Surya Sayed-Ganguly
Former Chief Information Officer as of March 2, 2026

Surya (he/him) oversaw data and technology at The Legal Aid Society, including strategy, planning, advocacy, support, training and staffing across application development and data, infrastructure and user experience teams. Across the organization’s practices, the role of technology and data is increasingly critical in supporting social workers, paralegals, attorneys and investigators, and most importantly, in better serving the vulnerable individuals, families and children the organization works for.

Before joining The Legal Aid Society, Surya worked with The World Bank, helping its grantees build digital capacity on projects addressing poverty, refugee rights and reproductive health. He led professional services teams and in-house technology and data practices at domestic and international nonprofits, including leading information services at The Asia Foundation across 18 countries in developing Asia. Before moving into the nonprofit sector, he was the founder and CTO of a security software startup. After leaving the dot-com space, he worked to design grassroots technology for low-resource settings. One example was a store-and-forward wireless mesh network that employed a mule — later upgraded to a Vespa — along with solar power and wireless tablets to enable communications and medical diagnostics at a community health center in rural Costa Rica.

Surya is a leader with deep experience building teams across cultures, languages and continents to deliver innovation, data and technology that supports and extends mission. Recognized as a pioneer for his work at the intersection of governance, data and access to justice, he won the InsideNGO Operational Excellence Award in 2014. Surya holds a JD, CISSP and Lean Six Sigma certification, and chairs the board of CIO4Good.