The School of Data Fellowship has been running since 2013. We worked with each class of Fellows to help them mature as data leaders through the Fellowship. Months or years after their Fellowship, they are still working within their community or internationally, pushing data literacy forward. They are now trainers, university professors, journalists, community organisers, researchers or civil society organisation leaders.
Class of 2018
Class of 2017
Class of 2016
Class of 2015
Class of 2014
Class of 2013
Class of 2018
Pamela Gonzales, Bolivia
Pamela is passionate about data visualization and bridging the digital divide for women. She is the co-founder of Bolivia Tech Hub, a collaborative space for tech projects to contribute to the prosperity of an innovative ecosystem in Bolivia. Pamela is also the Regional Ambassador for Technovation, a San Francisco based program that equips girls with the skills needed to solve real-world problems through technology. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Universidad Mayor de San Andres.
Odanga Madung, Kenya
Odanga is the co-founder and Data Science Lead at Odipo Dev, a data science and analytics firm operating out of Nairobi Kenya that delivers services to various bluechip companies and NGOs across the country. Odanga’s deepest interest is at the intersection between data and culture and it is through this that Odipo Dev has been able to carry out data analysis and visualisation on various activities for a wide range of clients and occurrences in Kenya and the world. Some of his work has been featured in publications such as Adweek, Yahoo, BBC, CNBC, Quartz, and Daily Nation, just to mention a few. He will be working on Open Contracting in Kenya during the period of his fellowship. You can follow him on Twitter @Odangaring and Odipo Dev @OdipoDev for more information.
Nzumi Malendeja, Tanzania
Nzumi is a Research Associate at an Independent Evaluation and Research Cell of BRAC International in Tanzania, where he leads larger-scale research projects in education, agriculture, and health. Here, he has developed mobile-based data collection platforms (ODK Collect and SurveyCTO), which replaced the traditional paper-based methods. Before this, Mr. Nzumi worked as a Field Monitor and Research Assistant at SoChaGlobal and Maarifa ni Ufunguo respectively, both in education and construction sector transparency projects. Mr. Nzumi has attended a 4 week Summer School Training on Research Methods and Teaching Skills, hosted by Hamburg University of Applied Sciences in Germany, funded by the Germany Academic Exchange Services (DAAD). Presently, Mr. Nzumi is working on his thesis towards the fulfillment of the Master of Research and Public Policy at the University of Dar es Salaam.
Sofia Montenegro, Guatemala
A fan of nature and the teachings it hides, Sofia has dedicated herself to research in social sciences. She studied political science at Universidad Francisco Marroquin and Public Opinion and Political Behavior through a Masters degree at the University of Essex. At this last tenure, she reinforced her interest for data methodologies in social research. She is interested in academia as long as it drives political action. She looks to help other women to be involved freely in data practice and political spaces.
She is interested in network analysis, studying corruption as a social phenomenon, following electoral process and learning research methods.
Elias Mwakilama, Malawi
Elias is a lecturer at University of Malawi-Chancellor College and Coordinator of Research, Seminar and Consultancies, and Diploma in Statistics programme in the Mathematical Sciences Department, Elias Mwakilama is a computational and applied mathematician in the field of operations research. He lectures and supervises undergraduate students in Mathematics & Statistics fields. His research interests are in working with optimization models using mathematical statistics techniques integrated with computing skills to offer solutions of industrial related problems in theoretical and practical arena. Elias holds a first upper class MSc degree in Mathematical Sciences from University of Malawi. His website is here. During his fellowship, he hopes to support the “public procurement open contract platform” for Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in Malawi with Hivos.
Ben Hur Pintor, The Philippines
Ben Hur is an open-source and open-data advocate from the Philippines who believes in democratising not only data, but also the means of utilising and analysing data. He’s a geospatial generalist and software developer who’s worked on projects related to renewable energy, blue carbon ecosystems, and participatory disaster risk mapping and assessment. Ben is currently pursuing an MS Geomatics Engineering degree at the University of the Philippines. As part of his advocacy for Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), he’s a co-organizer and active participant of FOSS4G Philippines and MaptimeDiliman — avenues for sharing open source mapping technologies with the community.
Hani Rosidaini, Indonesia
Hani is always passionate about how technology can be adopted and applied for people’s needs. She combines her technical skills, especially in information systems and data science, with social and business knowledge, to help companies and organisations in Indonesia, Australia, and Japan. This includes her own ventures. Highly relevant to this year fellowship’s focus of data procurement, Hani has experience as a data specialist for public policy in the Indonesia Presidential Office, where she has analysed the national integrated data platform, data.go.id, contributed to data-driven policy making, advocated ministries and agencies, as well as engaged with civic and local communities.
Kelvin Wellington, Ghana
Kelvin is a Data Scientist from Accra, Ghana. He holds a Masters degree in Data Science from the University of Southampton as well as a first degree in Computer Science from Ashesi University, Ghana. He has had the opportunity to work in various roles that involve the application of data-driven solutions. He is passionate about using data for social good and has been involved in various volunteering projects to that effect..Kelvin is also an active member of the Machine Intelligence Institute of Africa(MIIA) and a facilitator for Data Science meetups organised by Developers in Vogue, a tech community based in Ghana. He will be joining the 2018 fellowship class to work with the Natural Resource Governance Institute on data literacy in the extractives sector.”
Class of 2017
Idriss Kone, Cote D’Ivoire
Idriss is a statistician and economist at the Ministry of Budget in Cote d’Ivoire where he is responsible for monitoring and evaluating customs activities including the analysis of foreign trade statistics and measuring the impact of tariff reforms and trade agreements. Furthermore, Idriss has experience in Education and Financial Inclusion having worked as the MTEF(Medium Term Expenditure Framework) specialist at Ministry of Education and served as a principal investigator for “Women, Monetary Practices and Technological Innovation” project in Côte d’Ivoire. He holds an engineering diploma in statistics and econometrics from the National Advanced School of Statistics and Applied Economics of Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire). He will be joining the 2017 Fellowship class to work with the Publish What You Pay coalition in Cote d’Ivoire on extractives data.
Pascal Elie, Haiti
Pascale Elie holds a BA in Mathematics and Economics from the University of Montreal and specializes in statistical and actuarial analysis. She worked as a statistician and actuarial adviser for various Canadian and Haitian companies, particularly for the Auto Insurance Fund for the State Employees in Haiti. She also participated in launching a start-up insurance company in Haiti, UniAssurance S.A. Currently, she is a consultant for HaitiPay S.A., where she leads the company by proposing and implementing financial product using strategic mobile payment solutions. With HaitiPay, she is also responsible for marketing a mobile wallet service operated by the National Bank of Credit, by developing and implementing distribution strategies and leading elaboration of new products and services related to mobile banking. She will be working to develop the data literacy community in Haiti as part of the Going Global: Digital Jobs and Gender programme.
Lyse Marie-Carlie Ladouceur, Haiti
Lyse is an engineering student at the Ecole Supérieure d’Infotronique d’Haïti (Port-au-Prince). She served as a GIS and Data Entry Intern for UNOPS where she used data to created maps that detailed the road conditions in the south of Haiti following Hurricane Matthew. She will be working to develop the data literacy community in Haiti as part of the Going Global: Digital Jobs and Gender programme.
Yan Naung Oak, Myanmar
Yan is passionate about civic tech, open data, and the power of new technologies to empower communities and civil society. He is currently work at Phandeeyar, an ICT Innovation Hub in Yangon, Myanmar, which is spearheading the use of technology to accelerate change and development in Myanmar. He is a native of Myanmar but studied and worked in Singapore and the United States, before coming back to Yangon in 2014. He will be joining the 2017 fellowship class to work with the Natural Resource Governance Institute on data literacy and data availability in the jade mining sector.
Sebastián Oliva, Guatemala
Sebastián Oliva was born in Guatemala and got into computers since his early childhood. Although he majored in engineering and physics, he kept an interest in social science as well as for the multidisciplinary realm of exact science.
Sebastián has worked both for tech companies and for social tech projects. He also develops free software and hardware. He was a in intern for Google, in the “cloud” division, where he gathered knowledge of programming language Python.
Sebastián was member of the winner teams in the Latin American development challenge Desarollando Latinoamérica 2014 and was a finalist in the Space Apps Challenge 2014. His interest in School of Data comes naturally when you align his social impact interests with his technical skills in data extraction, processing and presentation. Amongst his other interests you can count documentary photography and, why not, role and strategy games. You can send him a tweet at @tian2992
Data Experts
Nuru Magwaza, Tanzania
Nuru is a data trainer and researcher from Dar es Salaam Tanzania. After graduating with a Bachelors degree in Computer and Information management, she has worked as a research assistant and data consultant in Tanzania including with the Open Data Institute. As a data enthusiast, she is now working as a data fellow in the Data Zetu project under Code for Tanzania which helps citizens in addressing their problems by using data.
She will be joining the 2017 data expert programme working with the Tanzania Media Foundation and NRGI to clean extractive sector data from TEITI, develop an extractive data journalism fellowship curriculum and run in-house data training for TMF staff.
Ketty Adoch, Uganda
Ketty is a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) specialist based in Kampala, Uganda. In 2013, inspired by a Twitter post about an upcoming online data expedition (School of Data MOOC) on global carbon emissions, Ketty joined Open Knowledge and signed up for the course. Passionate about the environment and feeling the need to expand her skill set, she found the data expedition methodology very useful and has used it in her training in Uganda. She will be joining the 2017 data expert programme to work with the African Centre for Media Excellence in developing GIS skills and tools for journalists and media organisations focusing on the extractive sector.
Class of 2013
2013 was the year of the first incarnation of the Fellowship programme, which we named to be the Mentorship programme. It was a brilliant precursor to the current Fellowship programme, and we’re still seeing great things come from Ali, Ketty, Tarek, the very first School of Data “mentors”.
Ketty, a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) specialist, went on to become a central piece of the open data and mapping community in Uganda. Tarek, a Data Mining and Information Retrieval expert, has been creating Arabic-language tools and training materials helping bring open data and data journalism forward. Ali went on to become a prominent consultant on the impact of data.
The 2013 Fellowship would not have been possible without the support of [Funders]
Ketty Adoch, Uganda
Ketty is a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) specialist based in Kampala, Uganda. In 2013, inspired by a Twitter post about an upcoming online data expedition (School of Data MOOC) on global carbon emissions, Ketty joined Open Knowledge and signed up for the course. Passionate about the environment and feeling the need to expand her skill set, she found the data expedition methodology very useful and has used it in her trainings in Uganda. Ketty has rejoined the School of Data team as a 2017 Data Expert.
Tarek Amr, Egypt
Tarek is a MSc. graduate in Data Mining and Information Retrieval with a decade of experience in software development. Tarek sought out the School of Data to hone his data visualization skills while preparing his dissertation in the UK. Tarek is an Open Knowledge ambassador in Egypt and uses his digital media talents to help journalists and activists raise their data skills.
Ali Rebaie, Lebanon
Ali is a data analyst from Lebanon who, as part of and after his participation in the first School of Data Fellowship, has been training hundreds of data enthusiasts worldwide, spreading data skills and educating on the use of the data pipeline methodology to ordinary citizens and journalists. He is now also a renowned speaker on emerging data technologies.
Class of 2014
12 Fellows from 11 countries. The 2014 class of the Fellowship is the biggest and most diverse to date, with a mix of GIS specialists, developers, journalists, designers and community leaders. They have become leaders within and outside the School of Data network as part of member organisations or as contributors to the open data and data literacy movements.
We partner every year with organisations to help coordinate Fellows in their region. In 2014 those partners were Code for Africa, SocialTIC (Mexico) and Publish What You Pay Indonesia.
Additionally, the 2014 School of Data Fellowship was made possible thanks to the trust and support of several funders: the World Bank through the Partnership for Open Data, the Foreign Commonwealth Office (FCO), Hivos, Indigo Trust, the Southeast Asia Technology and Transparency Initiative (SEATTI), The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Open Society Foundations (OSF).
Antonio Cucho Gamboa, Peru
Antonio is a PHP and Python programmer, co-organizer of Hacks & Hackers Lima and among the founders of the Open Data community in Peru. He is an active participant in projects around both open data and data journalism. In July 2013 he took part in AbreLatam in Montevideo, Uruguay with the award winning project Lima I/O. He is now based in Miami and works as senior developer for the data journalism team of Univision news. During his Fellowship he worked on election and extractives data and ran several workshops with journalists, CSOs and citizens.
Codrina Illie, Romania
Codrina is a PhD Student at the Technical University of Civil Engineering, Bucharest working within the Groundwater Engineering Research Center ‘CCIAS’. She is an active promoter and researcher of open geographic data and open source software in Romania. As part of the Geodata Openness Initiative for Development and Economic Advancement in Romania project team, she works to improve the scientific basis for open geodata model adoption in Romania. During her Fellowship she worked on geospatial and elections data, with a notable contribution to a Bosnia and Herzegovina civic hacking workshop.
Dona Djambaska, Macedonia
Dona graduated in the field of Environmental Engineering and has been working in Skopje with the Metamorphosis foundation, a School of Data member organisation. At Metamorphosis she focuses on organising trainings for computer skills, social media, online promotion, photo and video activism. She is also an active contributor and member of the Global Voices Online community. During her Fellowship she facilitated several data literacy trainings and meetups in her region.
Hannah Williams, South Africa
Hannah is a graphic designer working in both web and print with an experience in copy writing and public art projects. She focuses on projects that have a social impact, using her knowledge in data visualisation. Her Fellowship was focused on helping specific South African organisations with her data visualisation and storytelling skills, which he did alongside another South African Fellow, Siyabonga Africa.
Happy Feraren, the Philippines
Happy Feraren is the co-founder and CEO of Bantay.ph – a Manila based civil society organization (CSO) which monitors the quality of service delivery provided by frontline government offices through volunteer reporting. Bantay.ph aims to uplift the standard of public service and create a culture of active citizenship. Happy leveraged her knowledge of the public service to maximise the impact of her Fellowship, which resulted in events and workshops aimed at civil servants, such as the Civil Service Commission.
Joachim Mangilima, Tanzania
Joachim Mangilima is a technology and data enthusiast with a passion for using technology and data. He is active as a consultant in the field of development, deployment and management of mobile and web-based solutions as well as systems for decision support, data collection, analysis and management. Joachim is also the co-founder of Google Developer Group Dar es Salaam, a group of technology enthusiasts and software developers who are interested in open source technology with a bias in Google’s developer technology. His Fellowship’s work was focused on helping building open data skills and awareness among civil servants in Tanzania, with the support of the World Bank, which he still works with.
Nisha Thompson, India
In 2010, having worked as a social media and community organiser for the Sunlight Foundation, Nisha moved to India. There, she gained experience in water data management and open government data, and became the Lead Organizer of DataMeet, an Indian community of people working towards open data by sharing experiences and helping others with data related problems. While Datameet was already hosting meetups and Open Data Camps when she became a Fellow, the Fellowship was an opportunity for her to start doing data trainings and expeditions, especially around data journalism.
Oludotun Babayemi, Nigeria
With a Masters Degree in Information Management, 5 years of experience in the nonprofit sector and a CrisisMapper Fellowship under his belt, Oludotun had already an excellent profile for the School of Data Fellowship. His work on monitoring and evaluation systems used to promote good governance, accountability and transparency (such as the Follow The Money and the Education Budget Tracker) made him a valuable contributor to the School of Data network. After a Fellowship focused on building the community of civic hackers and training journalists, he successfully applied for Connected Development, a NGO he is now board member of, to be part of the School of Data network.
Rita Zágoni, Hungary
Rita Zágoni is a programmer with a social science background. She has worked in IT management and web development before joining the Economics department of Central European University, where she is in charge of parsing unstructured, free text data to create analyzable data formats. Her Fellowship was a rare occasion for Hungarian NGOs to receive both basic and advanced training in data skills.
Ruben Moya, Mexico
Ruben studied computer science at the Autonomous University of Guadalajara (UDG). He is currently building web applications. He is an avid follower of technology and love to see new places. He entered the Fellowship as an already prolific trainer, giving lectures on design and basic and advanced programming, both online and offline. The Fellowship was an opportunity for him to focus on data literacy skills in the trainings he ran with civil society organisations and journalists.
Siyabonga Africa, South Africa
Siyabonga is a new media design graduate from the East coast of South Africa living in Johannesburg. His career has its roots in public administration and journalism from the University of Pretoria and Stellenbosch University respectively. His work during his Fellowship involved mentoring organisations to run specific data projects, in coordination with Hannah Williams, another South African Fellow.
Yuandra Ismiraldi, Indonesia
Yuandra is a full stack mobile engineer and game developer from Indonesia. He holds a bachelor and master degree in software engineering. He is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Development Studies at the University of Melbourne, while working in the University as a Research Engineer as part of the team that help researchers to adopt next generation digital research tools and skills. The main achievement of his Fellowship was the outstanding work that he did while working with the local network of Publish What You Pay Indonesia, organising regular trainings and creating content.
Class of 2015
For the 2015 School of Data Fellowship class we selected a mix of strong technical Fellows and experts with a deep knowledge of their audiences. It allowed us create or contribute to valuable projects that we are still enriching: A data journalism project about migration in Central America, a website about Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Data, and the Easy Guide to Mobile Data Collection.
We partner every year with organisations to help coordinate Fellows in their region. In 2015 those partners were Code for Africa, SocialTIC (Mexico) and Metamorphosis (Macedonia) and Connected Development (Nigeria).
Additionally, the 2015 School of Data Fellowship was made possible thanks to the trust and support of several funders: the Partnership for Open Development (POD) OD4D, Hivos, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in Macedonia.
Camila Salazar, Alajuela, Costa Rica
Camila studied journalism and Economics at the University of Costa Rica. She now teaches data journalism classes at the same university while working in the data journalism unit of La Nacion (Costa Rica). She has several years of experience working with data and quantitative tools to write journalistic stories. She worked with several high profile journalism projects and is motivated to share her knowledge, making her a perfect profile for her Fellowship programme. As part of her Fellowship she ran data journalism trainings across Latin America, and wrote learning content that she is still using to this day.
David Selassie Opoku, Accra, Ghana
David Selassie Opoku is a graduate of the United World College Costa Rica, Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania with a B.A. in Biology and the New Jersey Institute of Technology with an M.S. in Computer Science. He has had the opportunity to work with the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research, the Eugene Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility, the UNICEF Health Division and a tech startup in New York City. His Fellowship was focused on building a data literacy community in Ghana, through meetups and training. He is now the Open Data for Development Africa Lead at Open Knowledge International.
Goran Rizaov, Skopje, Macedonia
Goran Rizaov, data-journalist based in Skopje, Republic of Macedonia, with several years of experience in investigative journalism. Goran was a Professional Development Year fellow in 2011/2012 studying data journalism, precision journalism and online media at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, ASU, Phoenix, Arizona. He worked with School of Data network member Metamorphosis (Macedonia) on providing data skills to Macedonian NGOs during his Fellowship.
Julio Lopez, Quito, Ecuador
Julio is an economist and consultant at the Energy Division at the Inter-American Development Bank. He became interested in open data after joining “Extrayendo Transparencia“, which translates to “Extracting Transparency”, a Grupo FARO’s initiative that promotes the dissemination of citizen-oriented government data to improve the accessibility and use of information from the oil and mining industries in civil society organisations and local governments in Ecuador. In line with this experience, his Fellowship focused on creating content and facilitating trainings related to extractives data, with the support of our partner the Natural Resources Governance Institute.
Nirab Pudasaini, Kathmandu, Nepal
Nirab is the lead mobile application developer at Kathmandu Living Labs. Working with the team at Kathmandu Living Labs Nirab has been championing the OpenStreetMap and Open Map data movement in Nepal. By training and mobilizing volunteers they have been successful to make OpenStreetMap as the most detailed map data source for Kathmandu. His Fellowship started on on a dramatic note, with a magnitude 7.9 which destroyed most of Kathmandu. He still managed to create, as part of his Fellowship, the foundation of the Easy Guide to Mobile Data Collection.
Nkechi Okwuone, Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria
Nkechi is the Open Data Manager of the Edo State Open Data portal in Nigeria, the first sub-national Open Data portal in Africa. She is an alumnus of Federal Government Girls College, Ibusa and the University of Port Harcourt, where she received her B. Eng in Electrical Electronics Engineering. Nkechi is also a director in SabiHub, a not for profit organization with a vision to solve social problems using technology where she mentors entrepreneurs and open data enthusiasts. Her Fellowship was similarly orientied on community building and mentorship, helping build the bases of a data literacy community in the Edo State. Her main achievement was the organisation of a the second Nigerian Open Data Party.
Sheena Carmel Opulencia-Calub, Makati City, the Philippines
Sheena works as a National Information Manager of the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene with organisations such as ACF International and UNICEF. She is specialised in working on data management during emergencies, supporting communities, non-government and government agencies in managing and establishing information management systems during events such as Typhoon Pablo in 2012, Zamboanga Crisis, Bohol Earthquake, and Supertyphoon Yolanda in 2013. Her Fellowship was consequently focused on similar work, where she used the data pipeline as a basis for training CSOs and civil servants around the Philippines.
Class of 2016
Nika Aleksejeva, Latvia
Nika is a passionate data storyteller from Latvia. In 2013, she joined Infogr.am, a popular data visualization service that empowers non-designers to create beautiful data visualizations in no time. In 2014, she launched the International Infogram Ambassador Network that unites ~100 data enthusiasts all over the world. Each of them brings the power of data visualisation to local communities worldwide. Nika comes from a journalism background – her work involved writing about business topics and data-driven stories about energetics, global economic trends and education. Seeing the future in digital journalism, she continues to work and share the knowledge that helps to develop new communication forms. Currently, she works to empower Latvian journalists with data journalism skills by curating School of Data in Latvia.
Precious ONAIMO, Nigeria
Precious is a software developer and a technology enthusiast with the belief that people can only live better if they are provided with accurate, reliable and easy-to-access data, and tools that enable them to make real-time, qualitative and informed decisions. He was the Deputy Head of Software Development in iDevWorks Nigeria Limited, where he worked on designing, development and maintenance of many industry enterprise resource planning solutions geared towards eradicating the unavailability, insecurity, errors and delays associated with manual collation and distribution of organizational data and workflows. He currently heads a team of six programmers to develop open data solutions in different sectors, such as agriculture and extractives industries.
Vadym Hudyma, Ukraine
Vadym Hudyma is an open data activist and works as a digital security consultant for CSOs and activist groups in Kiev, Ukraine. He was involved in several projects focused on government, electoral and parliamentary transparency in Ukraine. It included mass screening tens of thousands of candidates in Parliament and local elections for their involvement in corruption crimes or human rights violation activities. He also worked on the launch of an extensive database of firms and individuals mentioned as suspects in anti-corruption journalist investigations in Ukraine. One of his main activities was devising policy on disclosure procedures. As a security specialist, he’s helping raise and spread awareness in basic digital security problems as well as privacy issues in a digital age. He also helps young non-governmental organizations in devising their information security policies, as well as contributes as a trainer to journalists and activists working in the war zone in Eastern Ukraine and in annexed Crimea.
Malick LINGANI, Burkina Faso
Malick Lingani is a Social Entrepreneur from Burkina Faso. He is committed to improving Transparency and Accountability through the advancement of Data Literacy within organizations, institutions and media. He is the Co-founder of the Ouagadougou-based NGO BEOG-NEERE.Org (For a better future) where he works as a data scientist and also as mentor to empower youth in the development of innovative and sustainable startups in sub-Saharan Africa since 2012. Malick holds a Master in Computer Sciences and Business development from the University of Ouagadougou and also a Data Science Specialization from John Hopkins University.
Kabukabu MUHAU, Zambia
Kabukabu Muhau is a researcher and statistician specialised in demography and economics. She has worked with the NGO Coordinating Council (NGOCC) as Monitoring and Evaluation assistant. Currently, she works for the National Youth Development Council as a Hub Officer, assisting youths in her province to access information more easily. Having studied Health Demography, she developed a keen interest in the Health sector of Zambia. She’s particularly interested in strengthening her country’s current Health Information Management System so that it yields desired results. Her future plans include pursuing a Master’s degree in Public Health so as to strengthen her knowledge on the health sector.
Raisa Valda Ampuero, Bolivia
Raisa is passionate about the impact of new technologies and social networks in the social justice field. She started working as a Community Manager in the “SerBolivianoEs” campaign, led by UNDP in Bolivia, the first Bolivian digital campaign. Raisa was logistics coordinator in encounters for a more inclusive and participatory Bolivian digital space, “Conectándonos I – II”, funded by Global Voices and Hivos, in which indigenous communities, LGBT groups, women’s associations among others participated. Raisa also worked as Social Media Strategist of the digital platform “La Pública” project promoted by Hivos, that opens and manages spaces for active citizenship through social networks and outside them; she is an Open Data activist with Bolivian projects “Cuántas Más” and “Que no te la charlen””, the last one winner of Bolivia’s First Accelerator of Data Journalism.
Daniel Villatoro, Guatemala
Daniel Villatoro started working as a journalist in Plaza Pública, an online media dedicated to do in depth journalism. There, he has worked in the Maps and Data section of the newspaper, as an investigative reporter and in other data driven projects. He graduated from Plaza Publica’s two year training program in 2014. His work has also been featured in other media like El Faro and Data Politica (El Salvador), Fáctico and Animal Politico (México) and Ojoconmipisto —a project about local corruption reporting in Guatemala’s municipalities—. He has a taste for maps, so he publishes some and tries to travel others. In 2014 he was part of the group that investigated the way the guatemalan government hid the deaths of kids who died due to malnutrition by analysing a database with all the death records of the country. In 2015 he did a series about political party financing by researching all the financial record data from the top three presidential candidates.”
Ximena Villagrán, Guatemala
Ximena studied journalism in Guatemala and then a master’s degree in data and investigative journalism at El Mundo newspaper in Madrid, Spain. She’s currently working as a data reporter in Guatemala. Her beginning at data journalism was at the independent media outlet, Plaza Pública, where she discovered the power of data journalism to tell stories and began to learn more about it. By now she is exploring the power of open data and information access laws to create journalism tools available to all kind of people in Guatemala. Also, she is creating a model to include data journalism and visualizations in breaking news. In 2015, she worked at the data journalism unit of El Confidencial, Spain, where she learned about how to integrate a small data journalism unit into a traditional web newspaper. She also teaches data journalism at Universidad del Istmo in Guatemala, that has the best journalism school in the country.
Omar Luna
Omar studied Social Communication at the Universidad Centroamericana “Jose Simeon Cañas” (UCA). He specialized in various areas such as quantitative and qualitative research, institutional communication, popular culture, proofreading, gender, among others. In 2008, he started working in different areas, such as education, journalism, research and collaboration. Two years ago, he found out the power of data as valuable inputs to evaluate speeches and traditional perspectives on many issues, such as gender violence and memory. Currently, he work as data consultant of the Business Intelligence Department at CentralAmericaData.com, one of the main business portals in Central America, for which he elaborate economic reports.