Presenters
Our presenters in alphabetical order
Thomas Bjelkeman-Pettersson is the founder and managing director of AKVO – a platform to publish project-level aid information and to collect feedback on aid projects. He has over twenty years of international experience in software development and the software business. Parallel to his activities in AKVO Thomas is an environmental activist and a researcher in sustainable food, energy and water resources.
Geraldine de Bastion is an international consultant for new media and development at newthinking communications. During the past years she has worked for organisations including the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Gesellschaft für internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and has managed a number of projects on Information and Communication Technology for social and economic development. Geraldine has a passion for music, politics, media and technology as well as for sustainable business models and brings these interests into her work.
Isabel Bucknall works as a Programme Officer on aidinfo, mainly for the Technical Advisory Group (TAG) Secretariat of the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). Her other work focuses on stakeholder management, coordination of the aid transparency group and involvement of philanthropic foundations into IATI. Isabel’s academic background is theology and religious studies with a special focus on India.
Daniel Dietrich is an open data activist, a computer scientist and researcher at the Institute for Internet and Society at the Technical University of Berlin. He is co-founder and CEO of the Open Data Network, co-founder of the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany and key figure of the German Open Data movement. He is project coordinator for the international Open Knowledge Foundation and leading member of European networks on use of public sector information.
Peter Eigen is a pioneer and longtime activist for transparency in development cooperation and in development countries. The organisations and networks the Prof. Eigen co-founded include Transparency International, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), the Berlin Civil Society Center, the Humboldt-Viadrina School of Governance and the African Progress Panel. In the past Peter Eigen has been a professor of law at Harvard university and held different positions within the Worldbank, including regional director in East Africa.
Beris Gwynne is the Director of the Worldvision Geneva office and the Worldvision UN representative. In the past she has been held executive positions of different governmental and non-governmental development organisations, including director of the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID). As representative of Worldvision Beris is a member of the board of the International NGO Accountability Charter and of the Steering Committee of the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI).
Rolf Kleef is one of the founders of Open for Change, the network for transparency and impact in development, hosted by Partos, the platform for Dutch civil society organisations in the international development cooperation sector. Rolf has helped non-profits and governments use internet for online collaboration, campaigning, policy-making and knowledge-sharing since 1994, and is currently focusing on open data and
the semantic web.
Christian Kreutz is the Director of Crisscrossed GmbH, is on the Board of the Open Knowledge Foundation in Germany, and is the initiator of Frankfurt–Gestalten.de (Create-Frankfurt). He worked for the Deutsche Gesellschaft für internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) for five years. Since 2008 he has been working as a Knowledge Management and Social Innovations Consultant, mainly for international organizations such as the World Bank among others. Since the beginning of this year he has been lecturing Online–Journalism at the University of Darmstadt.
Prasanna Lal Das is Senior Program Officer, Office of the Controller, World Bank. He is a content strategist and KM practitioner with experience in journalism, computer games design, and management consulting (his last project before joining the Bank was MIT’s OpenCourseWare initiative – a project that he likens to the open data of its time). Prasanna conceived and led the development of the Bank’s open financial data website. He also co-leads the Bank’s eBusiness program. Prasanna has a Masters degree in Modern Indian History from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Blog @prasannalaldas
Irina Lashkhi is a political scientist and works at the Human Rights and Good Governance Programme of the Open Society Georgia Foundation in Georgia. She is responsible for the anticorruption monitoring projects of the OSF and for aid monitoring. In the past Irina Lashkhi worked as researcher at the Arnold Bergstresser Institut in Freiburg.
Anna Lauridsen is a political scientist and the representative of Development Gateways in Brussels. Development Gateways is one of the main drivers behind the AidData Geocoding project. In the past Anna Lauridsen has worked for the Dutch aid agency SNV, PLAN International, UNDP and SIDA in Asia, particularly in Vietnam. Her current focus of work is EU development policy and advocacy with EU member states.
Ronald Siebes is a Senior Policy Officer, Aid Effectiveness Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Netherlands. He is part of the Quality of Aid team and specifically responsible for the implementation of IATI and OESO-DAC reporting. He has over 20 years of experience in development cooperation, not only at the Ministry of Foreign HQ but also at country level and for the UN and NGO’s, especially in the field of education.
Rob Tew is working as a policy analyst and statistics advisor for Development Initiatives. He has carried out studies on the status of aid information in a number of partner countries and he represents aidinfo on the Technical Advisory Group of the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). He is undertaking analysis of donor budgeting processes as part of the Budget 4 Change programme. Rob also carried out statistical analysis of aid data for The DATA Report 2009. Rob has over 10 years experience in the financial services sector and his academic background is in development and economics (LSE).
Alexander Schellong is a Senior Managing Consultant with Capgemini and former research fellow with Harvard University who continues to be active in research and teaching on a variety of topics in public management, e-government and public policy. Alexander Schellong holds a PhD in Public Management. Blog; @schellong
Claudia Schwegmann is the Director of OpenAid, an advocacy organisation to promote aid transparency, created in 2009. Before founding OpenAid, Claudia worked as an evaluator and organisational development consultant in development cooperation for the German and as a social media trainer. Her academic background is catholic theology, political science and empirical social research methods.@OpenAidGermany
Marek Tuszynski – co-founder & director of programmes & technology.
Marek has been working to help advocates use technology since 1995. In the mid-nineties he co-founded the International Network of Contemporary Art Centres and worked with others to create a television programme about independent culture in Poland. He was director of the Stefan Batory Foundation’s Internet programme (Warsaw), sat on the board of Klon/Jawor (a research and infrastructure NGO) and The Second Hand Bank.Marek worked as a consultant to many funding agencies focusing on information and communication strategies for civil society in Central Asia.
Andreas Westerwinter is working as an education advisor to governments and multilateral agencies in development cooperation. In the past Andreas served as UK Deputy Permanent Delegate to UNESCO, working primarily on UNESCO’s management and results based programming and budgeting. As co-chair of the Paris Chapter for the Geneva Group (16 largest contributors to the UN budget), he led debates on budget transparency, improved monitoring and evaluation, country-specific results reporting in UNESCO. His academic background is history and anthropology.
Fola Yahaya is Managing Partner of the communication consultancy Strategic Agenda LLP and co-founder of TransparentAid, a platform that aims to make information about development cooperation more accessible to beneficiaries. In the past Fola Yahaya worked as an economic consultant for both the United Nations and World Bank, and as a strategy consultant for clients including the Government of Qatar, the Foreign & Commonwealth office, BP and Morgan Stanley. Dr. Yahaya received his PhD in information infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa from the London School of Economics in 2000.