Founder & CEO, Open Mind

Rose Shuman is Founder & CEO of Open Mind, a California nonprofit.  Question Box is a core initiative of Open Mind.  Question Box brings the Internet to people who may never get online in their lifetime, utilizing local language telephone hotlines with live operators.  Rose began developing the Question Box concept in 2006, launching the first pilot sites in 2007.  Question Box has connected thousands of people in India and Uganda to the information they need and want, the way they want it.

Rose has taken Question Box to full implementation in Noida, India, Pune, India, and two districts in Uganda. She manages Open Mind’s strategic partnerships and direction, and coordinates volunteers from around the world.

Previously, Rose was Head of Marketing for Adlens Ltd, a $20 million Oxford, UK social enterprise start-up, and was Senior Program Manager for Adaptive Eyewear, a non-profit dedicated to correcting vision in the developing world.  Prior to that, she was Corporate and Foundation Relations Manager at Direct Relief International, one of the largest nonprofits in the United States, liaising with the pharmaceutical industry for medical donations.  Rose holds a BA and Masters with Honors from Brown University in International Development, as well as BA from Brown in Visual Arts.

Rose has lectured at the University of California, Berkeley; the Haas School of Business; and the Europe Asia Business School of Pune, India. She has also presented at the World Health Congress, SXSW, and the W3C Workshop on the Role of Mobile Technology in Social Development.  Rose is also a DASRA Social Entrepreneurship Fellow and a TEDIndia Fellow, as well as a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

CTO, Open Mind

Jon Gosier joined Open Mind’s Question Box project in June 2008. Since then, he has become the anchor of Open Mind’s activities in Uganda and the Great Lakes region. Jon has overseen the build of specialized backend software. The software, now launched as Open Question and made available Open Source, allows even a small organization to run its own Question Box service, even if the Internet is down much of the time. Jon has also managed day-to-day operations of Open Mind’s pilot with Grameen Foundation, maintained the website, and built What the World Wants to Know, a spooling list of questions from Uganda displayed in real time.

Jonathan Gosier is also founder of Appfrica.org and a TEDGlobal 2009 Fellow. Appfrica invests in east African software start-ups to create jobs and prevent brain-drain. He currently lives in Kampala, Uganda where he is working on two fronts: to encourage western businesses and investors to engage African entrepreneurs and in developing parts of Africa to encourage the adoption of computers, programming and use of the Internet. His novel Muxtionary explores a potential future where the world has become a technological utopia but Africa is still like it is today.

Project Co-ordinator, India

Nikhil spearheaded the effort to found Open Mind’s Indian affiliate, Open Mind Trust (India). Open Mind (India) is a registered charitable trust in Maharashtra State, India, and the local seat of Open Mind’s activities in India. Nikhil oversees local fundraising, strategy, and recruitment of local staff and MBA project volunteers. He is Secretary on the Board of Open Mind (International). An internationally-recognized expert on Information and Communications Technology (ICT), Nikhil is a High-Level Adviser to UNGAID and a Professor of ICT. He is also Director of Europe Asia Business School, which recently received venture capital funding. Prior, Nikhil was an Assistant Professor at SP Jain Institute of Management and Assistant Professor & Research Fellow, Institute of Management Technology. He received his MPhil from University of Cambridge in England, and his Ph.D from the Institute of Management Technology. Nikhil also received a BBA from Devi Ahilya Vishwavidyalaya. Nikhil is Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce (JIBC), Aspen University.

Lead Hardware Engineer, a.k.a. Grand Panjandrum of Question Box

Rama Sundaram (Masters from BITS-Pilani , MBA from London Business School ) has been associated with QB since September 2008 . He is responsible for taking the original specifications into a hardware reality. He successfully installed and managed the first Question Boxes in Pune, India. Rama runs his own engineering company in India, Propellex, which is into vehicle and people tracking and has built high tech applications for remote data exchange and M2M applications.