Who I am
I like the space between people and systems.
I’m Paige Cleary, a data platform manager, planner, translator, and lifelong collector of complicated questions. My work usually lives in the handoff between technical systems and the people who need to use them: understanding what teams actually need, making the messy parts legible, and building structures that can survive past the first launch.
How I work
Translate the messy middle
I’m good at moving between technical and nontechnical groups, finding the real question underneath the first request, and turning it into something people can act on.
Design the operating system
I care about the structures around the work: planning boards, rituals, documentation, handoffs, reporting rhythms, and ownership models.
Think in systems
I like big-picture planning, dependencies, tradeoffs, and long-term maintainability. The plan matters as much as the artifact.
Keep people in view
Good systems are not just technically correct. They have to be understandable, trusted, and realistic for the people expected to use them.
Background
I’m a first-generation college graduate with a background in political science, computer science, research methods, business intelligence, and analytics systems. I earned my bachelor’s degree from the University of Mississippi and now live in East Tennessee, near Great Smoky Mountains National Park, though I grew up in Southern California.
In college, I gravitated toward research and data because I wanted a way to engage seriously with whatever questions caught my attention. Learning how to work with evidence, evaluate claims, and structure information gave me a toolkit for moving across subjects with rigor rather than guesswork.
That still shapes how I work today. I’m less interested in data for its own sake than in what happens after someone asks a question: how the question gets translated, what gets measured, what assumptions are hidden in the system, how the result is communicated, and whether the answer is actually useful.
Outside the spreadsheet
Game mastering
I design and run long-form tabletop roleplaying campaigns. I’m currently game mastering a homebrewed campaign using the Stormlight Roleplaying Game, grounded in canon from the Silver Kingdoms era and supported by detailed research into author commentary and source material.
Running games at that scale requires long-term planning, narrative coherence, worldbuilding, audience awareness, improvisation, and organization. It is one of the clearest places where my personal and professional instincts overlap.
Animals and community
I volunteer with a local animal rescue and foster animals who need time outside the shelter before adoption. It is practical, emotional, logistical work: care planning, behavior support, communication, and finding the right fit.
Curiosity as a through-line
I’m an avid reader, an enthusiastic home cook, and someone who tends to turn interests into systems. Whether I’m planning a project, a campaign, a wedding, or a reporting workflow, I like making complicated things feel navigable.
What this site is
This site is my home base for professional work, independent projects, writing, and experiments. It is also a place to think through questions around data, research, communication, design, and the systems people use to make sense of the world.
Eventually, it will include a more interactive portfolio layer. For now, it is meant to be readable, honest, and useful: a place where the work and the person behind it can both show up clearly.