Eric hails from Houston, Texas. In 2005 he moved to Tbilisi to study and found a home. Since then he has worked with a variety of local organizations, including Transparency International Georgia. Since 2011, he has directed JumpStart Georgia with the goal of pushing the boundaries on how civil society can communicate information and data to engage audiences and achieve goals. Using cutting-edge and open-source technologies as well as a design-oriented approach, JumpStart Georgia explores how data-driven visualizations can improve advocacy strategies in Georgia and beyond. A strong advocate for open government and an open data hacktivist, Eric is a self-taught coder and dataist. When he isn’t visualizing data, he is spending time with his 2-year-old daughter.