Shani Evenstein Sigalov is an educator, lecturer, researcher and Free & Open Knowledge advocate, focusing on the intersection between education, Technology, Innovation and Openness. She serves as Co-editor at Project Ben-Yehuda and is the Chairperson of the Hebrew Literature Digitization Society, the non-profit that supports Project Ben-Yehuda. She also serves as a member of the Board of Trustees at the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that supports Wikipedia, one of the 10 biggest websites in the world.   

Shani works at Tel Aviv University (TAU). She is specifically interested in integrating Open Education / Culture / Science / Data into the academic curriculum, and finding ways for academic work to advance gender equality, knowledge equity and positive social impact -- topics she is especially passionate about. In 2013 she opened the first for-credit course to feature Wikipedia at the School of Medicine. Her students wrote over 400 medical-related articles, roughly 13% of the medical content available on Hebrew Wikipedia, which have been viewed over 7 million times. Since then, she has designed 3 additional academic courses, the last one of them, is the first in the world to feature Wikidata, and is available to all undergraduate students at TAU. 

Shani is also pursuing a PhD at the School of Education (Technology & Learning track) at TAU, and is the recipient of the Azrieli Foundation PhD Fellows Program Scholarship. Her research focuses on the Semantic Web as a learning platform, looking specifically at Wikidata as a case study.

She frequently lectures and lead workshops in Israel and worldwide about these topics, focusing on Wikipedia, Wikidata and Project Ben-Yehuda, as case studies for Open Innovation initiatives involving the "wisdom of the crowd". She also advises organizations on implementing Open Access policies and integrating their work with the Open Knowledge Movement.