Nikesh Balami

Background

About Nikesh Balami

Nikesh Balami is a civic entrepreneur, open data advocate, and tech researcher. He is the co-founder and CEO of Open Knowledge Nepal, a non-profit civic tech organization working to create a fair, sustainable, and open future by advancing open knowledge as a design principle beyond data. With extensive experience in business development, project management, and capacity building, Nikesh has been instrumental in promoting data-driven decision-making across various sectors. He is a strong supporter of open-source software and believes in the vision of Open Knowledge to empower citizens regarding technology usage and open data. He loves coffee chat, tweeting, hackathons, blogging, traveling, and open data. Nikesh has received numerous accolades, including being named a Shuttleworth Flash Grantee in 2016, a member of the U.S. Embassy Youth Council in 2017/18, an OpenMRS Community Management Fellow in 2022, Climate Action Champions Network (CACN) Cohort for 2023/24, and a Datasphere Fellow for 2023/2024. In addition to his work at Open Knowledge Nepal, Nikesh is actively engaged with several other organizations. He serves as the Secretary of the Nepal-US Alumni Network (NUSAN), a Board Member of the Open Data Charter, and a Founding Member of Open Internet Nepal. Nikesh has also contributed significantly as the International Open Data Lead at Open Knowledge Foundation and as a program coordinator at Code for Nepal. His daily responsibilities include coordinating diverse tech and data projects, writing research papers and reports, scraping and harvesting government data, and occasionally coding. Nikesh brings a wealth of experience from his work with private, non-profit, and government organizations.