Danny Ekhaus.
Who I am
I hate wasted time.
Early in my career I found myself digging through folders for files that should have taken 30 seconds to find, sitting in handoffs where nobody wrote anything down, inheriting projects with no trail to follow. Instead of complaining, I built better habits. Documentation, organization, and relentless refinement became the foundation of how I work, not because someone told me to, but because the alternative was maddening.
That instinct has followed me across retail, e-commerce, and consulting for over a decade.
How I work
I get oriented fast and build things that last.
A B2C SaaS client was my first foray into consulting. The first few weeks were an adjustment: new environment, new client expectations, a different kind of accountability. I worked through it, delivered a Tableau to Looker migration, and earned a contract extension at a higher rate. The client ended up expanding, and I onboarded on additional analysts afterward.
At a quick service restaurant group, my first assignment was a complicated one. A complete overhaul of the way they organize and report on their products based on a new hierarchy. It touched a bit of everything: Marketing, product, restaurant operations, and sales. It forced me to get oriented quickly and learn their data world fast. That engagement has been extended multiple times since.
The through-line across both: get to know the client early, build trust before building dashboards, and document everything so nothing gets lost when the work is done.
What I work on
BI architecture and implementation, primarily Looker and LookML, with experience in MicroStrategy, Sisense, Tableau, and Omni. I've built EDWs, migrated platforms, refactored dashboards for performance, and consolidated reporting tools that had grown beyond what anyone actually needed.
At Petco, I managed a 300TB EDW with over 7,000 tables and led query refactoring efforts that reduced annual cloud costs by 20%. At Finish Line, a Looker deployment I led automated over 30 scheduled reports, eliminated roughly 40 hours of manual work each week, and replaced third-party tools costing $350k annually. I'm GCP Professional Data Engineer certified, which formalized a lot of what building on BigQuery had already taught me.
Outside the office
Athlete first, analyst second. Most non-working hours go toward the gym, meal prep, golf, or pickleball. Sports are a core part of how I'm wired; the discipline and the attention to detail carry over.