Data That Speaks: How to Turn Complex Numbers into Compelling Business Stories

Angelica Ornelas

Jul 2026 · Angelica Ornelas

Ebook

253

Pages

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About this ebook

Data That Speaks is a detailed, practical guide to Data Storytelling for Non-Technical Business Leaders for readers who want a clear path from understanding the topic to using it confidently in real situations. The book is designed as a structured learning companion rather than a shallow overview: it introduces the core ideas, explains why they matter, then develops them through realistic examples, guided practice, scenario-based explanations, and common mistakes to avoid. Readers are taken step by step from foundational concepts into everyday applications, with each chapter building on the previous one so the material feels progressive, usable, and easy to revisit. The main areas of focus include The High Price of Data Confusion, The Business Story Arc, Choose Your Core Message and Data Points, The 7 Mistakes That Kill Your Data Story, How One CMO Used Data to Win a Budget War, Design Slides That Tell a Story, The Data Storytelling Pre-Flight Checklist, From Raw Spreadsheet to Draft Story in 5 Steps, Transforming a Monthly Report into a Decision Narrative, The Power of Contrast, Context, and Comparison, giving the book a concrete learning arc that moves from orientation and confidence-building to applied communication, problem solving, and independent practice. The writing style is direct, supportive, and accessible, making the book suitable for self-study, classroom reinforcement, professional development, or personal improvement. It emphasizes practical understanding over abstract theory, so readers can immediately connect the lessons to conversations, decisions, habits, and challenges they are likely to face outside the page. By the end of the book, readers should have not only a stronger grasp of the subject, but also a collection of repeatable strategies, useful language patterns, mental models, and practical routines they can continue applying after they finish reading.

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About the author

Angelica Ornelas is a data communication consultant and the founder of Narrative Metrics, a firm that helps organizations transform how they present data to internal and external stakeholders. Over the past fifteen years, she has worked with executive teams at Fortune 500 companies, fast-growing startups, and nonprofit organizations to build data storytelling capabilities that drive better decisions.

Her career began in management consulting at Deloitte, where she spent seven years advising clients in the financial services and healthcare sectors. There, she observed a pattern that would define her professional focus: organizations with world-class data analytics capabilities routinely failed to communicate their findings in ways that actually influenced decisions. Reports were dense, presentations were confusing, and valuable insights went unheeded because the story behind the numbers was buried under technical detail.

She left consulting to pursue this problem directly, first as a senior director of business intelligence at a major retail analytics firm, and later as an independent consultant. Her clients have included global brands like American Express, Pfizer, and The New York Times, as well as dozens of smaller organizations seeking to build data communication skills from the ground up.

Angelica is a certified instructor in the Storytelling with Data methodology and has delivered workshops and keynote presentations at conferences including the Data Visualization Summit, the Corporate Executive Board's Business Analytics Forum, and SXSW. Her writing on data communication has appeared in *Harvard Business Review*, *Forbes*, and *Towards Data Science*.

She holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a B.S. in Statistics from the University of California, Berkeley. She lives in Portland, Oregon, where she volunteers with DataKind, a nonprofit that connects data scientists with social impact organizations.

*Data That Speaks* is her first book.

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