I work with clients across industries as a designer and advisor, leveraging more than 15 years of experience helping teams make data meaningful.

With a career that has included roles in monitoring and evaluation, communications, design, data visualization, data team leadership, and tech consulting, I help teams tackle data design challenges and sticky organizational issues around enabling teams to use data more effectively.

Data Design

Looking to create a more compelling charts for your next presentation or refresh a dashboard so that users are excited to engage with it?

For each project, I work with clients to understand your audience, your data, and your goals.

Then, I work with you as a partner in the design process so that you learn data visualization tricks as we collaborate.

At the end, you’ll have a polished, professional data product that doesn’t just look pretty - it will help you connect your audience to your analytics in meaningful ways.

Advisor

For organizations with their own data design capabilities, I serve as a data visualization advisor.

Your team is leading the analysis and design work, and I provide feedback, suggestions, and (most importantly) examples of how to reimagine your data visualizations. Along the way, I’ll help you identify where you could create templates or systems to routinely deliver data visualizations that make an impact.

Often, these consulting engagements are paired with hands-on training sessions for the team for a shared mastery of best practices. That way, we’re using our advisory time to work on applying those concepts in your specific deliverables, from slide decks to dashboards.

Leadership & Organizational Change

Many organizations struggle with bigger questions about how to maximize the use of their dashboards and data tools, building data literacy, or setting up internal systems and training programs to make sure teams can make the best use of their data.

I collaborate with leadership to understand the current data environment, and make targeted recommendations that we can collaborate on implementing together or you can take forward on your own.

With my background in research and evaluation, I always work with teams to set approaches to measure the success of these organizational endeavors to ensure you can show (and share!) about the return on your investment in your data team.

Testimonials

Amanda’s work is technically brilliant, on time, on budget, beautiful, and clear, but equally important, she's a true thought partner.

She helped our team comb through the most compelling data we had, think through the stories we were trying to tell, figure out how to tell them most effectively for our audience. She also taught us a LOT about data visualization overall, helping distill her years of experience into lessons along the way.

— Lauren Brody Smith, The Fifth Trimester

Without Amanda Makulec, the Data Visualization Society would never have succeeded. Her leadership, her relentless focus on building culture, her breadth of data visualization knowledge and her communication skills are all first-rate. Amanda has the rare ability to speak to a variety of audiences whether technical, design-oriented or the general public.

—Elijah Meeks, Data Visualization Society Co-founder and Senior Engineer, Confluence