This week, we’re spotlighting Karima Makrof, Founder and Chief Adviser at AKLYON Consulting AB, a practitioner who approaches data governance less like a bureaucratic hurdle and more like long-distance training.
With extensive experience navigating complex in-house environments across financial services, logistics, retail, manufacturing, and technology, Karima brings a pragmatic, people-centric approach that prioritizes human connection and clear ownership over “shiny tools.” Much like her passion for long-distance running, she sees data governance as work that requires endurance, consistency, and the ability to keep moving when there is no clear finish line – only a better version of the organization, built stride by stride. She focuses on the steady work of building strong foundations to ensure data and AI initiatives deliver genuine business value rather than just technical complexity.
Alongside her advisory and leadership work, Karima is also the author of The Confidence to Act: 30 Reflections on Data Governance, published in May 2026, exploring what makes governance hold in practice, and what quietly breaks it.
Hyperight.com: What’s the best way to describe your job to someone outside tech?
Karima Makrof: I support organizations through change by helping people understand how their work with data affects others. This is often forgotten or underestimated. A large part of my role is coaching, mentoring, and match-making (ie connecting people across the organization so they see the downstream impact of their decisions and collaborate more effectively). Because when people understand the full picture, better decisions follow. That last part, the match-making, is often where the real change happens.
Hyperight.com: What originally sparked your interest in AI/data, and what keeps you inspired today? 
Karima Makrof: It started with seeing how difficult organizations find it to clearly define their processes and their real need for information. Most data challenges are not technical. They stem from unclear responsibilities and assumptions. AI has amplified both the scale and the consequences of this. What keeps me inspired is helping organizations and people go back to basics and build foundations that make data (and AI) genuinely useful.
Hyperight.com: What is one challenge you’re trying to solve, and why does it matter?
Karima Makrof: Governance is still too often treated as a separate function or a one-off initiative instead of a way of working. In reality, this is not a project with an endpoint. It is long-term work that must continuously evolve with the organization. When governance is reduced to documentation or control, it fails. When embedded into everyday practices, it enables speed, quality, and confidence, especially as AI increases scale and complexity. The work is never really finished, because organizations themselves never stand still.
Hyperight.com: A tool you can’t live without (tech or not)?
Karima Makrof: Good running shoes. Even the best ones won’t win the race without training. They help, but it is consistency, patience, showing up on the difficult days, and building the right foundations that make the distance possible. The same applies to data governance.
Hyperight.com: What trend in data or AI do you think will shape the Nordic region the most?
Karima Makrof: A renewed focus on the basics. Responsible and pragmatic AI adoption is clearly on the agenda, but without solid data governance in place, initiatives will either fail at high cost or take too long to deliver value. The organizations that succeed will be those that invest in clarity, ownership, and quality first.
Hyperight.com: What’s one piece of advice you’d give to others entering the data and AI field?
Karima Makrof: In data and AI, strong fundamentals matter more than shiny tools. Be curious about the business, not just the technology. Strong technical skills matter, but clarity matters more: without clear ownership, context, and understanding of how organizations actually operate, even the most advanced analytics or AI will struggle to deliver real value. The strongest practitioners are usually the ones who can connect people, decisions, and outcomes, not just systems. Be bold enough to challenge how your organization thinks about data, and have the confidence to act even when the data is imperfect and the path forward is not yet clear.
