Joseph D. Williams
Profile  /  N° 01 Updated 2026

Welcome.

Glad you're here. What follows is a working profile of who I am, what I do, and the thinking behind it.

Current Vice President
Revenue Optimization, Sales, Distribution, and Data Science Seminole Hard Rock · Hollywood, FL
Sectors Hospitality  ·   Gaming  ·   Rail  ·   Automotive
Energy  ·   Financial Services  ·   E-commerce
Founder BeDataSavvy
LystGenie
Teaching Adjunct Professor, Revenue Management University of Florida
Based Davie, Florida

Commercial and analytics leader who turns customer behavior into revenue-driving strategy — and an educator helping teams think better and decide smarter with data.

josephdw@gmail.com / 954.699.4311 / bedatasavvy.com
$1.4B Hospitality Portfolio Integrated-resort & casino revenue under commercial oversight at Seminole.
$4B Auto Retail Portfolio Risk & predictive models built for an enterprise-scale automotive distribution portfolio.
$600M Payment Equipment Portfolio Consumer-risk and simulation models built for a payment equipment leasing portfolio at First Data.
10,000+ Wind Turbine Portfolio Utility-scale wind assets managed and assessed for long-term resource and operational performance.
7,000+ Rooms Priced Across the U.S. and Canada, led by a revenue-management team.
4 New-Build Resorts Integrated casino hotels launched for Seminole to date.
§ 01  —  Point of View

Most people aren't struggling with data.
They're struggling with how to use it.

Commercial work, done well, is the art of connecting the dots — customer behavior to pricing, marketing investment to lifetime value, operational choices to the P&L.

That's exactly how I think about data strategy and optimization. Not as ends in themselves, but as the discipline that makes those connections visible and the decisions sharper.

Data is the foundation.
AI is the amplifier.

Every shift in modern business — pricing, personalization, forecasting, automation — runs on this stack. Weak data produces weak AI. Unclear thinking produces failed strategy. Everything above depends on what's below.

Narrative & Strategy Top Layer
AI & Machine Learning Amplifier
Analytics & Interpretation Bridge
Data Quality & Structure Engine
Data Collection & Governance Foundation
§ 02  —  Focus Areas

What I build
for the business.

A deliberately wide remit — because commercial performance is rarely a single-function problem. Each of these disciplines is a lever I've personally built, staffed, and scaled inside operating companies.
01

Commercial Planning & Analysis

Forecasting, pro-formas, and diagnostic analysis — connecting operational patterns and customer behavior to enterprise strategy and financial targets.

02

Data-Driven Budgeting & Planning

Building budgets and plans from predictive factors — weather, demand drivers, customer profile, promotions, and market signals — rather than last year plus a percent.

03

Call Center & AI

Agentic AI and LLM-driven summarization reducing cost per call and unlocking unstructured survey and contact-center data.

04

Data Science & ML

Proprietary Python models for demand forecasting, customer lifetime value, and conversion prediction across commercial segments.

05

Team & Org Design

Building analytics orgs from scratch — recruiting, mentoring, and developing leaders of leaders.

06

CRM & Segmentation

Customer-level profitability, behavioral segmentation, and lifecycle campaigns that shift mix toward higher-value customers.

07

Sales & Business Development

Sales performance metrics, outbound programs, business development, and strategic partnerships — managing cost of acquisition while building a stronger direct mix.

08

Pricing & Yield

Dynamic pricing, demand-based rate strategy, and yield optimization across 7,000+ rooms — including the tooling migration from RainMaker to Duetto enterprise-wide.

§ 03  —  Experience

A career built
across industries.

Hospitality and gaming today. Before that: rail, consumer brands, payments, energy, and automotive. The common thread is turning messy operational data into commercial decisions that compound.
Aug 2023
— Present Current

Vice President, Revenue Optimization, Sales, Distribution & Data Science

Seminole Hard Rock  ·  Hollywood, FL

Accountable for hotel revenue, leisure sales, third-party alliances, budgeting, data science, CRM, and business intelligence across a $1.4B integrated-resort and casino portfolio. Built the "Total Revenue" framework that evaluates customers by cross-platform worth — not room night alone.

  • Leading pricing & revenue management across 7,000+ rooms in the U.S. and Canada.
  • Launched four new-build integrated casino hotels for Seminole to date.
  • Migrated revenue-management stack from RainMaker to Duetto enterprise-wide.
  • Built ML models predicting lodger conversion and customer lifetime value.
  • Deployed Agentic AI to reduce cost per call across global call centers.
  • Shifted analytics from aggregate to customer-level profitability.
Aug 2021
— Aug 2023

Senior Vice President, Enterprise Analytics

Recommerce Brands  ·  Deerfield Beach, FL

Led enterprise analytics for an Amazon agency representing brands including L'Oréal, Nature's Plus, JBL, and Supergoop! — owning the revenue forecast, financial modeling, and BI stack as proxy FP&A.

  • Owned monthly revenue estimation, forecasting, and strategic planning.
  • Implemented Domo as the company-wide business-intelligence platform.
  • Built ML models for repeat-customer insight, market-basket, and attribution.
  • Advised brand leadership on risk/opportunity scenarios and pricing.
Jul 2019
— Present

Founder — BeDataSavvy & LystGenie

Independent Ventures  ·  Davie, FL

BeDataSavvy is an advisory and education practice helping individuals and organizations build data literacy, AI readiness, and sharper decision-making. LystGenie is a consumer platform built around collaborative planning and gift coordination.

Jul 2018
— Jul 2019

Vice President, Commercial Analytics

Brightline Trains  ·  Miami, FL

Reported jointly to the Chief Commercial Officer and Chief Financial Officer. Built the analytics function from the ground up and owned the commercial playbook underpinning Brightline's private-funding and IPO due diligence.

  • Recruited and developed a cross-functional analytics team.
  • Built Customer Lifetime Value framework for passenger pricing & ancillary spend.
  • Modeled partnership economics with cruise lines and private-equity partners.
  • Set data-driven sales goals for local and regional teams.
Aug 2015
— Jul 2018

Vice President, Data Sciences

Atlantis Paradise Island / Brookfield Hospitality  ·  Plantation, FL

Recruited to build the Data Science department from the ground up and instill a data-driven culture behind Total Revenue Management. Rotated through Revenue Management, Marketing, and Finance — partnering with senior leadership to set goals, measure business-unit performance, and translate financial and operational trends into pricing, promotional, and strategic plans.

  • Partnered with FP&A to build the resort's two-year revenue-management budget on a bottoms-up, granular variance framework.
  • Established pricing analytics and a standardized product portfolio for cruise-line and reseller offerings — sharpening pricing consistency and tier structure.
  • Built proforma and demand models to evaluate promotional offers and surface new demand opportunities for marketing.
  • Modeled loyalty-program economics — offering costs, point distribution, and total program cost — alongside the CRM team.
  • Folded weather, port calls, and ship profiles into forecasting for cruise excursions, the water park, and ancillary revenue.
  • Created F&B and breakage purchasing profiles that shaped the Dining Plan product design.
  • Developed financial models for revenue displacement, hurricane and renovation impact, and business-interruption insurance claims.
  • Stood up SAS enterprise-wide and centralized executive reporting in Tableau as a single source of truth, cutting data-to-decision time.
§ Prior Positions
Aug 2013 — Aug 2015 Director of Decision Sciences First Data Corp. (Fiserv)  ·  Coral Springs, FL

Directed consumer-risk analytics for a $600M payment-services portfolio, partnering with the division president and development team to shape commercial strategy and risk policy.

  • Developed, backtested, validated, and maintained machine-learning models for consumer-risk assessment.
  • Built portfolio simulation models to quantify and stress-test risk exposure.
  • Owned outbound sales models and customer-profile segmentation that drove tailored call scripting.
Mar 2011 — Aug 2013 Energy Resource Modeler / Data Scientist NextEra Energy Resources  ·  Juno Beach, FL

Built long-horizon resource models underpinning the valuation of utility-scale wind energy assets across the NextEra portfolio.

  • Developed 30-year wind-resource forecasts feeding wind-farm valuation and investment models.
  • Owned reporting and narrative for the CFO's quarterly briefings on wind resource and operational performance.
  • Translated complex resource modeling into clear guidance for finance and leadership stakeholders.
May 2007 — Mar 2011 Senior Modeling Analyst / Data Scientist JM Family Enterprises  ·  Deerfield Beach, FL

Led the modernization of credit-risk modeling for Southeast Toyota Finance — a $4B leasing and retail portfolio — advancing the function toward machine-learning methods.

  • Led the migration to advanced machine-learning models across the $4B leasing and retail portfolio.
  • Built simulation models that set financial reserves against bad debt and informed risk-management policy.
  • Established predictive frameworks that strengthened forecasting accuracy and portfolio oversight.
Point of View  /  From the Field
“Data is just data. What makes it an effective tool for managing a business is the communication and storytelling behind it — the context, the insight, and the action. The work is developing the right narrative around what the data produces.
More thinking at bedatasavvy.com
§ 04  —  Beyond the Role

Teaching &
board service.

I think the next generation of commercial and analytics leaders is better served by operators who teach than by academics who've never run a P&L. So I do both.

Teaching

Adjunct — Revenue Management
University of Florida · Boca Raton, FL Mar 2025 — Present
Adjunct — Statistics
Palm Beach Community College · Boca Raton, FL Jan 2008 — Dec 2009

Boards

Director
Kya's Smiles Foundation for Leukemia Present
Board Member
UF College of Hospitality & Tourism Present
§ 05  —  Work With Me

Three ways
to engage.

Beyond my executive role, I take on a limited number of advisory, consulting, and speaking engagements through BeDataSavvy. Real-world experience — not theory.
For Organizations

Advise &
Consult

Executive advisory, AI readiness, analytics strategy, and revenue optimization — embedded with leadership teams.
  • Analytics strategy & optimization
  • AI readiness & data-quality audits
  • Revenue & performance improvement
  • Executive & board-level advisory
Explore Consulting
For Teams & Individuals

Teach &
Coach

Data-literacy programs and 1:1 coaching that help professionals think, communicate, and decide more clearly with data.
  • Data literacy for teams
  • 1:1 coaching for analysts & leaders
  • Critical thinking & insight framing
  • Communication & presentation craft
Explore Coaching
Speaking & Workshops

Speak &
Facilitate

Practical, business-relevant sessions for conferences, leadership groups, classrooms, and cross-functional teams.
  • What it means to be data savvy
  • Why AI depends on data quality and information integrity
  • Communicating insight with clarity
  • Building a data-driven culture
Inquire About Speaking
§ 06  —  Education

Engineering. Statistics.
Data mining. Leadership.

Three graduate-level credentials that together cover how systems work, how uncertainty behaves, and how to extract signal from the noise they produce.
Master of Engineering, Engineering Management
University of Florida Gainesville, FL
Master of Science, Statistical Computing & Data Mining
University of Central Florida Orlando, FL
Bachelor of Science, Statistics
University of Florida Gainesville, FL