Data Holdings' Ryan Brooks an early adopter still on the cutting edge

By Rich Kirchen – Senior Reporter, Milwaukee Business Journal

Ryan Brooks already was a technology nerd and Marquette University engineering major in the early 1990s when he and some classmates begged a math department staffer to connect them to the internet.

The first web browser to display both words and images — NCSA Mosaic — had arrived as a game-changer, broadening the internet’s usefulness and appeal. Brooks and friends viewed the phenomenon in the Marquette dental school, which boasted a computer capable of connecting to the browser.

“I was like, ‘Oh gosh, I have to get involved with this,’” Brooks recalled. “All of a sudden, the internet was open to everyone. And all of a sudden, you could transact business on the internet.”

Brooks decided to pursue a career in the suddenly rising internet field. But first he needed to share the news with his mother, Melinda Brooks, and his father, Jack Brooks, then a professor and a future dean at the Marquette College of Health Sciences.

After what Brooks recalls as a difficult conversation, he made his move and left school.

“It was about timing, and it was the right thing to do,” he said.

He plied the nascent internet field, for example, by co-founding Inc.net in Milwaukee in 1993. The company was an early internet service provider for business clients.

In 1999, he joined Time Warner Telecom’s Milwaukee-area office as chief scientist, working on launching the company’s entry into running its own internet service.

Fast forward three decades, and Brooks has the same excitement for his current position in the data center field as that industry explodes because of the demands of artificial intelligence.

He leads Data Holdings Milwaukee's data center, which he views as the best data center in the area, guiding the facility through what he anticipates will be rapid growth the next few years.

The Data Holdings facility is a boutique operation that serves about 50 customers directly and hundreds who outsource data center connections through managed service providers. Brooks said customers include numerous “recognizable names” in business but that he’s prohibited from disclosing their identities.

One entity that has disclosed that it is a customer of Data Holdings is the state of Wisconsin.

Data Holdings, owned by Potawatomi Ventures of Milwaukee, opened on the city’s near west side in 2013.

Data Holdings has seen an influx of interest and some new customers the past year as Southeast Wisconsin suddenly rated a place on the national map for data centers thanks to Microsoft Corp.’s plans for a multibillion-dollar data center campus in Racine County — with the company now also planning a data center in Kenosha County. A Texas company also has proposed a data center for a 1,900-acre site in what now is the town of Port Washington.

When hyper data centers such as the Microsoft and Port Washington projects target a region, the region gains legitimacy with the tech industry, Brooks said.

“We’ll get more business and that’s good for us, because there’s a lot of people that would never consider Wisconsin unless Microsoft showed up,” he said.

Brooks, who is 52, joined Data Holdings in June 2022, when Data Holdings acquired a company he co-owned with Ian Favill called Stack41. The Stack41 office was next door to the data center and operated as a services partner.

In February 2024, Brooks was promoted to vice president and chief technology officer. Favill, who was Data Holdings' vice president of business development, retired at the beginning of 2025.

Brooks reports to Paul Hoesly, chief financial officer at Potawatomi Ventures, formerly known as Potawatomi Business Development Corp. Brooks also meets frequently with Potawatomi Ventures CEO Kip Ritchie.

Ritchie describes Brooks as a true IT nerd, “and he wears it proudly.” Ritchie calls Brooks a great addition to Data Holdings who has an ability to build rapport and trust with customers.

“Having somebody like Ryan who has so much passion and such a desire to be successful, to lead with confidence and speak that (data center) language — that credibility is a differentiator,” Ritchie said.

Brooks said that ever since he was growing up in Muskego, he had an interest in math and science. As an adult, he built his own observatory outside his home in exurban Richfield, where there’s less light to diminish his star gazing.

He embraces the Forest County Potawatomi’s environmental practices and long-term approach to its businesses including Data Holdings. The data center was a leader over a decade ago in technology that doesn’t use water for cooling, has its own solar panel field and has a parking lot with a permeable surface.

“I really like that this place is mission-driven,” Brooks said.

The current mission for Brooks and his eight-member staff is to match their data center’s capabilities with increasing market demand.

The 50,000-square-foot facility is running at about two-thirds of its capacity, and Brooks predicts it will reach 100% within a year. That will result from existing customers requiring more power for AI and from the facility attracting new customers.

Meanwhile, Data Holdings likely will work to increase power flow so the data center can handle more demand. Within five years, it may double the facility's floor space on the existing campus, Brooks said.

“We will choose our customers carefully,” he said. “We want customers that will be around for a number of years rather than a startup.”

About Ryan Brooks

Organization: Data Holdings Milwaukee

Title: Chief technology officer and general manager

Education: Attended Marquette University

Hometown: Muskego

Residence: Richfield

Family: Wife Jill Sasse, a technical writer

Hobby: Built his own backyard observatory

Favorite space show: “Star Trek: The Next Generation”