Thom Townsend is from United Kingdom. He is OpenOwnership’s Executive Director and a chief strategist He directs implementation efforts and works with our partners to maximize our impact. His focus is on making sure that we deliver our goal of ensuring the world has more open, usable information about who ultimately owns and controls companies. Thom is an expert on open data and was previously Head of Data Policy for the UK government.

He has led some of the UK’s biggest open data commitments at the national and global level, and has spent his career ensuring that good data is being produced and used inside and outside of government. Thom led the open contracting elements of the 2016 London Anti Corruption Summit and it was here that the real push towards open, usable beneficial ownership data got started and OpenOwnership was born.

It was clear that beneficial ownership disclosure is the last link in the long chain required to follow the money and the next frontier to work on, which is why Thom left Government and now leads OpenOwnership.