Bringing a data culture to an art school in Berlin

The challenge

The school ran on disconnected systems and had little experience using structured data. Leadership wanted to make decisions on evidence, not instinct, but had no platform, no metrics, and no one to guide the shift.

What I did

I joined as Fractional CDO. Through workshops and stakeholder interviews I helped leadership and staff define the metrics that mattered, then selected a pragmatic, lightweight stack and implemented Power BI dashboards for admissions, student progress, payments, and retention. The emphasis throughout was on enabling everyday, data-informed decisions, not building something heavy.

Outcomes

• Brought data-driven management to a non-technical organization.
• Connected operational systems into a lightweight platform feeding Power BI.
• Identified churn patterns and acted on them to improve retention.
• Gave leadership clarity on admissions, conversion, and payments.
• Raised data literacy so the team could keep going on its own.