We’re thrilled to announce our two newest Databricks Champions, Alex Wiss-Wolferding and Mike Shaw!
What are Databricks Champions?
This is an exclusive “invitation only” community representing “the best of the best” Databricks practitioners. Databricks Champions are recognized for their technical expertise, community engagement, advocacy, mentorship, and contributions toward making an impact in the Databricks ecosystem.
The criteria for nominations are steep. It requires verification of successful delivery of multiple Databricks projects, professional certifications, completion of an instructor-led training course, and finally a panel interview with a team of internal Databricks experts.
What are Alex and Mike’s credentials?
Meet Alex Wiss-Wolferding
Alex has over a decade working in data and analytics, watching the data stack evolve over time from point-and-click ETL tools to modern, cloud-native platforms. He has worked with a vast range of technologies, including Databricks, Snowflake, AWS, Azure, DataStage, Informatica, Python, PySpark, Airflow, OpenAI, and more. In addition to his Databricks certifications, Alex has achieved Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Architect and Azure: Designing and Implementing Big Data Analytics Solutions certifications. Alex has worked on many Databricks projects, from building a unified governance platform for a global real-estate organization to architecting a batch data ingestion utility for an energy company.
Meet Mike Shaw
Mike has over 17 years of experience exclusively in analytics spanning four major technology paradigms, including data warehousing, big data, cloud, and AI, and he has guided client organizations in every role from database administrator to cloud architect to analytics strategist. Mike has a large number of certifications in addition to Databricks from AWS, Snowflake, Apache Spark, Talend, Informatica, Vertica, and Cloudera. Hands on, Mike has worked directly with clients to implement a variety of Databricks solutions, including near real-time streaming for security trade analytics, leveraging GenAI for consumer regulatory compliance, and many more.
What’s this mean for Alex and Mike?
Alex plans to leverage his new Champion status to continue to drive successful Databricks solutions for clients, ensuring they get the most of the Databricks platform. He’s also applying his skills to building reusable tools and accelerators that reduce time to value for our clients as part of Nousot Labs.
Mike is motivated to represent Databricks as he helps clients navigate the complexities of their analytics ecosystem and build teams to deliver the next generation of analytics solutions. He sees Databricks as a crucial component for these efforts to work as an effective change agent, taking a Databricks-first approach. Being a Champion is a commitment to continuous learning, and Mike is focused on perpetuating that, not just for himself, but also in driving internal Databricks training for our engineers.
Both Alex and Mike have been working to launch Nousot’s newest accelerator, leveraging GenAI for platform migration to Databricks. Read Mike’s blog about how the accelerator reduces time and effort of migrations by as much as 80%.
How does this honor fit into our larger Databricks practice?
Nousot is an end-to-end data analytics service provider with a concentrated focus on GenAI. We partner with Databricks to deliver data solutions with impactful business outcomes and faster time to value with GenAI.
Alex and Mike join our two other Databricks Champions, Frank Partica and Andrew Wolf. And we’re not done yet! Our team has plans to add 3 more champions and 15 more certified practitioners by the end of the year.
Come Meet Our Databricks Champions
Our team, along with Alex and Mike, will be at Data + AI Summit 2024 next week in San Francisco. If you’re attending, stop by booth #14 in the Expo Hall to meet them both or schedule a time!
* This content was originally published on Nousot.com. Nousot and Lovelytics merged in April 2025.
