Board of Directors
Our Board of Directors, representing each of our leading corporate supporters, governs the Foundation and supervises its staff.
Demek Adams is a Practice Director in Grant Thornton’s Global Public Sector (GPS). He leads the Financial Management Operations practice, which delivers a portfolio of services to the federal government, such as accounting transformation, audit remediation and financial reporting.
Mr. Adams has over 10 years of experience serving federal clients in both the executive and judicial branches of government. With extensive financial management expertise, He delivers transformative solutions to address the government’s toughest audit and operational challenges. In addition to providing excellent client service, Mr. Adams is dedicated to developing accountants and consultants through mentorship and training within the financial management community.
Mr. Adams is a graduate of American University, where he earned his B.S in Accounting and Computer Information Systems.
Craig Clay has been with Donnelley Financial Solutions for 23 years and is the President of Global Capital Markets. Craig’s responsibilities include customer satisfaction and retention, owning the vision, strategy and goals for the Capital Markets business and aligning regional market strategies with the overall strategy. He is also responsible for delivering superior service distinctiveness to customers and delivery technology solutions to answer client needs. Craig has demonstrated leadership, a customer focus, and commitment to results throughout his career with Donnelley and its corporate predecessor, RR Donnelley.
Prior to joining RR Donnelley, Craig was with American Eurocopter a subsidiary of Aerospatiale. Craig received a BBA in Finance and International Business from Baylor University and MBA from Southern Methodist University.
Nick Hart is the Interim President of the Data Foundation. Prior to joining the Data Foundation, Hart was Director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Evidence Project. In that capacity, he championed a strategy for implementing the bipartisan recommendations issued by the U.S. Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking. Hart previously served as the policy and research director for the commission, overseeing the policy and research team and leading development of the commission’s final report, The Promise of Evidence-Based Policymaking, for Congress and the President in 2017.
With nearly a decade of experience in the federal government, Hart worked on a wide range of issues including social security, disability, anti-poverty, environmental, energy, economic development, and criminal justice policies. He served at the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) as a senior analyst and special assistant, writing executive branch budget proposals and encouraging increased capacity for evidence-based practices across government. He also served as OMB’s representative on the White House steering committee for President Barack Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper Task Force.
Hart has spoken widely about the need for government capacity to facilitate using data to inform decision-making inside and outside of government. He is an expert in federal policies related to data, evaluation, statistics, science, and privacy. In 2019, he received the FCW Federal 100 award.
Hart is an adjunct professor of program evaluation at George Washington University. He serves on the boards of the Data Foundation and the Washington Statistical Society. He also chairs the American Evaluation Association’s Evaluation Policy Task Force.
Hart earned a doctorate from George Washington University’s Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration, specializing in program evaluation. He also holds a Master of Science degree in Environmental Science and Master of Public Affairs degree from Indiana University, and a Bachelor of Science degree from Truman State University.
Hudson Hollister founded the Data Coalition in 2012 to serve as the leading industry advocacy group for open data in government. He has helped to craft landmark U.S. government data reforms, including the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 (DATA Act) and the Financial Transparency Act.
In early 2016, Hudson founded the Data Foundation, a nonprofit research organization, to work alongside the Data Coalition and partner with government to deliver insights, education, and programming supporting open data transformations.
Prior to founding the Data Coalition and the Data Foundation, Hudson served as counsel to the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform of the U.S. House of Representatives and as an attorney fellow in the Office of Interactive Disclosure at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Before his government service, he was a securities litigator in the Chicago office of Latham & Watkins LLP.
Hudson received his Juris Doctor from Northwestern Pritzker School of Law in 2005 and a bachelor’s degree in political science and mass communication from theUniversity of St. Francis in 2002. He is a native of Joliet, Illinois.
Brett is the CEO and Co-founder of data.world, which is building the most meaningful, collaborative, and abundant data resource in the world. He is also a seed-stage investor at Hurt Family Investments (HFI) in partnership with his wife, Debra. HFI are involved in 45 startups and 11 VC funds. HFI has directly made 34 startup investments, and Brett has also joined the Advisory Board of 11 additional companies. Prior to HFI, Brett founded Bazaarvoice (NASDAQ: BV) and served as CEO and President for 7½ years, leading the company from bootstrapped concept to almost 2,000 clients worldwide and through its successful IPO. He subsequently guided the company through a successful follow-on offering and two acquisitions, PowerReviews and Longboard Media. Prior to Bazaarvoice, Brett founded Coremetrics and helped grow the company into a global, leading marketing analytics solution for the eCommerce industry before its acquisition by IBM.
Brett holds an MBA in High-Tech Entrepreneurship from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a BBA in Management Information Systems from the University of Texas at Austin. He serves as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Wharton School. Brett previously served as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the McCombs School of Business and also served on the Board of Directors of Shop.org for six years. Brett established the Bazaarvoice Foundation and is very active in the philanthropic arena. He received the Austin Entrepreneurs Foundation’s Community Leadership Award in 2012. Brett is entrepreneur empowerment group RISE’s Serial Entrepreneur of the year for 2012. He was named by E&Y as Entrepreneur of the Year for Austin in 2009 and is a member of the Austin chapter of the international Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO). Brett was named CEO of the Year for large companies by the Austin Business Journal in 2012 and received the Joseph Wharton Award for Young Leadership in 2013. Brett and Debra received the LBJ Humanitarian Award in 2014 for their dedication to public service, philanthropy, and the Austin community. Brett was awarded the Henry Crown Fellowship from The Aspen Institute and joined the 2015 XIX class, named "Dare, Greatly".
To help support Austin's entrepreneurs, Brett serves as a Partner at Capital Factory and Mentor at Techstars Austin; invests in early-stage companies, funds, and philanthropic endeavors with Hurt Family Investments; serves as the Chairman of the Board at Edgecase (formerly named Compare Metrics); and blogs at Lucky7.io. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Central Texas as well as Conscious Capitalism, both of which are non-profits designed to bring out the best in business in the way it can serve society at large. Brett can be followed on Twitter at @databrett.
Steven Meizanis is a senior executive with nearly 25 years of experience in the financial industry. Steven graduated summa cum laude from Rider University with a bachelor’s degree in finance. Steven is currently the global head of Bloomberg LEI Services and Entity Management. He also manages Open Symbology and the FIGI standard and Bloomberg’s Regulatory Content. With a focus on industry standards, Steven most recently led an effort through the GLEIF accreditation process, allowing Bloomberg to become a Local Operating Unit (LOU) and issuer of the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI).
Steven joined Bloomberg in 1994 and quickly became an expert in fixed income products, covering fixed income calculations and structured notes. Steven has held multiple positions over the years within the Global Data division, including manager of the Fixed Income department and Quality Assurance. Steven was also responsible for overseeing business development for Bloomberg Data License, which combines the resources of the Bloomberg Professional Service - the world’s most trusted source of information, analytics, data and news - with end of day reference data services.
Dean Ritz is a subject matter expert in information modeling with over three decades of experience in various data-dominated domains, including artificial intelligence, expert systems, object-oriented programming, and most recently the modeling of financial information. As a Senior Director at Workiva, he applies his expertise to product strategy for collaborative work management and the management of the company’s expanding patent portfolio. His interests extend to the topics of rhetoric and ethics, with scholarly work in these areas published by Oxford University Press (2011, 2009, 2007), and Routledge (in press 2017).
Adam Roth is the Founder and President of StreamLink Software, a privately held company offering AmpliFund, the leading enterprise grant management software platform. He developed AmpliFund in response to personally encountering a need for greater process efficiencies during a 15-year career in the nonprofit sector. Adam works closely with industry and government officials to facilitate the development of improved regulatory guidelines for managing grant funding using standardized data structures, speaking frequently on the topic to audiences around the country.
Dan Tucker leads Booz Allen’s Digital Platform capability team, which leverages platform as a service (PaaS), container as a service (CaaS), big data platforms, and cloud-based infrastructures to assist clients in developing business functions and applications in a cloud-native environment. He sponsors strategic alliances with platform technology partners and coordinates innovation and development initiatives in the cloud domain.
Dan has more than 20 years of professional experience in full lifecycle systems development, with a strong technical background in architecture analysis, and lean development methodologies in the federal and private sectors. He also provided oversight for Booz Allen’s continuous process improvement function, which maintains the organization’s Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) maturity level 5 rating, most recently refreshed in June 2016.
Dan leverages his background in Agile, DevOps, and lean systems development practices to identify and implement strategies aimed at optimizing productivity, increasing product quality, and reducing risk on large-scale systems development programs in the federal and commercial sector.
Dan holds a B.S. in mathematics from James Madison University.
Sherry Weir has been with Kearney since 1996 and became a Partner in 2005. Sherry directs Kearney’s financial management and information systems consulting business primarily within the Departments of the Treasury, Department of Education and Veterans Affairs.
Before joining Kearney, Sherry worked at SAIC, the Inter-American Development Bank, Coca Cola, Sperry Corp. (now UNISYS), Northern VA Community College and began her IT career as a Marine which she left in 1981 as a Sergeant.
Sherry holds a Master of Science in Information Systems and is a certified Project Management Professional. She is actively involved with ACT-IAC, AGA and AFFIRM. Sherry holds an elected position on the Executive Committee of ACT-IAC and just completed a 2 year position as the Treasury for the Board of AFFIRM.
Sherry lives in Florida with her husband, Dr. Arnold Fariello, DDS. Sherry has two children John and Danniel, two step-children Wendy and Jennifer andgrandchildren Alexis, Sierra, Angeline, Skyla, Emmet, Mila, Mirko and Jack.
Stephan Wolf was appointed by the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) Board as the CEO of GLEIF.
Since January 2017, Mr. Wolf is Co-convener of the International Organization for Standardization Technical Committee 68 FinTech Technical Advisory Group (ISO TC 68 FinTech TAG). The group acts as an advisory sounding board to support and engage with the Fintech community on standards requirements, for the effective and efficient use and development of standards to support FinTechs and the broader financial services industry, delivered using a cooperative relationship approach. The focus of the FinTech TAG will be on the following areas: Financial messaging, semantic technologies, blockchain / distributed ledger technology, mobile / digital wallets, digital currencies as well as security considerations related to these topics and interoperability with existing bank-channels.
In January 2017, Mr. Wolf was named one of the Top 100 Leaders in Identity by One World Identity.
Mr. Wolf has extensive experience in establishing data operations and global implementation strategy. He has led the advancement of key business and product development strategies throughout his career. Mr. Wolf co-founded IS Innovative Software GmbH in 1989 and served first as its managing director. He was later named spokesman of the executive board of its successor IS.Teledata AG. This company ultimately became part of Interactive Data Corporation where Mr. Wolf held the role of CTO until 2010 with development teams in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. He has a proven ability to build and to manage large organizations and partnerships, both globally as well as regionally with the ability to deliver complex solutions to the financial services industry.
Mr. Wolf holds a university degree in business administration from J. W. Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main.
John Runyan is President of Runyan Public Affairs (RPA), an independent government relations consulting firm assisting clients with a full range of government relations services, including: strategic issue advocacy, coalition management and PAC and grassroots program development. John opened RPA in 2009 after more than 25 years in the government relations profession.
John Runyan has broad experience in all facets of the government relations profession. He cofounded the Data Coalition in 2012 and previously served as Treasurer of the Data Coalition. He has managed the federal government relations lobbying team for a Fortune 100 global corporation, developed and managed both corporate and association political action committees, played leadership roles in major multi-industry business coalitions and chaired the business community’s largest grassroots and voter education program. He began his career on the staff of a U.S. Senator.
John earned his Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University. He and his wife Ruth live in Alexandria, Virginia and are the parents of two adult daughters.