Publish What You Fund is grateful to all of its Board Members for their support to the organisation.

Giles Bolton, Chair

Giles Bolton is Responsible Sourcing Director at Tesco. He leads a team of 45 human rights and environmental experts around the world, responsible for ensuring good working conditions and sustainable sourcing across Tesco’s supply chain. Prior to joining Tesco, Giles worked for the UK Government’s Department for International Development for ten years, including roles in Kenya, Iraq and as head of the UK’s aid programme in Rwanda. In 2008 he wrote the activist book ‘Aid and Other Dirty Business’, on how western aid, trade and globalisation affect Africa, published in the UK, US and Canada.  Giles is a Member Board Director of the Ethical Trading Initiative and of SEDEX, the Supplier Ethical Data Exchange.

Claire Hickson, Vice Chair

Claire Hickson is managing director of Trio Policy Ltd and has over 15 years’ experience of working in policy, advocacy and communications for the public, private and voluntary sectors. Claire began her career in corporate public affairs, and spent several years working on international development and foreign policy for the UK government and voluntary sector. She was an adviser to the UK Department for International Development from 2000 to 2004. She has headed up advocacy and communications for international non-governmental organisation, Saferworld, managing teams in London, Brussels and New York.

Claire became an independent consultant in 2010 and set up Trio in 2011. She was a councillor in Southwark from May 2010 to May 2014 and Cabinet Member for Communities and Economic Development from May 2012 – May 2013. Claire is a trustee for Pancreatic Cancer UK and on the board of the Leathermarket Community Benefit Society.

Simon Gill, Treasurer

Simon Gill is the Director of the Budget Strengthening Initiative, part of the Overseas Development Institute which provides support to fragile states on public finance. The programme is developing innovative and adaptable forms of support in the areas of planning and budgeting, aid co-ordination and the design of systems to support service delivery.

Simon has extensive experience of public financial management reform and institutional development gained over the last 30 years. He has worked long term within a Ministry of Finance in Africa and in an implementing Ministry in South East Asia. In addition to the design, delivery and management of a range of technical co-operation programmes across Africa and Asia, Simon has also been directly involved in the delivery of a range of training programmes drawing on his experience as a Senior Lecturer in a UK Business school. Before joining ODI, Simon worked for the last 13 years with the UK Department for International Development, most recently as the Deputy Director responsible for the Finance function.

Hetty Kovach

Hetty is a Senior Program Officer for International Development Finance leading its work on ODA and bilateral financing mechanisms and institutions. Hetty has spent the last four years at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as a policy analyst in the Development Assistance Committee’s (DAC) Peer Review Division. She has reviewed the performance of seven DAC donors assessing the quality of their development cooperation policies and programmes in several recipient countries.

In her last year at the OECD, Hetty also led the DAC Network on Governance (GovNet), which brings together donors, international and civil society organisations to promote more effective governance in developing countries. Prior to the OECD, Hetty worked at Oxfam for six years leading their international policy and research team on aid effectiveness and development finance. She also worked for three years at European Network for Debt and Development (EURODAD). She is co-author of several Oxfam reports on aid effectiveness and wrote the first Concord/EURODAD AidWatch Report on EU Aid.

Paul Lenz

Paul Lenz is the Head of Finance and International Projects for mySociety and leads the international engagement team.

Paul’s role in mySociety covers overall operational management, but has specific focus on working with partner groups to use mySociety’s tools and open-source code base to drive democratic engagement and accountability around the world. This has included managing the re-launch of Mzalendo.com in Kenya and developing pa.org.za with the Parliamentary Monitoring Group in South Africa. Paul is also focused upon supporting and expanding the community of users of the Alaveteli Freedom of Information platform which is currently deployed in more than 20 countries. He leads the mySociety involvement with the Poplus project (Poplus.org) a federation founded by mySociety in partnership with Fundación Ciudadano Inteligente (FCI) in Chile to develop online tools that can be used by groups with little or no technical skills.

Paul has an MA in Biological Sciences from the University of Oxford and an Advanced Post-Graduate Diploma in Environmental Decision Making from the Open University. Prior to joining mySociety Paul worked in the commercial sector for 15 years in a range of marketing and management roles, most recently with BT Group PLC.

Thanks to our former Board members, including:

• Owen Barder
• Geoff Broadhurst
• Ellen Miller
• Sarah Mulley
• Fran Perrin
• Martin Tisne
• Eloise Todd
• Alexander Woolcombe

Founder and Patron

Karin Christiansen

Karin Christiansen is the founding CEO and Patron of Publish What You Fund. She was previously General Secretary of the Co-operative Party and currently also Chair of the Open Knowledge Foundation. Before setting up Publish What You Fund, Karin worked as a Policy Manager at ONE and Research Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI). She joined ODI having worked as an Economist at the Rwandan Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Agriculture. Prior to that, Karin worked for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In 2011 Karin was named as one of the Devex London 40 Under 40 International Development Leaders.

We are also very grateful to the other founders of Publish What You Fund:

• Martin Tisne is Investment Director at the Omidyar Network and previously set up Integrity Watch Afghanistan. Martin was Chief Executive of Tiri, which incubated Publish What You Fund from 2008-11.
• Helen Darbishire is Founder and Director of AccessInfo Europe. She brought the freedom of information perspective to Publish What You Fund’s development.
• Owen Barder led the aidinfo team at Development Initiatives from 2009-12, which recommended the creation of an open data standard. He is now head of the Center for Global Development Europe.

Read more about the Board’s Terms of Reference.
Read the minutes from Board Meetings.