Team
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Aiko Kempen
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Anett Seeker
Anett (she/her) is a computational linguist and works as a software developer at FragDenStaat.
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Anne Ware
Anne is responsible for fundraising at Jugend hackt. She has a degree in political and social sciences and has previously worked as a project manager and coach for youth participation and community programs.
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Arne Semsrott
Arne (he/him) leads FragDenStaat and is an expert in the domain of Freedom of Information (FOI). With a background in political science, he also works as a freelance journalist and engages with other NGOs in topics related to transparency and lobbyism, e.g. for LobbyControl and the Whistleblower Network.
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Ben Burmeister
Ben (he/him) manages the policy and advocacy work of the OKF and is the contact person for the F5 Alliance.
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Christina Willems
Christina (she/her) is a project manager for policy and open data.
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Danai Papadopoulou
Danai (she/her) supports the OKF in finances and controlling. Besides she works as a language teacher for refugees and immigrants. She has a degree in translation and is certified teacher of German as a second language.
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Dénes Jäger
Dénes (he/him) is project coordinator for policy and open data. He works as a freelance journalist and has several years of experience as data researcher in the field of digital political monitoring.
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Denis Witt
Denis is a system administrator at FragDenStaat since the end of 2023. Previously he worked in corporate education and training for almost 20 years, designing and managing server environments for OpenSource learning platforms.
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Dr. Henriette Litta
Henriette (she/her) is Managing Director of OKF Germany. She is a political scientist. Read more about Henriette’s work in this biography.
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Dr. Vivian Kube
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Elena Buscaino
Elena (she/her) is a communication designer and supports FragDenStaat as a social media consultant. She is active in the abolitionist movement against border regimes and for collective liberation struggles.
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Eliah
Eliah (he) has been in charge of the Jugend hackt Lab network since 2025 and is involved in developing the educational program. He is also active in anti-discrimination work and, after completing his teaching degree, worked with autistic students in a school context.
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Enyong Küsgen
Enyong (she/her) works as Program Manager at the Prototype Fund. Next to it she works as a resource-oriented coach and supports groups, organizations and individuals to deepen their appreciation, mindfulness and self-determination - especially in the context of collaborative work.
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Gerd Kant
Gerd (he/him) is a software developer and, outside of FragDenStaat, serves as a board member of the Schwerin Hackspace and as the lab lead of the Jugend hackt Lab Schwerin.
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Giulia Norberti
Giulia supports the management in bookkeeping, finances, accounting and general chaos management
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Gregor
Gregor supports us and our projects as Devops and system administrator. He works on facilitating open source software in business context.
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Hannah Vos
Hannah is with the OKF since March 2021 and part of FragDenStaat’s legal team.
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Joschi Wolf
Joschi (they/them) is a climate consultant at FragDenStaat. They is a journalist, education speaker and environmental engineer and has been active in the environmental and climate justice movement for over ten years.
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Judith Doleschal
Judith is part of the FragDenStaat team and responsible for community management and fundraising.
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Kara Engelhardt
Kara (she/her) leads the tech-team at FragDenStaat.
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Lisa Jahn
Lisa supports Jugend hackt as project manager for events. Previously, she worked for a research museum on participation processes and formats as well as for various cultural institutions and projects.
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Luisa Izuzquiza
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Marie Kreil
Marie manages the Prototype Fund together with Patricia. She is also in charge of managing the projects during their funding period. She studied cultural journalism and researched new models for online journalism platforms. Since then, she has worked as a freelance journalist, campaigner, communications officer, infosec trainer and event organizer for various projects in journalism, privacy and open source.
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Marie-Lena Wiese
Marie-Lena (she/her) manages the funded projects at the Prototype Fund. She studied Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science in Halle, Marburg and Cairo. Previously, she worked in a project for digital democracy promotion.
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Mattea Weihe
Mattea (she/her) is responsible for the communication team of FragDenStaat and develops political media strategies. She focuses a lot on the topics of migration, human rights and democracy.
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Max Kronmüller
Max (he/him) works at FragDenStaat as Student Assistant, where he previously also completed his year of voluntary service.
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Maximilian Voigt
Maximilian Voigt manages the Prototype Fund Hardware for the OKF. He works on improving the transparency of technical products for civil society to create more opportunities for participation. Specific projects include the right to repair and the digital product passport. Before his work at the OKF he co founded the FabLab Cottbus e. V., studied technical journalism, public relations and culture and technology. His master thesis was about the educational potential of open workshops.
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Melek Bazgan
Melek (she/her) is studying Sociocultural Studies in Frankfurt (Oder) and works as a student assistant at the Brussels office of the project FragDenStaat.
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Nadja Laschinski
Nadja (she/her) supports our managing director and our projects in accounting and office management.
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Nils Deventer
For years, Nils (he/him) has been roaming around on mountains, rivers and trees as an adventure educator. In between, he was also engaged as a theater educator at various state theaters, where he developed plays with young people. Since 2021 he has been part of the Jugend hackt alpaca flock as educational director.
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Nina Schröter
Nina (she/her) has been responsible for the events ath Jugend hackt since the beginning of 2020. Prior to her time at Jugend hackt, she spent many years designing and supporting participation processes.
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Patricia Leu
Patricia (she/her, on parental leave) runs the Prototype Fund together with Marie and is also responsible for the Prototype Fund’s communication. She studied religion and culture in Berlin and did research on media discourse hegemony. Previously, she worked in public relations for various NGOs.
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Paul Robben
Paul is responsible for communication and project management at the Prototype Fund. He studied mathematics and is active in the climate justice movement. Previously, he worked at BUND e.V., where he organized the Bits & Bäume Conference 2022.
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Philip Steffan
Philip (he/him) joined Open Knowledge Foundation Germany in August 2018 as the new Community Manager of Jugend hackt. He’s always loved to connect, communicate and explain and has played an important part in the German Maker community in the past years as a makerspace founder, blogger, tech journalist and curator of Maker Faires.
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Sabrina Winter
Sabrina (she/her) works as an investigative journalist in the research team at FragDenStaat. She studied International Criminology, Sociology, and Political Science in Dresden and Hamburg. She completed her journalistic training at Henri-Nannen-School.
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Sonja Fischbauer
Sonja (she/her) works as specialist for organizational development and community strategy in the management team. As part of that role, she manages collaboration with the civic tech network Code for Germany. From 2018 to 2020, she was a program manager for Jugend hackt.
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Sophia Schulze Schleithoff
Sophia has been responsible for conducting accompanying research and for organising events at the Prototype Fund since January 2023. She studied politics, economics, and philosophy in Hamburg.
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Stefan Wehrmeyer
Since 2009 Stefan Wehrmeyer promotes Open Data and he started the Freedom of Information (FOI) portal FragDenStaat.de in 2011.
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Thomas Babyesiza
Thomas has been a press and public relations officer at FragDenStaat since 2023. He studied political science with a focus on German and European politics. He completed his training as a press officer at ECCHR Berlin e. V. At FragDenStaat, Thomas is responsible for communication regarding strategic process management and work in a European context.
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Vera Deleja-Hotko
Vera is an investigative journalist and manages journalistic research at FragDenStaat. Before, she worked as a freelance journalist mainly on the topics of migration, right-wing extremism, and social injustices for German, Austrian and Swiss media. She was part of the team working on the publication of the Ibiza-Video as well as the Frontex Files.
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Walter Palmetshofer
Walter is an economist by training and has been involved in the domain of Netzpolitik for many years. He is project lead of the EU research project Open Data Incubator (ODINE), the Digitaler Offenheitsindex [do:index], and supervises the Open Data Census. He worked as a system administrator in NYC, before moving to Berlin, where he co-founded a start-up in 2012.
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Yasemin Altınay
Yasemin (she/her) is the communications manager in the management team at Open Knowledge Foundation. She studied Applied Literary Studies in Berlin and is a qualified publishing manager.
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Yasemin Uyar
Yasemin (she/her) joined the FragDenStaat team in July 2024. She is a cultural scientist, educator, trainer for awareness workshops, and a certified EU fundraiser. She has worked for many years as a project manager in digital agencies.
Volunteers
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Dr. Jochen Klar
Jochen develops software in the scientific environment and works in various projects to professionally capture and store research data and to make it freely accessible via the Internet. Jochen supports the OKF team on a voluntary basis: he administrates the community server. He is also active in the Code for Germany network and co-organises the OK Lab Berlin.
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Ernesto Ruge
Ernesto is the founder and owner of binary butterfly, a software company specializing in web applications for transport and Open Data. Ernesto supports the OKF team in a volunteer capacity: He maintains the servers of the Wordpress blogfarm, housing numerous websites of OKF projects. When not tending to our websites, Ernesto is active in the Code for Germany network. As a volunteer developer he created the Civic Tech platforms Politik-bei-uns.de and mein-stadtarchiv.de. Ernesto also co-developed the data interface OParl, which benefits local government.
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Maximilian Richt
Maxi supports the OKF team in a volunteer capacity: As a software developer and Open enthusiast he has worked on many OKF projects. His experience and expertise are greatly valued by our tech team, who regularly turn to Maxi for consultation and hands-on help. Maxi has developed and deployed numerous Civic Tech and Open Source applications, with a passion for mobility and transport Open Data. As an active member of the volunteer network Code for Germany, he has developed Civic Tech platforms including kleineAnfragen.de and sehrgutachten.de.