Joel Gurin

Joel Gurin is an internationally recognized open data expert with a background that combines government, journalism, and nonprofit leadership. He focuses on democratizing the use of data and on data for equity, climate action and improving health. 

His experience includes organizational leadership and management; strategic planning; convening and facilitation; writing, editing, and publishing; conceptualizing online resources and tools; and translation scientific and technical concepts for the public.   

Since 2015 Joel has led the Center for Open Data Enterprise (CODE), the nonprofit organization he founded with a mission to harness the power of open and shared data for the public good. CODE is expert at bridging the gap between data providers and data users, through Open Data Roundtables, workshops, research papers and online resources. CODE has collaborated with the White House, numerous Federal agencies, other national governments, intergovernmental organizations, businesses, and other nonprofits. 

Joel’s leadership of CODE built on his previous experience as an open data researcher and advocate, beginning when he was Chief of the FCC’s Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau during President Obama’s first term. His bureau’s work on “bill shock” led to a landmark industry agreement to make cell-service billing more transparent. Drawing on that success, Joel served as Chair of the White House Task Force on Smart Disclosure, which studied how open data can improve consumer markets. 

He wrote the book Open Data Now, which helped define this emerging field, and led the NYU GovLab Open Data 500 project, which demonstrated how the private sector relies on open government data. The team for that project then launched CODE to promote open data nationally and internationally from Washington, DC.

Joel began his career as a science journalist after graduating Harvard College with a degree in biochemistry (magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa). He has won top science writing awards from the AAAS and the National Association of Science Writers, and has written for The Atlantic, Smithsonian and The New York Times, among many other publications. He has co-authored four books on health and medicine, including Mind/Body Medicine with Daniel Goleman, PhD, and The Dieter’s Dilemma, which popularized the revolutionary setpoint theory of weight control. For nine years he edited American Health, one of the fastest-growing magazines of its time and the first health magazine to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence. After American Health he became the science editor, then editorial director, and finally executive VP of Consumer Reports, where he saw the power of data to improve people’s lives. As the operational leader for this $200 million, 500-staff organization, he revamped the magazine, launched new print publications, and directed the launch and development of ConsumerReports.org, which was then the world’s largest paid-subscription information-based website. His work at Consumer Reports led to his joining the FCC.

In addition to receiving numerous journalism awards, Joel has been elected as a Fellow of the National Academy for Public Administration. He was also one of only five nonprofit leaders selected to the FCW Federal 100 in 2023, with a citation that described him as “zeroed in on the use of data for the public good and social justice.”