About

Ryan Desmond

I've built data governance programs where none existed, triaged inherited architectures held together with duct tape and good intentions, and sat across from CFOs who didn't understand why they should fund data work — and built the business cases that changed their minds.

My career spans government, fintech, banking, manufacturing, and consulting. I've led data functions at organizations ranging from federal agencies to mid-market industrial companies — places with real data problems but not Fortune 500 budgets. The work is always the same: establish authority, diagnose the real problem, build the plan leadership will fund, and fix it without becoming another body they have to manage.

I founded RDMIS LLC because the mid-market has a gap. Companies doing $20M–$150M in revenue have complex data problems but can't justify a full-time CDO salary. They need senior judgment, not junior consultants. They need someone who's been in the room before — not someone learning on their dime.

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The practice

RDMIS LLC

RDMIS is a Wisconsin-registered data consultancy. We work with a maximum of three clients at a time — no volume, no leverage model, no junior teams running your engagement while a senior person reviews the deck. Every engagement is direct, senior-led, and scoped to deliver real outcomes in 90 days.

Engagements typically start with a triage: what's broken, how bad is it, and what's it costing. From there we build a remediation backlog, establish governance, and work the plan. Some clients stay on a fractional retainer. Others need a defined engagement with a clean handoff. Either works.

In parallel, we're building Lucint™ — a procurement intelligence platform for industrial conglomerates with multi-brand portfolio complexity. If you're running procurement across divisions and suspect you're leaving money on the table, that's the conversation to have.

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The handbooks

The Data Leader's Handbook series

I kept running into the same problem: the books were too academic, the blog posts were too shallow, and the consulting frameworks I could find were built for companies with budgets I've never had access to. So I wrote the handbooks I wished existed.

The series is written for first-time and fractional CDOs at mid-market companies — the people who have to build a data function from scratch, or repair one that was never built right, without a Big Four budget or a 30-person team. Applied experience only. No theory borrowed from McKinsey decks.

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Work together

If the problem is real,
we'll know quickly.

Engagements start with a direct conversation. No sales process, no pitch deck. Describe the situation — the messier the better — and we'll figure out if there's a fit.