Empowered Leaders

As civil society moves to increasingly data-centric and data-driven modes of doing work and making change, we face new challenges in stewarding and governing the assets that underlie and power those efforts.

New types of leaders are emerging to meet these challenges, but few resources are available to inform governance, stewardship and long-term responsible leadership in data-centric missions and ventures.

Building and supporting these leaders is one of the core capacities needed in civil society. We believe that these leaders will

• excel at the ability to convene and align stakeholders, and address issues of power
• need to understand the core issues, risks, and opprtunities of using data
• be capable of managing diverse needs and expertise, including governance, procurement, project management.

Technical leadership is not the focus here. These leaders themselves need not be technical experts, although they must be conversant in the core technical issues, which are evolving rapidly, and must be able to lead technical teams.

Innovation is not the holy grail. Building disruptive and