Tom Bendall is the director of safety and security at Open Briefing. Tom was previously the global safety and security lead at WaterAid, where he was responsible for providing expert safety and security support to leadership, staff, and partners in 34 countries across Africa, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America. Prior to that, Tom worked as a senior risk adviser for the security consultancy International Location Safety. During this time, he provided retained safety and security support and trainings to NGOs, academic institutions, and media groups and led a number of high-level projects with a variety of international organisations, including ActionAid, Doctors of the World, Catholic Relief Services, Forest Peoples Programme, and the London School of Economics. Between 2013 and 2016, Tom held various safety and security roles within the British Red Cross and the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies at a headquarter and regional level, including postings across East Africa and in the Philippines. Tom holds a master’s degree in international security and terrorism.
Group: Senior management team
Vicky Nida
Vicky Nida is the director of development at Open Briefing. Vicky leads our fundraising strategy and delivery and works to raise awareness of our work among foundations and major donors. She is also the head of fundraising and project management at the Open Rights Group. Vicky was previously head of development at Videre est Credere and the development director at Privacy International, where she led the organisation’s fundraising strategy and financial management through a period of strategic growth. She has also provided freelance fundraising and management support to a range of NGOs and policy institutes, including Fashion Revolution, Media Defence, Chatham House, C40 Cities, and the Institute of War and Peace Reporting. Vicky holds a degree in social and political sciences from the University of Cambridge.
Camille Gallie
Camille Gallie is the director of wellbeing and resilience at Open Briefing. Camille is an executive coach, trainer and NLP practitioner. Based in Senegal, she has been supporting the wellbeing of regional and field office staff in West Africa for the last two years. Prior to that, she spent seven years in the humanitarian sector with Save the Children UK, GOAL, and World Vision, including four years in advocacy and programme management roles in Haiti. Camille is a certified executive and life coach and an accredited Workplace Resilience and Wellbeing (Wraw) practitioner and holds a degree in history and a master’s degree in European studies.
Rosa Levin
Rosa Levin is the finance director at Open Briefing. Rosa was previously the managing director of an iconic and eco-conscious furniture and lighting company in Cornwall, which she transformed from a small owner-run enterprise to a successful business employing 35 people. From 2010 to 2016, she held various finance roles within an international fluid technology group, including financial accountant and a secondment as an international management accountant and an acting financial controller. Before entering business, she worked as an English teacher in Japan for two years. Rosa is a chartered management accountant and holds a degree in history from the University of Warwick.
Richard Tynan
Richard Tynan is a digital and information security consultant at Open Briefing. Richie is a technologist and ethical hacker who has been building and evaluating secure systems for over 15 years. He is passionate about using technology to help civil society organisations flourish and well known for providing clear and concise explanations of complex legal and technology issues and the interplay between them. Richie was the director of digital and information security at Open Briefing until February 2024. He was previously a penetration tester at Guardian News & Media, where he served for a period as the most-senior member of their information security team. Prior to that, he was the head of technology at Privacy International for five years, and also led the organisation’s data exploitation programme for two years. Richie holds a PhD in computer science, a graduate diploma in law, and a BCS foundation certificate in data protection.
Chris Abbott
Chris is a passionate advocate for human rights and social justice. He worked with indigenous, land, and environmental defenders in Ecuador and the Philippines in the late 1990s, supporting their struggles against multinational oil and mining companies. He then spent a decade working at the policy level to protect civilians in conflict during the ‘war on terror’ and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The human rights champion Archbishop Desmond Tutu described Chris’s work at that time as “radical in the proper sense”.
Chris was previously the deputy director of the Oxford Research Group and an honorary research fellow in the Centre for Governance and International Affairs at the University of Bristol and in the Department of Peace Studies and International Development at the University of Bradford. He is the author of two books and more than 50 influential reports and articles on security, politics, and history. His work has regularly featured in the international media, and he has been interviewed by the New York Times, BBC, Channel 4 News, Esquire, ABC, and the Australian.
Today, as well as leading Open Briefing, Chris is a director of Peace Brigades International and a member of its International Council and risk management committee. He is also a founding collaborator in the Civic Ecosystems Initiative and will join the advisory board of the Funders Initiative for Civil Society (FICS) early next year.
