OGP Announces New Executive Director and IRM Program Manager

The Open Government Partnership is delighted to announce two new members of the Support Unit team!

On January 3, 2013, the OGP Support Unit will welcome Linda Frey as its new Executive Director.  As Executive Director, Linda will manage the secretariat of the Open Government Partnership, working closely with the Steering Committee to outline clear strategic priorities and cultivate high-impact partnerships to achieve these goals.   Reporting to the Governance and Leadership sub-committee of the Steering Committee, Linda will work in close contact with senior government officials and civil society leaders to execute OGP’s strategic plan, while managing a multi-million dollar budget funded by governments and private foundations.

Linda comes to OGP from the Hewlett Foundation, where since 2004 she has been program officer for their global development and population program. After helping develop the first strategic plan for the (then) Global Development Program, since 2005 Linda has managed a growing portfolio of grants to promote transparency and accountability in public spending and service delivery in developing countries. She has developed grantmaking strategies to promote budget transparency and aid transparency, as well as to improve the effectiveness of U.S. development assistance. In addition, Linda helped launch and then oversee the "Think Tank Initiative," a multi-donor fund to strengthen policy research institutes based in the developing world.  Prior to joining the Hewlett Foundation, she managed a variety of programs to strengthen democratic institutions in Latin America for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), based in Washington, D.C.  Linda holds a master's in public affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University and an undergraduate degree in political science from Duke University. She speaks English, French and Spanish.

On October 22, OGP also welcomed Joseph Foti as its new Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM) Program Manager.  As IRM Program Manager, Joseph’s responsibilities include working with the International Expert Panel to develop an assessment template for all OGP countries, helping to identify local researchers for OGP’s participating countries, working closely with each of the selected local researchers, shepherding draft reports through a government and IEP review process, preparing final reports for publication, and assisting in report outreach and dissemination.  

Joseph has over 6 years of experience in sustainable development and assessing good governance. Prior to joining the Open Government Partnership, he worked as a Senior Associate for the Access Initiative, a network led by the World Resources Institute (WRI). During his time at WRI, he helped to develop a number of indicator-based toolkits to assess access to information, public participation, and access to justice for matters affecting the environment. In particular, he led work in Latin America, work on poverty and access rights, and citizen participation in climate change adaptation policy. He was the lead author on a number of papers and reports on access to information, public participation, and access to justice in the environmental context, including Voice and Choice Opening the Door to Environmental Democracy and A Seat at the Table: Including the Poor in Decisions for Development and Environment. Prior to his work at WRI, he worked at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars on election runoff processes in Latin America and, for five years, as a public school teacher in the cities of Baltimore, Maryland and Oakland, California.

These two appointments represent the first of several new hires that OGP will be making within the Support Unit over the coming months as we build a small, committed team to support participating countries in achieving their open government commitments with the full engagement of civil society.  

In the coming days, OGP will begin advertising for two additional positions, a Deputy Director and a Program Associate.  The Deputy Director will report to and work closely with the Executive Director to implement the Support Unit’s work plan, including providing direct support to the rotating lead chair of the Partnership as needed.  In close coordination with the Executive Director, the Deputy will also be responsible for supporting regional and country-level outreach to OGP participants. The Program Associate will report directly to and work closely with the Executive Director to support the OGP Steering Committee and subcommittees.   This position will entail approximately 50 percent administrative support and 50 percent research and writing to support senior management. Full public announcements for these positions and application details will follow shortly.

Please contact Julie McCarthy, OGP’s current Director, with any questions at Julie.mccarthy@opengovpartnership.org