About Open Ownership
What is Open Ownership?
Open Ownership is a global nonprofit working to make information about the true owners of companies more transparent. Verbatim from /what-we-do: "Open Ownership (OO) believes that information on the true owners of companies is an essential part of a well-functioning economy and society. Public registers of beneficial owners give access to high-quality data about who owns, controls, and benefits from companies and their profits. This information, known as beneficial ownership transparency (BOT), helps tackle corruption, reduce investment risk, and improve national and global governance."
Since 2017, OO has worked with almost 40 countries to advance beneficial ownership reforms and supported the creation of over 15 new central and sectoral registers. The team developed the world's leading data standard for beneficial ownership information (the Beneficial Ownership Data Standard, BODS), co-founded the international Beneficial Ownership Leadership Group with the Open Government Partnership in 2019, and built the world's first transnational public beneficial ownership register. The Global Open Ownership Register holds beneficial ownership data on nearly 8 million companies. Open Ownership receives funding from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the World Bank, and operates three workstreams: technical assistance, technology and capacity, and research. The Open Ownership Strategy 2025-2030, "From transparency to trust", sets the team's next five years of direction.
Where will I work?
Open Ownership is a fully distributed nonprofit. Verbatim from /what-we-do: "Based across five continents, OO's team of policy and technical experts works on three key areas." The DB sidebar indicates flexible work locations within GMT +/- 5 hours, suiting a global team. Past country engagements have included Ukraine, Armenia, the Kyrgyz Republic, Kenya, Nigeria and others — staff routinely engage with national government agencies.
What is the Open Ownership team like?
The published team page lists 21 named people across three director-level roles, six senior-manager roles, and assorted regional managers, policy advisors, technical leads and operations associates. Executive Director Thom Townsend leads alongside Deputy Executive Director Louise Russell-Prywata, Director of Finance and Human Resources Claire Reichenbach, and Director of Country Implementation Karabo Rajuili. The Head of Policy and Research is Tymon Kiepe; Senior Regional Managers Favour Ime (Africa) and Emily Manuel (Asia Pacific) lead the regional teams. The team verbatim "thrives on collaboration with a diverse and global range of people."
Work-Life Balance
The DB-recorded schedule policy is a 4-day pro-rata week at 32 hours with 25 days of paid vacation. No first-party page on openownership.org currently corroborates the 4-day, 32-hour schedule — the field is flagged for review and retained pending verification. Open Ownership's nature (a globally distributed nonprofit covering technical assistance in multiple time zones) is consistent with the flexible-hours, GMT ±5 working pattern described in the sidebar.
Perks and Benefits
The Open Ownership website does not publish a benefits list on the careers, about, team or "working with" pages — the only employee-facing public claim is "OO's team of policy and technical experts" working across five continents.