Hi, I’m Leigha

I'm a data and technology leader with more than a decade of experience helping legacy organizations become digital-first, insight-driven businesses. Today I serve as Head of Data & Technology at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where I lead enterprise modernization across data engineering, business intelligence, platform engineering, and advanced analytics & AI, partnering with product, marketing, editorial, finance, and executive leadership to turn data into better decisions.

Over my career I've built and scaled analytics teams from the ground up, modernized data infrastructure across the cloud, and deployed machine learning and AI systems that drive real business outcomes from dynamic paywalls and personalization models to subscriber propensity scoring and customer lifetime value frameworks. I care most about the intersection of technology and strategy: building the systems, teams, and models that help organizations understand their audiences and grow. My toolkit spans Snowflake, dbt, Python, AWS, SQL, Tableau, and the modern ML/GenAI stack, and I hold dual degrees from the University of Tennessee in business analytics, supply chain, accounting, and information management.

Outside of work, I'm a small-town East Tennessee girl (go Vols!) at heart now happily settled in Atlanta's Grant Park, where my husband and I are slowly restoring our 120-year-old house. When I'm not knee-deep in a home project, you'll usually find me in the garden, out on a hiking trail, behind my 35mm camera, lost in a good book, planning the next trip, tinkering with Claude to build my own app, or thinking far too hard about my next move over a chessboard.