The Advisory Board consists of five people who bring external feedback to the PDL, advise the PDL on its activities and support the PDL in promoting its activities. Members of the Advisory Board are:
Nikki Böhler
... is co-founder of Intersections and FutureSense. As a social entrepreneur and from her experience with impact-oriented work, she recognises the importance of a solid data foundation and data processing. In her previous role as managing director of Opendata.ch, she not only dealt intensively with the worth and importance of data, but also advocated for data to be used for social wellbeing. In the DIZH Public Data Lab, Nikki sees high potential for laying the foundations for evidence-based and impact-oriented decision-making in politics, administration, and beyond.
Nicola Forster
... is a social entrepreneur, a foundation and board member, and a lawyer. He co-founded the staatslabor and the think-tank foraus. He has been engaged in civil society for many years, amongst others as president of the foundation Science et Cité and, until 2024, as president of the Swiss Society for the Common Good (SSCG). Nicola is currently setting up a new foundation to tackle social challenges together with actors from civil society, the economy, and government. Nicola believes that an innovative state is needed to make meaningful, data-based decisions for the common good, which is why he supports the DIZH Public Data Lab.
Petra Keller Guéguen
... is head of staff at the Federal Statistical Office. In this role, she also heads the Open Government Data Office, which ensures that public data is accessible, usable, and understandable – for the administration, research, economy, and society. Since her studies in sociology, Petra has been fascinated by how data can serve as a key to understanding social processes. Thanks to her experience at the interface between statistics and politics, she knows how important reliable and high-quality data is as a basis for decision-making. She supports the DIZH Public Data Lab because it aims to make open data understandable and usable for society – in a creative, interdisciplinary and socially relevant way.
Daniel Morgenthaler
... has been curator at the Helmhaus in Zurich for 14 years. He is a member of the Kunstkreditkommission Basel-Stadt. He closely collaborates with Zurich and Swiss artists, supporting them in the conception and production of their works. Again and again, he is surprised by how artists find their ways to address pressing social and political issues in their works. Daniel is looking forward to seeing how statistics, data handling and art will be interwoven within the DIZH Public Data Lab and what tangible results will emerge from this.
Ralph Straumann
... is a partner, member of the IT division management team and head of data science at EBP. Additionally, he is a lecturer for the CAS Spatial Data Analytics at the FHNW and the CAS Geographic Information Systems and Analysis at ETHZ. Thanks to his activities and his experience, he is familiar with important issues that the public sector faces and with the data landscape in Switzerland. At the same time, he also knows where data is currently lacking. Ralph has expertise in data analysis and visualisation, particularly for issues that require domain knowledge. Ralph supports the DIZH Public Data Lab because its inter- and transdisciplinary approach convinces him and because it stands for values such as fairness, openness and accessibility, which are also important to him.