Bill Shander teaches teams and individuals how to transform data into compelling visuals, engaging narratives, and actionable insights — so they can cut through the noise, grab attention, and drive real impact.
You spend hours digging through data, analyzing trends, and pulling insights — only to have your work ignored, misunderstood, or misinterpreted.
The problem isn’t your data. It’s how it’s being communicated.
Your audience is overloaded with data — overwhelmed with charts, reports, and dashboards, skimming past anything that doesn’t grab them immediately.
They say they want dashboards, but they don’t know how to read them. They ask for reports, but won’t make it past the first slide. Worse, they assume they understand the data — but without the right framing, they draw the wrong conclusions.
If your insights aren’t clear, engaging, and actionable, they might as well not exist.
Most data professionals focus on reporting the numbers. But numbers alone don’t inspire action — stories do.
To be truly effective, your charts, graphs, and reports need to do more than simply display data. They need to tell a story. A story that grabs attention, clarifies meaning, and guides decisions.
Through high-energy keynotes, online training, and hands-on workshops, Bill Shander equips data professionals with the tools to transform numbers into narratives and design visual experiences that make your data impossible to ignore.
Bill Shander teaches teams and individuals how to transform data into compelling visuals, engaging narratives, and actionable insights — so they can cut through the noise, grab attention, and drive real impact.
Bill’s keynotes help audiences rethink the way they communicate with data, blending sharp insight, practical strategies, and just enough humor to make it stick. From data storytelling to stakeholder alignment, these talks spark real shifts in how people approach their work.
Looking to go deeper? Bill offers hands-on workshops that teach teams how to think critically about data, design communication that connects, and build confidence across functions, from analytics to leadership. These sessions are practical, interactive, and designed for immediate application.
Bill’s new book, Stakeholder Whispering, reveals how to uncover what people actually need before acting on what they ask for. Part mindset shift, part communication playbook, it’s a must-read for anyone tired of misalignment, rework, and wasted effort.
“Bill really helped us think about how to tell a compelling story and visualize data & insights in an engaging way.”
“As an Analytics & Insights team at a B2B company, we are in the depths of data and analysis all of the time and can become disconnected from the needs and preferences of our audience. Bill worked through specific materials with us and gave us tips & tricks that will help bring our work to a new level.”
Everyone left the day energized and more confident in their ability to tackle future data visualization projects!
Bill Shander’s workshop was perhaps the most highly praised workshop our department’s staff training committee organized this year. Bill was happy to work closely with us before the workshop to help tailor its contents to make it more relevant for our organization’s communications objectives and staff’s current skill level. Everyone left the day energized and more confident in their ability to tackle future data visualization projects.
Bill Shander does a great job breaking down complexities into the most basic of human communications: Storytelling.
As a predominantly business-to-business global financial company, our marketing communications can often be very dense and complex. Bill Shander does a great job breaking down these complexities into the most basic of human communications: Storytelling. His 4X4 model for knowledge content helps us organize our thoughts from the audience’s perspective, separating “water cooler” moments from the “deep dive” to keep all content more engaging.
It was an extremely successful session for us all!
Bill started with a highly entertaining and informative history lesson on data visualization and then took our team through several exercises designed to give us the tools to think about our data and our content more interactively. It was an extremely successful session for us all!
It was tons of fun!
Bill’s class inspired my staff. For example, he effectively led a critique of some draft visualizations, provided pointers, and walked the staff through a ‘before and after’ demo. That “real life” activity, in particular, has helped challenge the staff’s creative thinking and transformed their process and deliverables. It was tons of fun!
“Not only was it fun and interactive, we all learned a lot and had many immediate ideas to implement.”
“Bill provided a two-day training for our team of Sales, Client Success, and Marketing, tailoring it to our industry, making our takeaways clear and actionable. Using a mix of small group activity and larger group discussion, he kept us all engaged, even over Zoom. I’d highly recommend bringing in Bill, and we look forward to continuing to work with him!”
Bill was a trusted advisor and invaluable partner in shaping our workforce development strategy and cultural engagement programs.
Bill served as the lead instructor for Starbucks’ enterprise-wide data analytics transformation over an eight-year period. His leadership in designing and delivering high-impact learning experiences enabled the upskilling and reskilling of hundreds of partners across functions, accelerating our shift toward a data-first culture. Bill’s strategic contributions were instrumental in embedding analytics into decision-making processes, fostering cross-functional collaboration, and aligning learning initiatives with broader business objectives.
Bill Shander’s data visualization workshops have been well received across all roles and levels at our firm.
Bill Shander’s data visualization workshops have been well received across all roles and levels at our firm. Bill is clearly an expert on the topic and he is also a talented facilitator! His creativity and flexibility in the classroom bode well for true problem solving.
Learn to uncover what your managers, clients, customers and other stakeholders need before doing what they ask
In Stakeholder Whispering: Uncover What People Need Before Doing What They Ask, Bill demonstrates how to get from your stakeholders’ “order”― what they’re asking for ― to what they really need. You’ll learn how to uncover the real underlying needs of your clients, colleagues, bosses, customers, and other stakeholders based on what they ask for and how they ask for it, and how to deliver products and services that meet those needs.
I never set out to be a data storytelling evangelist, but after years of watching brilliant analysts create dashboards, reports, and presentations that no one actually reads, I realized something:
The biggest challenge in data isn’t analysis — it’s knowing how to tell the story.
But most data teams aren’t trained to think like storytellers. They build dense reports, overcomplicated visuals, and insight-packed presentations — only to have their work ignored or misinterpreted. If people don’t understand your data, it doesn’t matter.
For 30 years, I’ve helped organizations turn complex data into clear, compelling stories that drive decisions. Through my keynotes, in-person workshops, and online training programs, I teach teams how to design visuals that engage, structure content that sticks, and communicate insights in a way people actually remember.
Because once you learn to start telling your data’s story, your work gets noticed, your insights have impact — and let’s be honest, your job gets a whole lot less frustrating.
Want better results with fewer bad requests? Start by getting inside your stakeholders’ heads, without the guesswork.
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