Read more about our organizational history, staff, governance, and funding here in our Orientation Packet (updated annually).

Team

Kaitlin Thaney

Executive Director

Kaitlin Thaney’s career has been centered around open infrastructure organizations; helping them think strategically about program design, participatory engagement, and sustainability.

Previously she served as the Endowment Director for the Wikimedia Foundation, where she led development of a fund to sustain the future of Wikipedia and free knowledge. Prior to joining Wikimedia, Thaney directed the program portfolio for the Mozilla Foundation, following her time building the Mozilla Science Lab, a program to serve the open research community. She was on the founding team for Digital Science, where she helped launch and advise programs to serve researchers worldwide, building on her time at Creative Commons, where she crafted legal, technical, and social infrastructure for sharing data on the web.

She also serves on the board of LYRASIS, a technology and services nonprofit serving higher education, libraries, archives and museums, Code for Science & Society, Invest in Open Infrastructure’s fiscal sponsor, and Open Collective Foundation, a fiscal sponsor for US-based Collectives with a charitable mission. She resides on the unceded land of the Munsee Lenape and Canarsie (known as Brooklyn, New York) with her husband, toddler, and dog. She's on Twitter as @kaythaney.

Richard Dunks

Director, Research & Strategy

Richard Dunks has spent 20 years helping organizations perform to their best with more and better data. Working mostly in the public and non-profit sectors, he has helped government at both the city and federal level better leverage data to achieve mission success. For the past 7 years, Richard has provided training in open data, information visualization, data analytics, and data strategy to civil servants across the country through his company Datapolitan, and continues working with local community groups to leverage open data for social and political change. As an adjunct professor, he has also taught graduate-level classes covering mapping with open source tools at Pratt Institute and machine learning at Columbia University.

He currently teaches data-informed leadership in the Master of Public Administration program at Tulane University. He holds a bachelor's degree in Sociology from Ithaca College and a masters degree in Applied Urban Science and Informatics from the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University. Originally from Las Vegas, NV, he now resides in Dallas, TX with his 2 year-old son.

Emmy Tsang

Engagement Lead

Emmy Tsang is passionate about open and meaningful community designs, strategic communication, and sustainable and equitable innovation. Previously, she led the communication and community engagement efforts for the Open Science Programme at the Delft University of Technology to widen researchers', teachers', staff' and leadership's adoption of open science practices at the university. At eLife, she helped build a community of open-source practitioners to advance the development of open-source tools to change the ways research is shared, consumed, discovered, and evaluated.

Emmy is also a co-director at Open Life Science, which runs a global cohort-based training and mentoring programme to support individuals and stakeholders in research in becoming open science ambassadors. She holds a PhD in Neuroscience from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory and the University of Heidelberg. Originally from Hong Kong, she now lives in Utrecht, the Netherlands. She is on Twitter @emmy_ft.

Anne Britton

Project Coordinator

Anne served as an IOI Research Fellow in 2021, exploring Wikidata as a tool for mapping investment flows for open infrastructure. Previously, she worked for the Harvard Library Office for Scholarly Communication, the Open Access Tracking Project at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, and Open Knowledge Commons. She has presented on the evolving scholarly communication landscape at the Open Publishing Fest, Boston Area Digital Scholarship Symposium, OpenCon, Northeast Institutional Repository Day, and WikiConference North America. Anne lives near Boston in the US.

Tania L. Hernández

Research Data Analyst

Tania is a researcher and specialist in nonprofit management and organizational development. Her areas of research are capacity building in nonprofits, government-nonprofit relationships, and volunteer management. She has extensive experience in the design and evaluation of public programs. She has been a senior consultant for the International Labour Organization (ILO) and multiple government agencies in Mexico.

Tania is a Faculty Associate in the Nonprofit Leadership and Management master's program at Arizona State University (ASU) and a Research Associate in the Nonprofit Institute at the University of San Diego. She holds a Ph.D. in Community Resources and Development from ASU, a master's degree in political and social studies, and a bachelor's degree in political sciences and public administration both from the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Naomi Penfold

Research Data Analyst

I’m a researcher and community builder in innovation in science and technology, in particular in scholarly communications. I’m currently helping IOI to understand the opportunity of preprints for science. I have a PhD in Clinical Biochemistry from the University of Cambridge and have previously worked for eLife and ASAPbio, and contributed to several open science community initiatives, including Dryad, PREreview, Open Life Science, and Open Con. When not working, you might find me on a Scottish beach, admiring the seabirds and watching the waves.

Find my full bio and reach me on LinkedIn, or on Twitter @npscience; and here is my ORCID ID.

Carmela Key-Mays

Administrative Assistant

Carmela received her communications degree at Alabama A&M University in Normal, Alabama while interning as a DJ at a local radio station and winning several accolades as a member of the Junior Toastmaster’s. She then went on to receive an advanced degree in business communications with a concentration in corporate communications and entrepreneurship.

Carmela has been widowed for ten years. She organized a CityWide ‘Heart Walk’ in honour of her late husband, to encourage others to take control of their health and exercise daily.

In her free time, she is most likely brunching, entertaining, and practising her skills in crafting the perfect mimosa.

She’s passionate about revitalizing marginalized communities as she founded a Career Initiative in her hometown to educate young women on business acumen, helping properly prepare them for a future in entrepreneurship and corporate careers.

Jerry Sellanga

Communications Associate

“Perfection is a moving target.”

This statement is what inspires our Communications Associate, Jerry Sellanga every day. The knowledge that there is always a new challenge to master and excel in.

Jerry currently works on the IOI team as the Communications Associate where he uses his expertise to expand IOI's audiences through events, digital communications, and stakeholder management, especially in Africa. Jerry specializes in strategic communications, graphic design, proposal development, and public relations.

Jerry holds a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies (Community Development) from Kenyatta University and is currently undertaking a post-graduate diploma in Public Relations. Before joining IOI, Jerry held senior roles in communication and marketing in the wildlife conversation, agriculture, and social impact sectors.

In his spare time, Jerry is passionate about sports and spending time outdoors hiking.

Alumni

Asura Enkhbayar

Research Data Analyst

Asura Enkhbayar has been working in the intersection of technology, openness, and knowledge creation within academia. While data analysis and software development have been at the core of his work, he has been recently wondering about the limits (or possibilities) of data work to contribute to issues of social justice. In some way, he might even be hoping to find some answers during his PhD on citations and power.

Previously, Asura worked as a data scientist at the ScholCommLab on a multitude of projects exploring the public dimension of scholarly communication. Before joining the ScholCommLab, he focussed on the quantitative study of science and research infrastructure at the KnowCenter. He has also been a developer and advocate for Open Knowledge Maps. Most importantly, he is still very proud about starring in a martial arts short film (which you can find on Youtube).

Asura currently resides on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations known to most as Vancouver. You can find him on Twitter and Github.

Affiliates

Saman Goudarzi (March - June 2022)
Samuel Moore (May - July 2022)
Ravin Cline (May - July 2022)
Matt Canute (July 2022)
Naomi Penfold (July - August 2022)
Taimour Azizuddin (July - September 2022)
Samala (July - September 2022)
Tim Elfenbein (October - December 2022)

Steering Committee

*Denotes non-voting advisory members.

IOI is governed by a Steering Committee who provide rapid programmatic decision-making support and oversight. The Steering Committee meets monthly with IOI Leadership.

Jochai Ben-Avie, Connect Humanity*
Amy Buckland, Library and Archives Canada
Mmaki Jantjies, Telkom SA; University of the Western Cape
Omo Oaiya, WACREN
Danil Mikhailov, data.org
Lorrayne Porciuncula, Datasphere, Internet & Jurisdiction Policy Network
Berhan Taye, Internews
Amy Sample Ward, NTEN
Leslie Chan, University of Toronto Scarborough; Knowledge Equity Lab
Evviva Weinraub Lajoie, State University of New York at Buffalo
Danielle Robinson, Code for Science & Society*

Governance & Nominating Committee:

This Committee consists of (5) Steering Committee members and IOI’s Executive Director, and supports IOI leadership in examining and evolving project governance to help execute on IOI’s mission and objectives, as well as leads the nomination and review process for participants in IOI governance. This group currently consists of Leslie Chan, Evviva Weinraub Lajoie, and Danielle Robinson. Our thanks to inaugural members Heather Joseph and Arianna Becerril. Stay tuned for additions to this group in 2022.

Inaugural founding Steering members:

We are grateful to the following individuals for their past involvement in the development, growth, and stewardship of IOI and ongoing support in championing open infrastructure.

Virginia Barbour, Open Access Australasia
Arianna Becerril, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México, REDALYC, AmeliCA
Leslie Chan, University of Toronto Scarborough
Raym Crow, SPARC US
Heather Joseph, SPARC US
David Lewis, Indiana University, 2.5% Commitment
Pierre Mounier, Open Edition, OPERAS
Cameron Neylon, Curtin University
Nici Pfeiffer, Center for Open Science
Vanessa Proudman, SPARC Europe
Kristen Ratan, Strategies for Open Science (Stratos)
Danielle Robinson, Code for Science and Society
Mike Roy, Middlebury College
Katherine Skinner, Educopia Institute
Greg Tananbaum, Open Research Funders Group
Evviva Weinraub Lajoie, State University of New York at Buffalo
Dan Whaley, Hypothesis
Maurice York, Big Ten Academic Alliance
Ina Smith, Academy of Science of South Africa
Peg Fowler, Hypothesis
Lucy Ofiesh, Crossref

Our special thanks also goes to Nate Angell (Hypothesis), Vanessa Rhinesmith (UCLA), Q McCallum (Solution Q), Saman Goudarzi, Katrina Pugh (Columbia University; AlignConsulting), Heather Staines (DeltaThink), Maggie Jack (Cornell Tech; NYU Tandon), Allison McCartney (Bloomberg), Jessica Klein (Wikimedia Foundation), Julia Smith (McClatchy), Teri Wanderi, and many others who have helped support and advance our work.

Community Councils:

IOI relies on these groups to represent and bring forward what’s important to key communities IOI serves. These Community Councils reflect IOI’s commitment to stakeholder conversations to inform future strategies for IOI and our attentiveness and responsibility to the needs of key communities IOI serves.

Community Councils are created on an as-needed basis, with participants serving in a non-voting capacity. Core council members are supported for their time and contributions via an honoraria, and term limits are 1-year with option to renew.

Active Community Councils: