the learning curve was out of reach for many business users. And the cost had outpaced the innovation.

Sigma immediately felt different. It met business users where they were comfortable—with a spreadsheet-like interface—and stayed aligned with all of our evaluation criteria. While it came down to Sigma and Tableau, in reality it wasn’t close. Sigma was the clear winner: live connection to the warehouse with smart, layered caching to keep costs down and performance up; a licensing and cost structure that made sense; flexible governance; and something no one else was really doing—input tables. Input tables are a game-changer both for master data management and for building data apps.

Adoption was critical because CRMA had become the platform people used to run the business—despite its technical limitations and unreliability. I built a series of trainings—The Sigma Challenge—to lead business users through progressively more challenging functionality, each lesson building on the last and ending in a cohesive, business-relevant dashboard. Each module was short, clear, and digestible (10–15 minutes of video, about 15 minutes of homework). The result: adoption nearly doubled across ~185 licensed users.

Governance mattered to senior leadership. CRMA had been the wild west; far too many people had access to sensitive data. With Sigma, we needed roles mapped to decision rights, domain-based workspaces with clear owners, row-level security, limited peer-to-peer sharing to prevent sensitive data leaks, and a content lifecycle so things were refreshed or retired on a regular cadence. I leaned on a strong relationship with Sigma’s engineers and PMs to shape the rollout.

Bottom line: Sigma fits how I work—meet people where they are, move fast, keep it simple, build habits that stick. It also lets me retire the “critical spreadsheets” that are somehow the glue holding a company together and replace them with sustainable input-table solutions. Good for the business, good for my blood pressure.

Why I Chose Maverick Data

I’ve wanted to consult for years. I didn’t have the courage to do it alone, and I didn’t want to join a giant firm where I’d get lost and my impact would get diluted. Maverick Data is the right fit: small enough to satisfy my curiosity about how the whole business runs—and to let me help build it; senior enough to stay hands-on with low ego and high ownership so I can see and measure the impact of my work. I believe anything truly successful is built on strong relationships and trust. I know what I can deliver technically; who I am is what sets me apart.

That’s how I operate, and it’s how Maverick operates. We listen and ask questions until the job is clear. We ship early and often so people see progress, not just a status report. We keep governance and operations light but useful. And we design to the client’s needs, not to a template—opinionated, but flexible. The goal isn’t dashboards or data apps for their own sake; it’s outcomes you can feel.

I also like that Maverick is aligned with Sigma. I genuinely think Sigma is where BI is going—live to the warehouse, spreadsheet-native for real self-service, and data apps that move work out of inboxes and shared spreadsheets and into the platform. I’ve gotten to know the people at Sigma, which only strengthens my desire to help Sigma win—and to help our clients and Maverick win with them.

Contact Us

If you’re evaluating platforms—or you’ve already chosen Sigma and want the value to show up on the scoreboard—reach out to sales@maverickdata.io. Tell me what you need your analytics to do, not just what you want them to show. I’m here to do what I do best: listen, partner, and build the right outcomes.