John Wills is the Founder of Prentice Gate Advisors, where he provides fractional and advisory support to enterprise data leaders and early-stage technology founders. His work focuses on data and analytics strategy, metadata management as a control layer for analytics and AI, organizational design and decision rights, and product strategy for companies building data and AI-driven platforms.

Over the past 35+ years, he has built, scaled, and advised data-driven software companies and consulting practices across the data and analytics landscape. His career includes leadership roles in nine software startups, three IPOs, and multiple acquisitions—including four by IBM and one by HP—as well as periods running large, data-focused consulting practices. He has served as a Field CTO, VP of Customer Success, and executive advisor, working at the intersection of enterprise customers, product teams, and senior leadership.

A recurring theme in his work is helping organizations move beyond manual, compliance-heavy governance toward scalable, metadata-driven operating models that enable trusted analytics and responsible AI at enterprise scale—a direction he calls *autonomous governance*.

He is the author of *The Goal is Autonomous Governance: Moving Data Governance into the Modern Age* (2023), writes a regular column, ‘Crossing the Data Divide’ on data leadership for *The Data Administration Newsletter* (TDAN), and develops SaaS products under Prentice Gate Software.