Karin Christiansen

Interim Executive Director

Karin Christiansen took on the role of Executive Director in June 2018, to assist with leading the organisation while we recruit a new CEO. She has been Chair of the OKI Board of Directors since September 2013 and currently serves as Board member. She is currently doing strategy, leadership and operational consultancy work including at the Open Data Institute. Prior to that she was the General Secretary of the Co-operative Party. She was the founder/CEO of Publish What You Fund, the global campaign on the transparency of aid. Before setting up Publish What You Fund, Karin worked as a Policy Manager at ONE and for many years as Research Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in the Centre for Aid and Public Expenditure. She joined ODI having worked as an Economist at the Rwandan Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Agriculture. Prior to that, Karin worked for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In 2011 Karin was named as one of the Devex London 40 Under 40 International Development Leaders.

Mark Gibbs

Chief Operations Officer

Mark Gibbs is our Chief Operating Officer and joins the Open Knowledge Team with a wealth of Knowledge gained from the IT/ Telecommunications and Data Centre industry. Mark spent most of his career based overseas and has successfully managed a number of Large Operations in The Netherlands, Russia, North America and The Baltics. Mark has both developed and funded a number of Open Source Projects in the Health care space including an Electronic Patient Register in The Netherlands.

Mark focuses on the day to day Operations of Open Knowledge including but not limited to Finance and Human Resources. Whilst not working Mark is a committed Rugby Coach and Local Parish Councillor.

Paul Walsh

Chief Product Officer

Paul holds a BA with Honours in Anthropology from the University of Western Australia, 9 years commercial experience working in startups in the highly competitive Israeli Hi-Tech industry, and several years experience as a volunteer and contractor working with open data and open source at Israeli NGO The Public Knowledge Workshop. He considers himself a generalist who feels equally at home writing code, working on product strategy, and managing teams.

Outside of work, Paul is an avid music fan and a keen urban gardener.

Stephen Abbott Pugh

Project Manager

Stephen is a portfolio manager for Open Knowledge International focused on developing, shaping and nurturing projects as well as project managing efforts including Open Data for Tax Justice and the Global Open Data Index. Prior to joining Open Knowledge International in 2016, he was an ICFJ Knight international journalism fellow with Code for Africa, working on data-driven projects across sub-Saharan Africa. He previously founded a civic technology company in Rwanda, was head of digital projects for the UK Parliament and worked as an executive producer for the Guardian's website.

Jo Barratt

Project Manager

Jo Barratt is a project manager and Product Team Lead at Open Knowledge International. He has over 10 years experience running projects across a wide range of technology, arts and communications projects. Previously a journalist, Jo has written for and produced audio for international publishing and broadcast organisations and is the producer of a number of successful podcasts.

Diana Krebs

Project Manager

Diana has been working as a web editor and IT project manager for over 10 years. She became interested in Open Data after having worked for Tactical Technology Collective in Berlin. In 2014, she had the opportunity to work for the Canton of Basel-City/Switzerland. In collaboration with other administration units, she implemented the Open Government Data strategy for the Canton Basel-City, that will lead to a pilot project to establish a sustainable Open Data culture. She has a B.A. in Religious Studies and History from SOAS University of London.

Sander van der Waal

Head of Network and Partnerships

Sander is the Head of Network and Partnerships at Open Knowledge International (OKI), where he focuses on strengthening connections between the projects at OKI and the wider Open Knowledge Network. He does this together with the team that's responsible for the areas of Research, Communications, and Community Management. Sander has been with Open Knowledge International since the end of 2012, when he started off overseeing project work in the many diverse areas in which OKI has been active, ranging from Open Education to Citizen Science and School of Data. Before joining OKI, Sander advised the higher education sector in the UK on open source software development as part of OSS Watch. Sander combines a background in computer science (BSc/MSc) with philosophy (BSc) and is always interested in how technology and data can be best applied to meet the citizens' needs and interests in the 21st century.

Danny Lämmerhirt

Researcher

Danny Lämmerhirt is research coordinator at Open Knowledge International. His work focusses on the politics of data, sociology of quantification, metrics, and policy, data ethnography, the organisational theory of open systems, the data commons, as well as data activism. Among others, he leads the methodology around the Global Open Data Index. Danny also co-chairs the measurement and accountability working group at the Open Data Charter. He is currently based in Amsterdam. You can follow him on Twitter at @danlammerhirt

Oscar Montiel

International Community Coordinator

Oscar previously worked at Codeando México as Community Director and Open Innovation Coordinator where he got to collaborate with a broad group of civic hackers and government officials on a national and sub national level. He also coordinated the first civic tech and open data Fellowship in Mexico City’s government. He has experience building tools that promote civic engagement, accountability and openness in government. In his free time, collaborates with CityDevs, a civic tech development collective. He also rides bikes and loves cats.

Lieke Ploeger

Communications Officer

As Communications Officer, Lieke works on increasing the profile and awareness of Open Knowledge International projects online, supporting and developing the core community around projects as well as engaging in social media and content. She previously coordinated the OpenGLAM initiative, promoting free and open access to digital cultural heritage data and has been managing European projects in the areas of open cultural data, open access and open science.

She holds an MA in Modern Western Literature and Translation Studies and lives and works in Berlin. In 2014 she co-founded the independent project space SPEKTRUM | art science community, where she works as community builder.

Brook Elgie

Senior Developer

Brook spent several years working for museums, libraries and archives creating websites and interactive installations for museums such as the Science Museum London, and The Churchill Museum. Brook also spent some time creating applications for the typeface industry, and has a keen interest in all things type related. As well as contributions to CKAN and Frictionless Data, Brook is currently technical lead for the Global Open Data Index, and Open Spending.

Evgeny Karev

Senior Developer

Evgeny was born in Moscow. He's got an engineering degree at Moscow State Technical University. Evgeny worked as an entrepreneur and a consultant on various projects in Russia. Now, he is a passionate open source developer living in Moscow and Dubrovnik. At Open Knowledge International, Evgeny works mostly on Frictionless Data project as a tech lead of the Frictionless Data implementations.

Adam Kariv

Senior Developer; OpenSpending Technical Lead

Adam is an experienced technologist and open data activist,with over 25 years of experience in a wide range of areas - from embedded systems, through mobile applications, scalable services, big data analysis through to UI design.

He studied Computer Science, Physics and Mathematics at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Adam is one of the founders of the Public Knowledge Workshop, an Israeli NGO aiming to improve government transparency via technological tools. There, he leads one of its flagship projects - The Budget Key for making national budgets more accessible.

Along with his volunteering work with the PKW, Adam also worked and consulted to various Israeli start-up companies as a CTO, Software Architect and platform specialist.

Adam is married with two daughters and lives in the suburban town of Raanana.

Adrià Mercader

Senior Developer; CKAN Technical Lead

Adrià has over a decade of experience working in the Open Data and Civic Tech fields. He is an enthusiast of the Open Web, specially the communities built around Open Source projects and Open Standards. He is a member of the CKAN Technical Team and works across different projects at Open Knowledge International. He has a Degree in Biology and an MSc in Geographic Information Systems. His first serious program was written in Visual Basic 6 many moons ago, and he once wrote a SOAP interface that ingested GML, in PHP. He currently lives near the shores of the Mediterranean, in the beautiful city of Tarragona.

Serah Rono

Developer Advocate

Serah is a Computer Science graduate with five years experience as a Developer Advocate and community coordinator in the open data space. In that time, she has served in various technical teams, contributed to open data projects and championed data literacy workshops in different parts of the world.

Serah has been at Open Knowledge since September 2016 and continues to work with Open Knowledge communities in various capacities as a member of the Product Team. She believes that, on all matters open data, the work does not stop until all nations are at par.

Sam Smith

Senior Visual Designer

A web & graphic designer, with a love for communication, whether it be design, photography, copy, or code. Since graduating with a degree in Fine Art over a decade ago, Sam has been working as a graphic designer, specialising in latter years in digital design and front-end development. Sam is the founder of Mint Canary.

Katelyn Rogers

Head of School of Data

Katelyn is the Head of School of Data. She grew up in California and is currently based in London, after a four year stint in the southwest of France.

Prior to joining Open Knowledge she worked at Wateraid on WASHwatch, an online platform for monitoring governments on their delivery of water and sanitation commitments. She holds a BA in Philosophy and French from UCLA and an MSc in Public Policy and Management from KCL where she wrote her dissertation on open government data policies in the Global South.

Cédric Lombion

Community and Communications Coordinator, School of Data

Cédric is based in Bordeaux, France, and joined Open Knowledge in 2015. He now coordinates several key School of Data activities such as the Fellowship Programme, the Network Projects and External Communications.

Before joining the team Cédric worked as a Project and Community Coordinator for Open Knowledge France, and is still active there as volunteer. He discovered School of Data there and has dedicated his time to the project ever since, working with the community and facilitating data workshops. He studied Public and Political Communication with a focus on Open data and Digital public services

David Selassie Opoku

Data and Curriculum Lead at School of Data & Africa Lead for OD4D

David is Data and Curriculum Lead at School of Data & Africa Lead for Open Data for Development. He is a data plumber currently based in Accra, Ghana with an interest in working with individuals and teams to build valuable data skills. David's work experience spans across 4 continents including Sudan, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Ghana, Brazil, US, Canada & Germany.

Prior to joining Open Knowledge International, David was a 2015 School of Data Fellow, and a Technology Teaching Fellow at the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology(MEST) in Accra, Ghana where he taught and mentored entrepreneurs from Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya skills necessary to build software companies. He has had also the opportunity to work with the Swarthmore College's Eugene Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility, the Health Division of UNICEF and a tech startup in New York City. He is a graduate of the United World College Costa Rica, Swarthmore College(PA, USA) with a B.A. in Biology and the New Jersey Institute of Technology(NJ, USA) with an M.S. in Computer Science.

Meg Foulkes

Project Coordinator, School of Data

Meg's role involves helping to run key School of Data activities such as the annual Summer Camp and the Fellowship. Prior to School of Data, Meg worked as a legal adviser to detained asylum seekers and has a particular interest in data literacy in the field of human rights

Michelle Heydon

Chief of Finance

Michelle is an administrative operations all rounder. Having spent the first part of her career as a Systems Administrator, she was part of a small group from the Xerox Reseach Centre Europe who spun out a new software start-up. Although that one didn't take off, she went on to be at the birth of a further 3 IT start-ups, where she did "everything but the software" during the first few years of rapid growth. Michelle has been at Open Knowledge since 2012, continuing this broad theme of operational responsibilities, but since 2016 has focused solely on the finances of the organisation.

Anastasia Kalashnikova

Operations Assistant

Anastasia Kalashnikova joined Open Knowledge in the role of Operations Assistant. Anastasia is working part time for Mark Gibbs as Personal Assistant, and the remaining hours for finance and HR team. Anastasia has worked in finance, administration and procurement roles across Europe. Anastasia has lived in the UK, The Netherlands and now resides in her hometown of Volgograd in Russia.

Shireen Kovoor

HR Manager

Shireen joined Open Knowledge International as Manager-HR and is responsible for providing HR services within Open Knowledge International. She has experience working in both the not-for-profit as well as the commercial sectors. Shireen has a BA in Economics and a MA in Human Resource Management.

Cassandra Woolford

Accounts Administrator

Cassandra is the Open Knowledge accounts administrator and book-keeper.

Naomi Lillie

Executive Assistant

Naomi joined Open Knowledge International in 2011. At various points she has been involved with administration, finance, project management, HR, the community network, events, communications, and other miscellaneous areas where a helping hand was needed. She currently supports the wider Leadership Team and the Board.

She has a diverse professional background, including project management and coordination in both public and private sectors, and has worked in academia where the closed nature of information was a source of much frustration.

Naomi is based in Edinburgh (UK) and still considers herself an English Literature graduate, although these days she reads for fun.