MENLO PARK, Calif.—The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation announced today that David Sasaki would be joining the Foundation as a program officer in the Global Development and Population Program.

From an email to grantees and Foundation staff Global Development and Population Program Director Ruth Levine sent about the appointment:

I’m pleased to announce that David Sasaki will be joining the Hewlett Foundation as a program officer for Global Development and Population, working on our transparency, participation and accountability grantmaking. David’s decade of experience working with foundations and nonprofits at the intersection of transparency and social change is strongly aligned with our own strategy. He will begin work at the Foundation later this month.

David comes to us from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he managed a portfolio of grants to media organizations in support of the foundation’s advocacy objectives. Prior to his work at Gates, he was responsible for developing Omidyar Network’s government transparency portfolio in Latin America, and also served as a full-time consultant to Open Society Foundations’ Information and Latin America programs, where he helped develop the programs’ strategies, evaluated the use of technology by their transparency and accountability grantees, and helped foster collaboration among Latin America’s technology and civil society communities.

Earlier in his career he worked at Global Voices, an organization that supports citizen media reporting around the world, overseeing the launch of the Spanish-language version of its site and later directing a training initiative that helped local communities take advantage of new media tools for social change in more than 25 countries around the world.

David holds a bachelor’s degree in third world studies (political science) from the University of California, San Diego.

We are looking forward to welcoming our new colleague.