Promoting good governance and responsible businesses is central to OpenCorporates’ mission. This makes it particularly important that we hold ourselves to high standards in these areas, and a key way we do that is through our Operating Board.
We assembled our Operating Board last year to bring great governance to our operations, and to become a benchmark for how boards should be run.
The remit of our Operating Board is to:
- Ensure good governance and diversity in the way we make decisions
- Scale up and transform our growth to deliver our mission
- Oversee the continued expansion and improvement of our global company data coverage
- Attract new capital investment to make our ambitious goals possible
The timing of the Board was also important: we wanted to bring leading experts together to thoroughly plan out and think through our strategy for accelerating our growth so we achieve our ambition of leading the emerging market for transparent company data. We need to be the market leader because our transparent data is critical to fostering a responsible and thriving business environment, as well as a fair society.
Millions of users rely on our data every month for its provenance, freshness and quality, but we believe this is only scratching the surface of global demand. Businesses in all kinds of sectors are demanding more from the company data they use to power critical processes, and so we are scaling up to meet an increasing need.
Over the last year, our Board has developed a go to market strategy to build on this success and bring the company into a new phase of growth. The strategy is now being rolled out and we are scaling up fast.
Meet the Board
The Board is, so far, a team of five who bring significant leadership experience in the diverse areas of data, technology, law and the scaling up of successful businesses.
Our Operating Board members are:
- Oliver Ratzesberger
Chair
Oliver is a respected leader in the world of big data, who brings over 30 years of experience in fast scaling companies such as Teradata, where as CEO he oversaw their transformation to a cloud and subscription business model, as well as eBay. - Sarah Arana-Morton
Chief Executive Officer
Sarah brings nearly 20 years’ experience of growing businesses and building high performing teams in the data industry, including at dunnhumby, a data science company, where she developed business units across Europe, Asia-Pacific and the US from the beginning.
- Chris Taggart
Founder and Chief Strategy Officer
Chris grew OpenCorporates from an idea into a key part of the world’s data infrastructure. An experienced entrepreneur, Chris previously ran and founded successful magazines companies, and is an acknowledged expert on global company data. - Julia Apostle
Non-Executive Director
Julia is a partner in the Tech Transactions group of the law firm Orrick, who brings almost 20 years of legal experience from innovative organisations including Twitter and the Financial Times
- Alessia Falsarone
Non-Executive Director
Alessia is an experienced investor who currently heads the sustainable investing arm of asset management firm PineBridge Investments
The Operating Board is separate to the OpenCorporates Trust and its trustees, who are responsible for the protection of our public benefit mission.
A diverse board positioned for future success
We’re proud that a majority of women sit around the table at our board meetings – which is a rarity for companies in all sectors, not least those in the data or technology sector. We also have a truly international board whose members are spread across four countries.
We value diversity at OpenCorporates, and we are convinced it leads to better decision-making and a range of other benefits that will aid our goals.
blog.opencorporates.com 