Catherine Stihler

Chief Executive Officer

Catherine is the chief executive officer of Open Knowledge International. She represented Scotland in the European Parliament between 1999 and 2019. As Vice-Chair of the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee, Catherine worked on digital policy, prioritising the digital single market, digital skills, better accessibility of digital products for the disabled, as well as citizen online data protection and privacy. She wrote a number of influential reports and opinions; calling for libraries to be included in copyright exceptions available to formal educational institutions and introducing exceptions to protect access to works allowing for private study and research. Over the years, Catherine has been recognised as an ambassador for accessibility, consumer and citizen rights.

She holds a MA (Hons) in Geography and International Relations (1996), a MLitt in International Security Studies (1998) from the University of St Andrews, and a Master of Business Administration from the Open University. In 2018 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of St Andrews. Out of her direct role as an MEP, Catherine Stihler was elected unopposed to serve as the 52nd Rector of the University of St Andrews (2014-2017). Catherine lives with her husband David and sons, Alex and Andrew, in Dunfermline, Fife.

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.

Jo Barratt

Delivery Manager

Jo Barratt is a delivery 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.

Stephen Abbott Pugh

Content Development Manager

Stephen is the content development manager for Open Knowledge International, delivering materials and content production processes to aid organisational strategy as well as supporting proposal and policy development. He previously worked as a portfolio manager 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.

Sander van der Waal

Head of Programmes

As Head of Programmes at Open Knowledge International, Sander is developing coherence between our various projects and initiatives, currently with a specific focus on the area of Fiscal and Financial Transparency. Sander has been with Open Knowledge International since the end of 2012, and has overseen projects in the many diverse areas in which OKI has been active, ranging from Open Economics to Citizen Science, OpenGLAM, 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 (BA) and is fascinated by the topic of how technology and data can be best applied to meet the citizens' needs and interests in the 21st century.

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. Next to OKI, she serves as Community Director of the Disruption Network Lab. In 2014 she co-founded the independent project space SPEKTRUM | art science community, where she worked as community builder until 2018.

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.

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.

Lilly Winfree

Product Manager, Frictionless Data for Reproducible Research

Lilly is the Product Manager for the Frictionless Data for Reproducible Research project. She has her PhD in neuroscience from Oregon Health and Science University, where she researched brain injury in fruit flies and became an advocate for open science and open data. Lilly believes that the future of research is open, and is using Frictionless Data tooling within the researcher community to make science more reproducible.

Katelyn Rogers

Head of School of Data and Opportunity Development

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

Meg Foulkes

Operations Manager, 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

Yan Naung Oak

Fellowship Coordinator, School of Data

Yan Naung Oak is a data visualization designer, as well as an open data, data literacy, and civic tech advocate. He splits his time between Phandeeyar, an innovation hub in Yangon, to build up an open data community in Myanmar, and School of Data, where he supports data literacy training for civil society organizations and journalists all over the world.

Michelle Heydon

Contracts Manager

Michelle has a background in administration for start-up companies and joined Open Knowledge International in 2012 when growth was rapid and there was a need to ensure our core services where running smoothly. Having spent several years establishing the Finance, HR & Sysadmin functions, she focused on finance management.

In 2017 she handed this over and moved into Contracts Management. She is responsible for all the financial and compliance aspects of grant & commercial contracts.

Cassandra Woolford

Finance Manager

Cassandra is responsible for the delivery of the Financial Services. With over 20 years of experience in the Finance / Administration sector, she runs a tight ship. The various engagements that Open Knowledge International undertakes keeps the pace moving and not one week is ever the same. From expenses to cash flow management Cassandra is able to fulfil her passion for numbers and spreadsheets.

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.

Anastasia Kalashnikova

Finance Assistant

Anastasia Kalashnikova works for Open Knowledge International in the role of Finance Assistant, working on finance and HR. 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.

Helen Stewart

Executive Assistant

Helen has over 10 years PA and EA experience working in a variety of fields including entertainment and the arts, fashion, tech start-ups, and also central government. Until recently, Helen was a freelance PA working for a variety of different clients. She now lives in rural Hertfordshire with her husband and young daughter.