About Us

Our vision: Every frontline team confidently collecting, analysing, and visualising data to deliver excellent service in complex contexts.

We are a data literacy partner to large NGOs, small local organisations, faith-based organisations, for-profit social enterprises, humanitarian actors, and international companies.

Too much ‘data expertise’ is locked up in silos in our sector

These silos exist within organisations - where one team may have great data skills while another has almost none. Silos also exist between organisations - many big organisations have the resources to lead the way, leaving many small organisations simply trying to get started, let alone keep up. And the digital divide seems to be widening.

We deliver patient, high-quality, non-judgmental, on-the-job adult-learning and support that brings sought-after data collection and analytics skills to aid and development teams. Through courses, coaching, and community - we are working to break down data barriers and power imbalances between big and small, rich and poor, international and local, remote and frontline.

Where teams are under-resourced, we also step in to support through consultancy until team capacity has grown to meet the need.

We love data, sure. But more than that, we love people. And we love supporting the people who care for the world’s most vulnerable.

What HDS is and does:

At Humanitarian Data Solutions, our heartbeat, our ‘why’, is to love, serve, and restore choice and hope to people living in crisis.

Courses & Community: Humanitarian Data Solutions trains operational frontline workers in common software tools like KoBoToolbox and Power BI, QGIS and Excel. We use humanitarian-centric data and examples - helping to make globally-recognised software relevant to the daily reality of frontline operations.

We provide structured training programmes and supportive community calls through the Humanitarian Data Academy for individuals and teams looking for certification, coaching, and in-depth training on data skills and software tools necessary for humanitarian and development programme excellence.

Many teams working around the world have tiny budgets and big hearts, so for those that can’t afford to enrol in formal training through the Humanitarian Data Academy, we put out regular data tutorials for free, global access through our YouTube channel. We primarily train on software that is open-source or has a free user experience to show that anyone, no matter the budget, can collect, analyse, and visualise data with excellence.

Consulting: We also provide consulting services to large and small organisations, in the general area of data collection design, data visualisation, and data literacy. Our consulting is unique to each client that we work with. It supports them in their goals and journey, and allows us to continue to be creative and to continue to learn.

Our Journey So Far:

Humanitarian Data Solutions officially started somewhere between the baby’s nursery and the kitchen table during Janna’s first maternity leave. Fresh from leading a multi-year humanitarian response team that had a strong information-management component in the Middle East, she had a strong sense of mission and a good understanding of gaps in the sector.

With some screen-recording software and a good background in data modelling through her engineering background - Humanitarian Data Solutions was born on January 30th, 2018.

Through 2018 and 2019, the focus was on understanding the global landscape of humanitarian data - producing a number of online resources, video tutorials, a short free course, and taking on a first consulting client.

A tiny grant in the autumn of 2020 paved the way for Humanitarian Data Solutions’ first video-based e-learning course to be launched in early 2021 - ‘Mastering Form Design in KoBoToolbox’. Since then, courses ‘Getting Started in KoBoToolbox’ and ‘Getting Started in Power BI’ have been added. ‘Getting Started in QGIS’, and ‘Supercharge your Spreadsheets for M&E’ will be added this year.

Support to organisation-specific training courses was begun in 2022, with three client-specific training programmes created and delivered since mid-2022.

Several team members joined between 2022 and 2024, with Roger becoming our non-executive Finance Director, Louise joining as Support Assistant and Nathan joining to do our finances.

We continue to be grateful for our clients and funders, with a special thanks to Oxlep and European funding for continued support!

Our Team:

We are pleased for you to meet our team!

Janna

- Founder and CEO

Loves a latte. Loves a dashboard. Passionate humanitarian. Proud wife and mum of two. Water Resources Engineer. Member of the ODK Technical Advisory Board. Church-goer. Reader. Marathon-runner. Canadian. Soon-to-be-British.
Roger

- Non-Exec Finance Director

Chartered accountant business owner retired 2020. Business mentor to able leaders coaching team development. His teams include: family (wife, son, daughter and 5 grandchildren!), church (member of his local church leadership) and football club (proud holder of local football club season ticket).
Nathan

- Bookkeeping & Finance

Qualified and Licensed Accountant (AAT) with over 20 years experience in industry who ventured out on his own in 2021 and has yet to look back.
One very proud owner of a beautiful daughter who occasionally allows me to enjoy my other passions of music, Indian food, a cider (or two), an Americano and watching a variety of live sport.
Louise

- Business Support Administrator

Working here at HDS is a perfect fit for me, with my degree in Anthropology with electives in Development Studies, career as a PRINCE 2 Project Manager for the NHS and training and experience as a teacher, I feel at home in the world of Humanitarian training. I love streamlining our processes to make sure everything runs smoothly and enabling us to provide the best user experience. In my spare time, when I’m not chasing around two young children, I volunteer as a governor for our local primary school.

We’re currently keeping our eyes open for great team members and collaborators.

Think you might like to join the team?

Please reach out to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with your CV and a covering letter explaining your passion, your qualifications/experience, and what you think you’d bring to the team.