Established online presence and content strategy to guide new international NGO to greater visibility and leadership in the campaign for oil and mining transparency. Conceived a series of cutting-edge tools demonstrating the potential of open data to advance economic justice.

The Natural Resource Governance Institute was founded by George Soros in 2006 (as the Revenue Watch Institute) to promote openness in the management of the oil and mining industries, in particular in the developing countries that depend the most on natural resource revenues. NRGI supports activists, lawmakers and journalists with funding and expertise in the oil, gas and mining sector. It also helps governments secure a better deal for their resources and promotes reform through new rules in U.S. and European markets, and through programs like the Open Government Partnership and the EITI.

My primary role was as internet director, leading vision, planning and delivery of two website redesigns over five years, and launching RWI’s initiatives on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and its own blog. During RWI’s first three years, I also managed communications, guided creation of the group’s first annual report and added staff to the web team.

I pioneered our investment in open data projects, pushing RWI and the wider extractives transparency community to embrace the power of digital tools to make oil and mining data more available, easier to use and, most of all, easier to share between governments and citizens and between disconnected international organizations.

We launched tools including two editions of the Resource Governance Index and the groundbreaking repository of contracts, ResourceContacts.org. Conceived during a conference of the Transparency and Accountability Initiative, the contracts repository has grown into the largest public collection of natural resource contracts online.

Since 2013, I have continued to help guide the development of ResourceContracts.org as an NRGI advisor and consultant. From our first steps as a public voice and digital innovator, the organization has expanded its global advocacy for good governance, and stepped further forward as a proponent of experimentation and investment in open data.