OpenCorporates appoints new CEO to strengthen its leadership in transparent company data

Sarah Arana-Morton succeeds founder Chris Taggart, as OpenCorporates targets ambitious growth in emerging transparent company data market

LONDON, Aug. 2, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- OpenCorporates, the go-to foundational source of reliable, transparent and real-time company data, has appointed its Chief Operating Officer, Sarah Arana-Morton, as the company's new Chief Executive Officer.

Arana-Morton succeeds Chris Taggart, the company's founder and former CEO, who grew OpenCorporates from an idea 10 years ago into a key part of the world's data infrastructure.

OpenCorporates has grown to serve over 400 enterprise clients and to attract millions of monthly users to its online platform, OpenCorporates.com. As COO, Arana-Morton was responsible for establishing a new go to market organisation to accelerate growth of an already strong US client base, including government agencies, technology platforms, financial organisations and professional services firms, who all depend on the standardised, provenanced and transparent company data that is needed in our data-driven world.

Arana-Morton commented: "I'm proud to be taking OpenCorporates into a new era, where we are positioned as a leader with a decade of industry experience in delivering value from transparent company data. It is more important than ever to know exactly who you are in business with and this fundamental dataset about companies should be available to everyone. At OpenCorporates we are redefining the company data landscape".

Chris Taggart, who will step into a new role of Founder & Chief Strategy Officer, said: "OpenCorporates' public benefit mission of opening up company data for all has never been more important – for society and for business. As business moves towards this new norm, OpenCorporates is rapidly scaling-up – and Sarah is the ideal leader to take us forward in this next stage of our journey".

"The Covid pandemic highlights that organisations need to understand who they're doing business with at the legal entity level", said Oliver Ratzesberger, Chair of OpenCorporates' Operating Board. "Sarah's experience, drive and customer focus make her the ideal candidate to lead OpenCorporates at this pivotal time", he added.

About Sarah Arana-Morton

Sarah is a business leader who brings nearly 20 years' experience of growing businesses and building high performing teams in the data industry. Prior to her appointment as OpenCorporates' CEO, she served as its Chief Operating Officer for four years, significantly growing the company's client base and more recently building out its first operations in the US. Prior to OpenCorporates, Sarah served in global leadership roles at dunnhumby, a data science company, having developed business units across Europe, Asia-Pacific and the US from the beginning.

About OpenCorporates

OpenCorporates is revolutionising access to company data, and with it changing the world for the better. OpenCorporates has built the largest open database of companies in the world, containing information on almost 200 million companies in 140 jurisdictions – all from primary public sources. Our data is more transparent, fresh and fit for purpose than legacy Black Box business information vendors, which is why millions of users and hundreds of organisations rely on it at scale. Experienced leaders on our Operating Board drive our success, and world-class trustees on the OpenCorporates Trust protect our public benefit mission.

To maximise its success, OpenCorporates has established an Operating Board with industry expertise in data and cloud technologies, as well as experience of scaling up companies. The Board includes Oliver Ratzesberger, former Teradata CEO, Julia Apostle, a technology lawyer formerly of Twitter and the FT, Sarah Arana-Morton, the CEO of OpenCorporates and Alessia Falsarone, an expert in sustainable investments, as well as Chris Taggart, OpenCorporates' founder.

Press contact

Philip Galloway
philip.galloway@opencorporates.com