Joel Gurin

Joel Gurin is the President and Founder of the Center for Open Data Enterprise (CODE) and an internationally recognized expert on open data. His book Open Data Now (McGraw-Hill), written for a general audience, is considered a benchmark publication that helped define this emerging field. Before launching CODE in January 2015 he conceptualized and led the development team for the GovLab’s Open Data 500 project, the first thorough study of the use of open government data by the private sector. Joel’s background includes government, journalism, nonprofit leadership, and consumer issues. He served as Chair of the White House Task Force on Smart Disclosure, which studied how open government data can improve consumer markets, and as Chief of the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. For more than a decade he was Editorial Director and then Executive Vice President of Consumer Reports, where he directed the launch and development of ConsumerReports.org, the world’s largest paid-subscription information-based website. He is a graduate of Harvard University with an A.B. in Biochemical Sciences, Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa. You can follow him on Twitter at @joelgurin.