A Farewell from Our Director!
Dear friends of the Open Gov Hub,
This is OGH Director Nada Zohdy writing to share some big news: After 7 years of leading and growing all aspects of the Open Gov Hub, I am now stepping down from my role!
Each year in this position up until now has given me tremendous learning, growth and collaboration opportunities that I am deeply grateful for. But after 7 years, I simply found myself ready to start a new adventure and pass the baton!
Our incredible existing team that many of you know will continue this work in the months to come, so I encourage you to be in touch with them! Tony Rodriguez will step up to oversee OGH’s Business Operations with support from Guillaume Bokanga, while Izabela Chmielewska will step back in on a part-time basis to offer Member Support (with both current and prospective members) during this transition.
I will be staying close though - still in Washington D.C and working in this field. Later this summer I will start a new position at the Obama Foundation, as their first-ever Global Network Lead - to support and connect 800+ Obama Foundation leadership program alumni to collaborate on key global issues, including challenges to democracy and climate. I am also joining the OGH Advisory Council.
I joined the Hub as its sole employee (housed within our parent organization, Global Integrity) back in the early days in 2015. One of the things I’m most proud of over all these years is our exceptional member retention and satisfaction rates - 92%+ year after year, even through the pandemic (which we survived as a nonprofit almost wholly funded by coworking memberships - despite the odds!). This has been alongside steady growth in our membership base (now over 65 organizations), our budget and team size, our partnerships (including 13 global affiliate hubs), our programs (unique initiatives like Defending Democracy and Introduction to Open Government trainings), and even our physical shared space.
The timing of my transition also feels serendipitous for two reasons.
First, because many organizations are now fully settling in to “post-COVID” ways of working, which have a direct impact on how the Hub works. We’ve been closely monitoring and adapting to such trends, and the Hub will continue to further adapt to now-permanent hybrid ways of working. Second, because my transition also overlaps with Global Integrity’s Executive Director leadership transition and recruitment that you may have seen. As collaboration from its inception, the Hub has always been co-owned and operated by Global Integrity in partnership with Development Gateway. Internally, we’ve made great strides recently to better define and maintain the Hub’s core operations, while also integrating the Hub’s strategy and programs with Global Integrity’s own evolution. So this transition moment opens up new possibilities for balancing staffing needs, mission-driven programs, and financial sustainability for the future through further internal alignment, efficiencies, and integration.
As a meeting place and innovation hub, OGH is successful when we help our members and partners be more successful themselves - by sharing resources, ideas and working together in a variety of ways toward our common goal of opening up governments to work better for their people, and supporting civic engagement around the world. So I invite you to stay connected with this unique and important work and help write the next chapter, together.
In fact, the Hub’s milestone 10 year anniversary is coming up toward the end of this year! Please stay in touch with me personally if you like (via LinkedIn), and stay engaged with the Open Gov Hub community, to support the next decade of resource sharing, collaboration and global impact!
Onwards and upwards,
Nada Zohdy
