We partnered with The Black Wealth Data Center (BWDC) to recruit an Executive Director. The BWDC aims to empower decision-makers – including practitioners, elected officials at all levels, and philanthropists – as well as journalists, working to improve and chronicle economic opportunity by making it easier for them to find and analyze a wide range of factors correlated to economic well-being and progress by race. This new effort will also build a network for leaders and organizations working to create economic progress for Black families and communities.

The search resulted in the appointment of Natalie Evans Harris to the role.

Evans Harris is known for working with a broad network of academic institutions, data science organization, application developers, and foundations to advance the responsible use of data standards, APIs, and ethical algorithms to directly benefit people.

She co-founded and previously served as Head of Strategic Initiatives of BrightHive, a data trust platform delivering a suite of smart data collection, integration, and governance products to social services providers for improved access to and usability of social sector data.

Evans Harris founded the Community-driven Principles for Ethical Data Sharing community of practice with over 1200 active members focused on strengthening ethical practices in the data science community through crowd- sourcing of a Data Science Code of Ethics. Now the Global Data Ethics Project, she serves as a Strategic Advisor in advancing the adoption of tools, techniques, and practices developed by the community.

As a Senior Policy Advisor to the US Chief Technology Officer in the Obama Administration, she founded The Data Cabinet – a federal data science community of practice with over 200 active members across more than 40 federal agencies.

She was also part of the founding team for The Opportunity Project, establishing a process for multi-sector engagement to create digital tools using government data.

Evans Harris holds a BS in Computer Science from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. She earned her MPA in Information Systems Security from George Washington University.