We are excited to announce that we are growing! In the first five years of Open Heroines, we relied on volunteers to do work for the community. However, the community expanded fast (more than 700 people and growing), the pandemic hit and it became hard to get work done by volunteers alone. Moreover, we want to live by our values and acknowledge the time and effort done by women. We are happy to announce our 3 new part-time consultants that will help to nurture Open Heroines in the year to come and we hope you will engage with them more to help the community thrive even more.
Meet Marisa and Tracy, the Community Coordinators, and Wakini, the Communications Lead.
Marisa Miodosky is an Argentine gender policy specialist. She got her Political Science degree at the University of Buenos Aires and with a Fulbright scholarship got her Masters in Sustainable International Development from the Heller School for Social Policy, at Brandeis University, United States. Marisa has worked for more than fifteen years on social development issues such as urban and rural poverty, youth, and migrations. She has worked in civil society organisations and international organisations such as the World Bank, the Inter-American Bank, and the UK Foreign and Development Office. From 2018–2020, she coordinated the Buenos Aires City Gender Equality Strategy and for that work, she and her team were awarded by Apolitical as the Best Civil Service Team of the year promoting equality. Currently, she works at the Buenos Aires City Statistics and Census Bureau where she has developed the Gender and the Pandemic Indicator System and the Gender Indicator System, among other gender data projects. She teaches about data and gender at Di Tella University and is a mentor at the Three Dot Dash Foundation.
“I am thrilled to start as one of the Community Coordinators at OH and work towards making this platform flourish by giving it and its members higher visibility and voice in the open government field worldwide. I hope to help the community develop the habit of making strong relationships that in turn, I believe, will help to improve many lives, especially women’s lives.“
You can find her on Twitter, @MarisaMiodosky.
Tracy Kadessa is a Kenyan policy advisor, researcher, writer and artist. Having studied law at both graduate and undergraduate levels, she is keen on the intersection of technology and human rights as well as gender. In this regard, Tracy was a board member and an acting national coordinator for the Forum for African Women Educationalists-Kenya Chapter, an Internet Society ambassador( 2017), a consulting researcher for the State of Internet Freedom in Africa Report by CIPESA(Collaboration on International ICT Policy in East and Southern Africa ), a member of the Kenya Internet Governance Forum Multi-stakeholder Advisory Group, a participant researcher at the Citizen Lab Summer -Institute (University of Toronto) (2018) and a fellowship scholar at the International Maritime Organization-International Maritime Law Institute (2019–2020).
Tracy has been a member of Open Heroines since 2019 and understands the needs of the community very well. As a community coordinator, she aims to help members fully benefit from the rich and diverse network that is Open Heroines.
“There is so much to gain from being in Open Heroines, from shared opportunities to shared experiences, discussions and activities. I look forward to working with community members on projects, activities, events and everything else that will enable members to better leverage this amazing network.”
Wakini Njogu is a multimedia journalist, researcher and communications specialist. She is passionate about producing data-driven work that explores gender inequalities, human rights abuses and internet governance. She is currently a fellow at the Africa Women Journalism Project where she fact-checks health & gendered misinformation and produces data-driven stories highlighting the aftershock of the pandemic on marginalised groups.
