Jeni Tennison is the CEO of the Open Data Institute, which has a mission to work with companies and governments to build an open, trustworthy data ecosystem. She specialises in the technology, public policy and cultural transformations needed to support these systems.

She gained her PhD from the University of Nottingham then worked as an independent consultant, specialising in open data publishing and consumption, before joining the ODI as Technical Director in 2012 and becoming CEO in 2016. Jeni was awarded an OBE for services to technology and open data in the 2014 New Year Honours.

Before joining the ODI, Jeni was the technical architect and lead developer for legislation.gov.uk. She worked on the early linked data work on data.gov.uk, including helping to engineer new standards for publishing statistics as linked data. She continues her work within the UK’s public sector as a member of data advisory boards for the Ministry of Justice, Department for Transport and Department for Education.

Jeni served on the W3C's Technical Architecture Group from 2011 to 2015 and co-chaired the W3C’s CSV on the Web Working Group. She also sits on the Advisory Boards for the Open Contracting Partnership and the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data.