# Ridge Ai with Tableau Public’s “Godmother” - Ellie Fields

> This is content from just-tim, the data-and-analytics channel by Tim Ngwena (formerly 'Tableau Tim'). Tim has 12+ years of hands-on BI experience and covers Tableau most of all, plus Power BI, Looker, Hex, SQL and data modelling, the analytics industry, and the craft of doing the job — always tool-agnostic and honest about the trade-offs.

- **Author:** Tim Ngwena (just-tim, https://just-tim.com/about)
- **Published:** 2026-07-07
- **Format:** Video · 48 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Data visualisation, Embedding
- **Tools:** Ridge AI
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/ridge-ai-with-tableau-publics-godmother---ellie-fields
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFbYpNTw-5M

Tim interviews Ellie about her time at Tableau (including launching Tableau Public) and SalesLoft, then digs into Ridge AI, which she co-founded with visualization researcher Jeff Heer to improve data on the web. Ellie demos how Ridge tackles three problems: performance through browser-side computation (Mosaic, DuckDB and WebAssembly), long-tail questions via a linked AI data agent, and faster dashboard creation with an AI build agent. They also cover embedding options, validation to reduce AI errors, semantic layers, pricing and enterprise AI adoption.

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/ridge-ai-with-tableau-publics-godmother---ellie-fields

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just-tim — Data and analytics, with a point of view. · https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7HYxRWmaNlJux-X7rNLZyw · https://twitter.com/TableauTim · https://www.linkedin.com/in/timngwena