Hi, everyone!
If you’d like, we would love it if you took a moment to introduce yourselves here. Share anything you would like us to know about you, your company/organization, what you’re working on, or anything else!
Looking forward to getting to know you all!
Hi everyone, nice to meet you all!
I’m Brenna, Head of Customer Success and Support at OpenSanctions. My focus is on building a strong customer journey—ensuring that using OpenSanctions is not just smooth, but also engaging and valuable. I feel immensely grateful to learn something (ok, MANY things) new every day with this team and community, and I’ve found a real love for what OpenSanctions does and what people do with our data.
My background in Open Data started at Mapillary (now part of Meta), where I worked with the OpenStreetMap community, including humanitarian mapping projects worldwide. I’m passionate about making clear, accessible data contribute to meaningful change.
A little about me offline: I’m American but for the past decade I’ve called Sweden my home, I have three with three wonderful dogs, and I make killer chocolate chip cookies. I also will talk your ear off about Sony Aibo robots, Japanese cuisine, and the Golden-Age of Lucasarts video games.
If you ever need anything, please don’t hesitate to ping me or write into support@opensanctions.org so I can help you out. 
Looking forward to connecting with you all!
Hi everyone! I’ve worked as a financial and investigative journalist for 20 years with a big passion for uncovering white-collar crime in general and money laundering and bribery in particular– maybe bribery most of all as that takes place in the fascinating intersection of politics and business (let’s face it, advance-fee fraud is a nice intellectual challenge if you need to proof it but of less relevance than corruption … ).
I spent much of my career in the Middle East and South East Asia before joining the investigative newsroom CORRECTIV in Berlin where I led a number of award-winning investigations, including on the global CumEx tax fraud. I also published a book on the foreign corrupt practices still widespread in the export business of German industry. After a 159 days stint as the head of investigations at BILD newspaper I joined OpenSanctions in the autumn of 2024 to help develop our partnerships.
Hi, all!
I’m into cycling, data visualization, and global politics. I recently finished my Master’s in International Affairs at the Hertie School, focusing on International Security. Before that, I studied Linguistics, which kicked off my love for languages, literature, and the humanities.
During my master’s, I developed a strong interest in data science and statistical modeling, which led me to transition into the tech industry. Before that, I worked in communications, focusing on international cooperation. Now, as a Data Engineer at OpenSanctions, I help expand the database to track financial crime and politically exposed persons.
Bit of a mixed bag, but it all ties into my broader interests in policy, technology, and international relations.
Hi all! I’m a senior data engineer at OpenSanctions, working mostly on the data platform but helping out all over. I get excited about producing high quality, useful data. Also about helping people get the most out of the data.
Beyond data and tech, my background and boarder passion is public participation and the systems that enable that. I also love climbing mountains, cycling, sailing, music, food. So many things, preferably outdoors.
Hi, I’m Rita! 
As the Operations Manager at OpenSanctions, I focus on optimizing workflows and streamlining processes to support transparency and efficiency. With a strong background in operations and project management, I love finding creative solutions to drive impactful results.
Outside of work, I’m a fitness enthusiast, animal lover, and professional makeup artist.
If you ever need assistance, I’m happy to help in any way I can! Feel free to reach out at office@opensanctions.org
Hi everyone! I’m a Sales & Partnerships executive at OpenSanctions. If you’re looking for support on the commercial side, I’d be happy to connect and explore how our extensive dataset can be integrated into the right solution for you.
On a personal note, I have a passion for cooking and love diving into history and economics books. I also try to stay active whenever I can—whether it’s swimming, jogging, or heading out on the occasional hiking trip to reconnect with nature.
Looking forward to engaging with you all!
Hey all! I’m Friedrich, a data nerd from Berlin. I first started working on OpenSanctions in 2015 in order to build a sanctions dataset that could be used by investigative reporters in their cross-border, follow-the-money investigations. The data was used as contrast material for leaked datasets and bulk databases to identify indicators of illicit activity.
In 2021, I was given a government innovation grant by the German research ministry which allowed me to take the (slightly ramshackle) OpenSanctions codebase and turn it into a really nice data pipeline. This led to our first commercial users in 2022, and founding a corporation around the database in 2023
Hi, great to meet you all!
I’m Paco, and I work for Senzing.com in devrel for entity resolution + graph technologies. I lead efforts to build open source tutorials about related tech, especially where we can show use of open data. Thank you for all you do at OpenSanctions!
I live in the coastal redwoods in Northern California, near Santa Rosa, though originally from San Luis Obispo further south. Translated: wine country 
Background: I was in an experimental undergrad program in the mid-1980s which Stanford renamed “Data Science”, then studied AI in grad school with lots of ML and NLP, while working at NASA. I got super interested in neural networks and joined NN projects at Bell Labs and Motorola. Later I became a “guinea pig” for the introduction of AWS and cloud computing, and from that helped a team at UC Berkeley which became Databricks – and lots of early Data Engineering. I enjoy teaching, writing, speaking and organizing community events - used for Apache Spark, Project Jupyter, and other open source projects. Because of NLP work, I got interested in graph technologies.
Also, lots of cooking. Put me to work in the kitchen.
Hi, I’m Paul May, Security Consultant at OpenSanctions. I support the leadership with our compliance and security programs, including our ISMS, threat modeling, documentation and auditing.
I also work on investigative projects in Central Europe for journalism, due diligence and advocacy.
Hello. I am new here. I live in the UK and posting here in a personal capacity. I am interested in public authorities and freedom of information. At present, I am doing some work on sovereign wealth funds.
That sounds fascinating, I’d love to learn more about sovereign wealth funds and how they work in different countries. Have you published on the topic?
I haven’t published anything. At the moment, I am just collecting data in a structured form.