Our Global Advisory Council
Our Global Advisory Council
The Data Tank’s Global Advisory Council is key to putting our mission of using data differently into action. Comprising 11 exceptional thought leaders from a broad range of backgrounds, regions, and sectors, our Council brings together experienced and thought leaders, innovators, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and civil society representatives. Their role is to support us with strategic advice, critique, and recommendations, shaping our activities to align with our mission of unlocking data’s potential. Additionally, they act as advocates for The Data Tank, expanding our reach and visibility within their respective areas of expertise and helping us liaise with their communities.
Anil Ananthaswamy
Jean-Claude Burgelman
Ciro Cattuto
Claudia Chwalisz
Silvana Fumega
Olivia Gambelin
Eniola Mafe
Brandeis Marshall
Bitange Ndemo
Marietje Schaake
Parminder Singh
Anil Ananthaswamy
Anil Ananthaswamy is an award-winning science journalist, and former staff writer and deputy news editor for New Scientist magazine. He is a 2019-20 MIT Knight Science Journalism fellow. He organizes and teaches an annual science writing workshop at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bengaluru, India. He writes regularly for Quanta, Scientific American, Nature, and New Scientist, among others.
His first book, The Edge of Physics, was voted book of the year in 2010 by UK’s Physics World, and his second book, The Man Who Wasn’t There, was long-listed for the 2016 Pen/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. His most recent book, Through Two Doors at Once, was named one of Smithsonian’s Favorite Books of 2018, and one of Forbes’s 2018 Best Books About Astronomy, Physics and Mathematics. Anil’s next book, Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI, will be published by Dutton, Penguin Random House, in Jan 2024.
Jean-Claude Burgelman
Jean-Claude Burgelman is professor of Open Science at the Free University of Brussels. He retired in March 2020 from the European Commission where he was in charge, from 2014 onwards, of Open Science at DG RTD. He and his team designed and developed the EC’s polices on open science, the European Open Science Cloud, open data, and open access.
Until 2000, he was full professor of communication technology policy at the Free University of Brussels, as well as director of its Centre for Studies on Media, Information and Telecommunication, and was involved in science and technology assessment. He has been visiting professor at the University of Antwerp, the European College of Brughes, and the University of South Africa, and sits on several academic journals. He chaired the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Innovation and was a member of its Science Advisory Committee.
He recently joined the advisory board of Open Knowledge Maps, Scimagine, and became the editor in chief of Frontiers Policy Lab. In 2022, he became the director of the Frontiers Planet Prize, a new prize to stimulate science that can save the planet.
Ciro Cattuto
Ciro Cattuto is the Scientific Director of ISI Foundation, a non-profit research institute based in Turin, Italy, focusing on data science, complex systems, and their applications to public health and social impact. He holds a PhD in Physics from the University of Perugia, Italy and has worked at the University of Michigan in USA, at the Enrico Fermi Center in Rome, at the Frontier Research System of RIKEN in Japan, and more. He is a former Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department of the University of Torino, a former Expert in the Italian Department of Digital Transformation, and served in the COVID-19 task force of the Italian Ministry of Innovation. He is a founder and principal investigator of the SocioPatterns project, an international collaboration measuring and modeling human proximity networks. He is an editorial board member of EPJ Data Science, Scientific Data and the Journal of Computational Social Science. He is a Fellow of the European Laboratory for Learning & Intelligent Systems and member of the Steering Committee of CRT Foundation.
Claudia Chwalisz
Claudia Chwalisz is the Founder and CEO of DemocracyNext, an international non-profit, non-partisan research and action institute with a mission to shift political and legislative power to people through empowered Citizens’ Assemblies. She works to build new democratic institutions that give people agency and dignity through participation, that distribute political power equally through selection by lot (sortition), and that channel collective intelligence and enable people to find common ground through deliberation. Previously, Claudia served as the Innovative Citizen Participation Lead at the OECD, where she established and analysed an evidence base of around 600 examples of deliberative assemblies around the world, co-authored the “Catching the Deliberative Wave” report, and set standards for implementation and institutionalisation. She was involved in designing the world’s first permanent deliberative bodies made up of people drawn by a lottery in Ostbelgien, Paris, and Brussels. Claudia is an Obama Leader Europe 2023.
Silvana Fumega
Silvana Fumega is a specialist on the intersection between data and inclusion. She is the co-founder of Data Against Feminicide together with Catherine D’Ignazio and Helena Suárez Val, as well as a Research Affiliate at the Data + Feminism Lab, MIT.
During her career she served as a consultant for numerous international organizations, governments, and civil society groups. She acted as Research and Policy Director of ILDA until December 2022. As part of her work at ILDA, she led projects such as “Regional Standardization of Data on Feminicide” and “Mapping of Data on Violence against LGTBQ+ people”. Since January 2023, she has been an independent consultant while also acting as Global Data Barometer project’s Director. Silvana holds a PhD from University of Tasmania, Australia. She also holds a Master’s degree in Public Policy from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and a degree in Political Science from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Olivia Gambelin
Olivia is an AI Ethicist who specializes in the practical application of ethics to technological and artificial intelligence innovation. She is the founder of Ethical Intelligence, an AI Ethics advisory firm providing Ethics-as-a-Service through the world’s largest network of Responsible AI practitioners. Olivia works directly with business leaders on the operational and strategic development of Responsible AI, and has advised various organizations from Fortune 500 to Series A startups across the healthcare, financial, and media sectors in utilizing ethics as a decision-making tool. In addition to her work as an ethicist, she is on the Founding Editorial Board for Springer Nature’s AI and Ethics Journal, Co-Chair of IEEE’s AI Expert Network Criteria Committee, and is on the Advisory Board of the Ethical AI Governance Group (EAIGG). Olivia splits her year between San Francisco, where she is an active member of Silicon Valley’s ecosystem of startups and investors, and Brussels, where she advises on AI policy and regulation.
Eniola Mafe
Eniola Mafe Abaga is the Founder and Principal of EMA Advisory and member of the Rural Opportunities for Universal Transportation Equity (ROUTE) coalition. Prior to joining ROUTE coalition, Eniola led the growth and development of a number of advocacy coalitions/initiatives at the World Economic Forum (WEF). She developed the OneMap Initiative, a cooperation and co-creation mechanism to help governments use geospatial data together with farmer data and other data to improve planning and decision making on agriculture and land use topic. Eniola also led the WEF’s development of the 2030 Vision Initiative, focused on harnessing 4IR technologies to accelerate progress on the Sustainable Development Goals within the next decade.
Eniola was the Co-Founder of #TheNewNigerian, an online community born out of #Endsars movement, now with a community of over 50,000, to reimagine, redefine, and shape a New Nigerian future through collaboration and collective action. In 2018, Eniola was named one of OkayAfrica 100 Women in Africa.
Brandeis Marshall
Brandeis Marshall is founder and CEO of DataedX Group, LLC. DataedX provides learning and development training to help educators, scholars and practitioners humanize their data practices. She is the author of Data Conscience: Algorithmic Siege on our Humanity (Wiley, 2022). Marshall speaks, writes, and consults on how to move slower and build better human-centered tech by highlighting the impact of data practices on technology and society. She has been a Stanford PACS Practitioner Fellow and Partner Research Fellow at Siegel Family Endowment. Marshall has served as a tenure-track faculty member at Purdue University and Spelman College. Her research work in data education and data science has been supported by the National Science Foundation and philanthropy organizations. She holds a Ph.D. and Master of Science in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Rochester.
Bitange Ndemo
Bitange Ndemo is Kenya’s Ambassador to Belgium and Mission to the European Union. Prior to his new assignment, he was Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Nairobi’s Faculty of Business and Management Sciences. He also served as the Chairman of the Kenya Distributed Ledgers and Artificial Intelligence Taskforce that developed a digital transformation road map. He is an advisor and Board member to several organisations, including Safaricom, a member of: MIT Artificial Intelligence Policy Forum (MIT AIPF) Panel member, OECD Expert Panel on Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain, World Economic Forum’s Global Blockchain Council.
Ndemo is former Permanent Secretary of Kenya’s Ministry of Information and Communication in Kenya. He facilitated many transformative ICT projects, including the undersea cables, open data initiatives, and the Silicon Savanah, a technology city under construction in Kenya. His other assignments include Senior Advisor to UN’s Global Pulse (Big Data initiatives), the UNCDF’s Better than Cash Alliance, and UNESCO’s Innovation Council. He is an Open Data/Big Data evangelist dedicated to simplifying (visualization) data for ordinary citizens to consume. He writes two columns every week for Business Daily and Nation online. He co-edited the book Digital Kenya: An Entrepreneurial Revolution in the Making.
Marietje Schaake
Marietje Schaake is international policy director at Stanford University Cyber Policy Center and international policy fellow at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.
Between 2009 and 2019, Marietje served as a Member of European Parliament for the Dutch liberal democratic party where she focused on trade, foreign affairs, and technology policies. Marietje is and (Advisory) Board Member with a number of non-profits including MERICS, ECFR, ORF and AccessNow. She writes a monthly column for the Financial Times and a bi-weekly column for the Dutch NRC newspaper.
Parminder Singh
Parminder is Executive Director of IT for Change, an Indian NGO in Special Consultative Status with the UN. Parminder has been a Special Advisor to the UN Internet Governance Forum and to the UN Global Alliance on ICTs for Development. He was a member of the UN’s Working Group on Improvements to the Internet Governance Forum, and of the UN’s Working Group on international Internet-related policies. He was involved with development of UNCTAD’s inaugural Digital Economy Report in 2019.
At India level, he has been a part of many committees and working groups of the government on digital issues; e.g. the Indian government’s committee that developed the first draft an e-commerce policy, and National Security Council’s committee on cyber-security. Parminder is currently a member of Government of India’s Committee on Data Governance Framework. He is also a member of G 20’s Think20 Task Force on Digital Public Infrastructure.
