The Journey to Visionary

This is a blog post I never thought I would write.

Last week Tableau announced the Class of 2026 Visionaries, and I was amazed to see myself named alongside 40 people from around the world. Many of these people have been a huge inspiration to me over the years, and I have learnt so much from them. Being included in the same category was never an option in my mind.

What is a Tableau Visionary?

This term is familiar to people within the Tableau Community, but it may well be new to you! To borrow Tableau’s own description, Visionaries fulfil three criteria:

Demonstrate Mastery : Show a deep understanding of how Tableau works. Develop innovative, effective new ways to use Tableau.

Teach in the Community : Help others be better Tableau users. Provide correct and clear answers to questions. Serve as Tableau evangelists and share our mission.

Collaborate with Others : Share tips and tricks that even our brightest developers hadn’t considered. Offer support to people of all skill levels.

Having those points put against my name is a huge honour, and one that I will do my best to live up to. It also gives me an opportunity to reflect on where this journey has brought me. How did I go from a 20 year old who knew nothing more than that he wanted to enter a career with data to being in a peer group with people I have looked up to for years?

The Key Steps

2018 - Discovered Tableau

In 2018 I took a year out of university to do a placement. My hope was that it would give me some idea of what I wanted to do after graduation (or at the very least an idea of what I didn’t want to do!). It was here that I discovered Tableau, a tool used in the company, and shown to me by Hall of Fame Visionary (and my good friend) Neil Richards.

2019 - Tableau Student Ambassador

About a year after seeing “Book 1 : Sheet 1”, I decided to apply to be a Tableau Student Ambassador. I was returning to uni for my final year, and thought this would be a great way to keep engaged with the community that I had discovered, and the tool that I had started to love. To my surprise I was selected as an Ambassador, leading to me hosting workshops at my university to teach other students how to use Tableau.

2021 - First job using Tableau

It took me a little bit of time, but in June 2021 I started my first Tableau-centric job. This meant that I was using my favourite tool all day, every day. During this time, I also worked closely with a mentor from the DataFam, Will Strouse, who helped me keep going on the path I had started.

2022 - First Viz of the Day

In 2022 I had a Tableau Public visualisation selected at Viz of the Day for the first time. This was something I had always had my eye on, and after posting about 50 visualisations it became a reality. I still look back on that visualisation with great fondness, and remember the excitement I felt vividly.

2023 - IronViz Top 10

I had first entered IronViz in 2020, but 2023 was the year that it began to click. My visualisation, Jonny’s Drop, was recognised in the Top 10 of entries that year. This was another huge boost to my confidence and a reminder that I was on a really great path.

2023 - Co-lead of the Scotland Tableau User Group

No path can be travelled alone, and the best way to do things together in the Tableau Community is through User Groups. The Scotland TUG was just coming back into action after a long hiatus and I was able to take a leading role in it very early on. This group has continued to grow since then, and every meeting leaves me feeling refreshed, inspired, and ready to do more with data.

2024 - IronViz Champion

A year on from being stunned by a Top 10 finish in the IronViz qualifiers, I was left even more stunned as I secured a place in the final. A few months later I had a truly unforgettable experience on stage in front of 10,000 people in San Diego, and was crowned as Global IronViz Champion. This one still feels mad. Though I had entered IronViz 5 times by this point, I never really dreamed of winning the whole thing.

2024 - Westlake Analytics, and Tableau Ambassador

Off the back of winning IronViz, I launched a blog (I’ll let you decide if it’s worth a read 😉) and was named as a Tableau Ambassador (a title I kept in 2025).

2025 - Nominated for 6 Vizzie Awards

At the annual Vizzie Awards at Tableau Conference I was amazed to see my name listed among nominees for 6 of the categories, making the Top-10-ish shortlist for 4 of them. The Vizzies are voted for by the community, and it is only the votes that have any bearing on the winners. Being nominated this strongly felt incredible, and I was incredibly humbled by the support of my peers.

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In short, that’s the journey. It hasn’t always been straightforward or easy. There have been setbacks, and milestones I wanted to reach that weren’t meant to be. But if you told that uni student who took a year out to do a placement in 2018 that he’d be here now, there’s no way he’d believe you. In fact, most days he doesn’t believe any of this is real!

Being a Visionary was never a goal. It was never an accolade I was striving towards. It is a title that I hope I can live up to in the year to come. I hope I can inspire you half as much as many of the other 40 people in the Class of 2026 have inspired me.

Take care // Chris