Ibrahim El Badawi
Partner & CEO
Discover the women and men who are advancing the use of data, inspiring their peers, and transforming organizations as we move towards a data-driven future.
Back to listingIbrahim’s experience and expertise
Ibrahim El Badawi is Partner and CEO of 01Gov, a Dubai-born GovTech firm that supports public sector leaders across the UAE, GCC, and MENA in achieving measurable and sustainable public value through data-driven innovation and a dedicated AI-powered platform.
With over two decades of experience supporting governments, Ibrahim focuses on data for sustainable impact through interdisciplinary and cross-cultural methods that place humans at the center of data programs. His work emphasizes practical adoption, institutional readiness, and alignment with local context. He founded the Open Data Institute Dubai in 2013, became a Certified Open Data Trainer with the Open Data Institute (UK) in 2014, and served as a Founding Board Member of Open Data Australia.
Ibrahim has collaborated extensively with UN-DESA and UN-ESCWA, including serving as the main contributor to UN-ESCWA’s landmark report on open government and open data in Arab countries. At the UN Public Service Forum 2025 in Samarkand, he moderated a high-level panel on data, digital transformation, and public servants.
He has led data initiatives and advisory engagements with public sector organizations across Australia, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Qatar, working closely with leadership teams to translate strategy into execution while building long-term institutional capability.
One of Ibrahim’s notable contributions includes leading Made with Data, a government-led initiative in the Emirate of Ajman in the UAE that transformed open datasets into interactive data stories, making public progress in areas such as sustainability and tourism accessible and understandable to both officials and the public.
Ibrahim is the author of the forthcoming book GovStory: Unlocking the Power of Storytelling in the Public Sector, which includes a dedicated chapter on data storytelling.
A word from Ibrahim
"Today, businesses and public sector organizations operate in increasingly multicultural spaces where people from different backgrounds might interpret and react differently to the same data. Data is now also produced and consumed by both humans and machines. My core conviction is that data becomes powerful for sustainable impact when it flows smoothly across this hybrid intelligence landscape, between humans and machines, and across cultures. Today’s data leaders must be cultural adapters, system interpreters, and storytellers who bridge these divides."
Ibrahim’s inspirations
Books and podcasts that inspire me
Freakonomics, the book and later the podcast by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. I find it refreshing and inspiring how it combines cross-disciplinary thinking with storytelling to bring data to life, showing that data becomes meaningful when the human stories behind the numbers are revealed.
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