Clint Grove
My journey began in the vibrant music scene of Durban, South Africa, where I spent nearly a decade running Ill Flava Studios. As a young entrepreneur from 2001 to 2010, I produced music for local artists, arranged national tours, and released six albums through Integrity Music. Those years taught me the fundamentals of business, creativity, and the power of bringing people together through shared passion.
Life took an unexpected turn when I met my wife, moved to England, got married, and found myself in the banking world at C&G (and Halifax) in Bury St Edmunds. From 2011 to 2013, I helped customers with their financial needs, but more importantly, I discovered my natural ability to connect with people and solve their problems.
The tech adventure began when I took a leap of faith and started working with an old friend from Vancouver, Canada in 2013. I joined Fresh BI, a startup where I fell in love with data and business intelligence. Working with Power BI, Excel, and various BI tools, I discovered my passion for transforming raw data into meaningful insights. I led the professional services team, developed internal workflows, and ran training sessions for customers on Sage Intelligence. Those startup years taught me resilience, adaptability, and the thrill of building something from the ground up.
In 2017, my time had come to an end with Fresh BI and I joined Mott MacDonald in Cambridge, UK as a Data Engineer and BI Lead. This is where I truly found my calling in cloud technologies and Azure. I built reporting frameworks that supported multiple products globally, managed embedded Power BI capacities across three continents, and became deeply involved in Azure infrastructure, security and RBAC. Managing virtual machines with Power BI gateways across strategic geographic locations, all while maintaining enterprise-level security.
In January 2022 I started as a Senior Data & AI Consultant at Microsoft in Reading. Since then, I've been part of Industry Solutions Delivery, where we architect and implement cloud solutions that transform how businesses work with data. I lead cloud data warehouse migrations to Databricks Lakehouse, design data lifecycle management solutions across Databricks, Synapse, and Fabric, and engage in pre-sales activities with our account teams.
But what truly drives me isn't just the technology—it's the people. I'm passionate about customer success, love solving complex problems, and find joy in teaching and mentoring others. Whether I'm demonstrating products, leading teams through challenging projects, or contributing to open source initiatives like the Azure Verified Modules project, I believe technology should empower people to achieve more.
My entrepreneurial spirit from those early music days still burns bright. I've learned that whether you're producing an album, migrating a data warehouse, or helping someone understand Power BI for the first time, success comes from combining technical expertise with genuine care for the people you serve.
Today, I can help you and your team master:
- Power BI and Power Platform
- Azure Data Factory and Databricks
- Synapse and SQL Servers
- Infrastructure as Code (Bicep, ARM, Terraform)
- Microsoft 365 optimization and automation
- Cloud data architecture and strategy
If you're only scratching the surface of what your Microsoft 365 and Azure investments can do, or if you're ready to transform how your organization works with data, I'd love to help. Let's connect and explore what's possible.
From music studios in South Africa to Microsoft's cutting-edge AI solutions—it's been quite a journey, and the best is yet to come.