SCIENCE COMMONS - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Strategy Director of Open Future Foundation
Alek Tarkowski is the Strategy Director of Open Future Foundation, a European think tank for the open movement. He is a sociologist, activist and strategist. Since 2004 he has been active, in Poland and globally, in organizations and social movements building an open internet. His focus has been on copyright, commons-based approaches to resource management and intellectual property. His interests include digital strategies for societies, regulation of emergent technologies, digital skills and openness of public resources.
He is the co-founder of Centrum Cyfrowe, a Polish think-and-do tank supporting open, digital society, where he currently chairs the Oversight Board. He also co-founded Creative Commons Poland, Communia (the European Association on the Digital Public Domain) and the Polish Coalition for Open Education (KOED). He has co-chaired the strategic process for the new Creative Commons Global Network Strategy. He is alumnus of the Leadership Academy of Poland (Class of 2017), in 2016 he was named New Europe 100 Challenger. Member of the Steering Committee of Internet Governance Forum Poland. Formerly, member of the Board of Strategic Advisors to the Prime Minister of Poland (2008-2011), member of the Polish Board of Digitisation, an advisory body to the Minister of Digitisation (2011-2016) and Junior Fellow at the McLuhan Program on Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto.
He co-authored a range of Polish strategic documents, including the strategic report "Poland 2030", the "DIgital Poland" strategy and the Polish official long-term strategy for growth. He advised as well multiple public institutions and civil society organizations on digital strategies and projects. Co-author, with Mirek Filiciak, of a collection of essays titled "Two zero. Alphabet of new culture and other texts". Lecturer at Artes Liberales Faculty at University of Warsaw and SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities. Member of the Advisory Board of the Commonwealth Center for Connected Learning, School of Ideas SWPS and CoderDojo Polska.
Job Titles:
- Director of the MIT Press
Amy Brand is Director of the MIT Press, one of the largest university presses in the world, and an important figure in open access publishing. The MIT Press is well-known for its publications in emerging fields of scholarship and its pioneering use of technology. Brand's career spans a wide array of experiences in academia and scholarly communications. She received her doctorate in cognitive science from MIT and has held a number of positions in scholarly communications, publishing, and open information access at MIT, Digital Science, and Harvard before returning to the press in 2015 to serve as director. She is an Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, and serves on the boards of Crossref, Duraspace, Altmetric, and Board on Research Data and Information of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. She's currently working on her first documentary film, on women in science.
Angela is a technologist, community builder and open-source software advocate who is passionate about building…
Job Titles:
- CEO
- Member of the Board
- CC in 2019 As Director of Product
- CEO CC Staff Photos Are Licensed under CC by 4.0. Gratitude to Sara Jordan Photography.
Anna joined CC in 2019 as Director of Product. She was promoted to COO in 2021 and was appointed CEO in 2024.
Before joining CC, Anna spent a decade building out all aspects of the operations of three distributed performance marketing start-ups. She is constantly considering opportunities for expansion and improvement in the environment around her. She happily straddles the worlds of leadership, operations, and product.
Anna grew up in Iceland, Scotland, and Malawi, leaving home to study in Norway, the United States, South Africa, and back to Iceland. She now calls Austin, Texas her home, and settles for traveling instead of moving (for the time being). Sharing information and resources is central to how Anna operates, as she is convinced it leads to a better existence for everyone. Sharing ice cream is optional, but encouraged.
Job Titles:
- Executive Director of VotingWorks
Ben Adida is the Executive Director of VotingWorks. His passion is using technology to empower individuals. Ben has extensive experience in voting systems, identity & payments, health IT, security & privacy, and Web architecture. He has developed free software for more than 20 years and Web software for more than 25 years.
Previously, Ben was VP of Engineering at Clever, Director of Engineering at Square, Director of Engineering at Mozilla, Research Faculty at Harvard Medical School / Children's Hospital Boston, and research fellow with the Center for Research on Computation and Society at Harvard. Ben co-founded three bootstrapped startups: ArsDigita (1998), OpenForce (2000), and Webdash (2005). He received his PhD from MIT's Cryptography and Information Security group.
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the Audit Committee
- Investor and Strategist
Bilal Randeree is a digital media practitioner, investor and strategist. He currently serves as the Director for Africa/MENA at the Media Development Investment Fund, a mission-driven investment fund providing debt and equity financing to independent news and information companies. MDIF operates in countries across Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America where a free and independent media is under threat. Bilal has 15 years' experience in business, tech and media - by way of a unique career path. As a qualified Chartered Accountant, he spent a few years in Transaction Services before going back to school and studying journalism. That culminated with him serving as Social Media Manager and Online Editor at Al Jazeera in Qatar, which he eventually left to lead a tech startup. He has participated and led Creative Commons activities in the Arab World for the last 10 years, and now back home in South Africa.
Job Titles:
- Director of Policy and Open Culture
- Director of Policy and Open Culture Brigitte Vézina ( Photo by Victoria Heath, CC by )
- Fellow at the Canadian
Brigitte is passionate about all things spanning culture, arts, handicraft, traditions, fashion and, of course, copyright law and policy. She gets a kick out of tackling the fuzzy legal and policy issues that stand in the way of access, use, re-use and remix of culture, information and knowledge.
Before joining CC, she worked for a decade as a legal officer at WIPO and then ran her own consultancy, advising Europeana, SPARC Europe and others on copyright matters.
Currently located in the Netherlands where she lives with her husband and two kids, Brigitte grew up living in eight different countries across North America, Africa and Europe but Montréal is where she proudly comes from.
Brigitte is a fellow at the Canadian think tank Centre for International Governance Innovation. She holds a bachelor's degree in law from the Université de Montréal and a master's in law from Georgetown University. She has been a member of the Bar of Quebec since 2003.
Job Titles:
- Director of Open Knowledge / Dr
- Director of Open Knowledge at Creative Commons
Cable Green
Director of Open Knowledge
Dr. Cable Green is the Director of Open Knowledge at Creative Commons. He works with…
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- CEO of the Colombian Civil Society
Carolina Botero is the CEO of the Colombian civil society digital rights organization Karisma Foundation. She is a researcher, lawyer, lecturer, writer and consultant on topics related to law and technology. Carolina works in the defence of human rights in technology environments, following debates on freedom of expression, privacy, access to knowledge and culture, social innovation and ICT in technology. Karisma's work includes social and gender perspectives. Carolina strongl y supports citizen participation through research as a key democratic value. Carolina holds a master's degree in international law and cooperation (VUB - Belgium), and a master's degree in Business and Contracting Law (2006, UAB - Spain). Frequently writes Opeds in two Colombian media, El Espectador and La Silla Vacía.
Job Titles:
- Today Creative Commons CEO
is announcing the conclusion of her time leading the organization. On behalf of the Board of Directors, staff, and global community, we want to offer Catherine our sincere thanks. We are grateful to her for over three years of leadership at CC. During her tenure as CEO, Catherine demonstrated…
Job Titles:
- Chairman of Broadline Capital
Christopher Thorne is chairman of Broadline Capital, a global private equity firm primarily focused on growth capital and impact investments in North America and Asia. Broadline Capital has received numerous industry recognitions including Private Equity International's Asia Deal of the Year award for a 2007 China transaction, the 2012 Fierce 15 Award in medical technology, and the 2016 Technology Deal of the Year at the 8th Annual International M&A Awards. Previously, Chris worked at McKinsey & Company, where he managed strategic and operational engagements for Fortune 500 companies. After serving leadership roles at McKinsey, he left the firm to execute on his entrepreneurial vision by launching a SaaS company whose on-demand intelligence solutions created efficiency gains for manufacturers, distributors and retailers by converting paper-based business processes into paperless electronic transactions throughout the CPG value chain. He then initiated a rollup of SaaS niche-leaders. The resulting company received VC backing by Accel-KKR and successfully sold to Roper Industries. Chris is a triple graduate of Harvard (JD, MBA, AB), where he served as president of the university-wide student government and founded the Harvard Negotiation Law Review.
Claudio works to shift CC to a more open, global, and inclusive organization led by its community. He believes in the importance of openness, communities, and policy to create better digital ecosystems.
Claudio has experience in free software licensing, as well as advocating for fundamental digital rights and freedom of expression. After serving as executive director for more than eight years, he is on the board of Derechos Digitales, a nonprofit organization that works to promote, defend, and develop digital rights and civil liberties in Latin America. Claudio used to host a radio show in Santiago, Chile, where he also lives with his dog, Flora. He loves indie rock, coffee, and morning bike rides. Claudio speaks Spanish and English.
Job Titles:
- Open Culture Coordinator
- Open Culture Coordinator Photograph by Ebrahim Elmoly
Connor is a Kaospilot with a background in project management, organisational development, and process design. He has worked around the world on various projects within arts, culture, and community activism. At Creative Commons he supports the Open Culture Program with logistics, project management, production and design activities that help make Open Access a reality for cultural heritage organisations everywhere.
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the Audit Committee
- Chairman of the Board
- Board Chair Republica / Gregor Fischer, 08.05.2014 CC - by - SA 2.0
Delia Browne is a highly respected copyright lawyer and policy advocate who leads the National Copyright Unit (NCU) providing specialist copyright advice to Australian Schools and Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institutes with a focus on the rapidly changing digital teaching environment. A long time member of the Creative Commons Global Network, Delia is the Education Sector Lead of Creative Commons Australia and has attended every Creative Commons Global Summit since 2007 and she was an essential member of the community strategy team that authored CC's Global Network Strategy. Delia is a strong advocate of the open education movement and has drafted a number of declarations and pieces of legislation including the Cape Town Declaration on Open Education and the Copyright Amendment on Disability Access and Other Measures Act 2017. She is a sought-after speaker and participates in many international conferences and think tanks on Copyright Law Reform and OER. She has represented Creative Commons at the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights and is dedicated to furthering the WIPO Limitations and Exception agenda particularly with regard to education. Delia is a co-founder and the President of Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) and a board director of the Australian Digital Alliance. She is also a member of the editorial board of Media and Arts Law Review and has taught Intellectual Property at the University of New Wales, Griffith University and the University of Auckland (her alma mater.)
Job Titles:
- Founder
- General Counsel and Corporate Secretary for CC
As General Counsel and Corporate Secretary for CC, Diane directs the organization's legal strategy and projects. She coordinates legal programs and activities that harness CC's diverse and complex global network. She also leads development of CC's licenses and legal tools, including the CC0 public domain dedication (2009), the Public Domain Mark (2010), Version 3.0 ports and, most recently, Version 4.0 of the CC license suite (2013).
Diane is a founder and Co-Chair of the Advisory Council of the Open COVID Coalition, an international effort led by Creative Commons to remove obstacles to intellectual property during the COVID-19 pandemic and effect longer-term change in the public interest. She also serves on the board of directors of Creative Commons as well as the Software Freedom Law Center.
Prior to joining CC, she served as general counsel for Open Source Development Labs (now, the Linux Foundation), and as legal counsel to Mozilla. In 2014, the Intellectual Property Section of the State Bar of California awarded her its Intellectual Property Vanguard Award for public policy. She is based in Portland, Oregon.
Job Titles:
- Digital Communications Strategist
Donette spearheads digital communications at Creative Commons, leveraging her diverse background spanning fashion, media, advertising, and non-profit sectors. This interdisciplinary approach has greatly influenced her work as a brand storyteller, digital advocate, and strategist. Her commitment to the Commons extends beyond the tangible, striving always to foster genuine connection in her work and beyond.
Outside the digital realm, Donette is a clinical herbalist, obsessed with clean beauty, and facilitates healing justice work. With her passions for hiking, baking, and aesthetics, she is aptly located in North Carolina.
Dorothy Gordon is a global leader in the field of technology and development with a special focus on Africa. As a Pan-africanist and feminist she works to bring about greater engagement and action on policy, implementation and evaluation issues relating to the impact of technology on society.
In addition to serving as Chair of the Inter-Governmental Council for UNESCO's Information for All Programme, she also participates on range of Boards including that of the Institute for Information Technology in Education, the Linux Professional Institute and the World Summit Awards. She is a member of the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence expert working group.
As the founding Director-General of the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT she made a significant contribution to participation of women in STEM fields. She was a member of the Global Commission on Internet Governance.
A strong supporter of the Open Movement, she is an advocate for the ROAM principles, the use of Open licenses, open source technology, and purpose-driven innovation. As well as consulting, she mentors, volunteers, and serves with a number of local and global initiatives working to define a better technology-enabled future.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Director
- Assistant Director, Open Climate
Dr. Monica Granados is Assistant Director, Open Climate and leads the Open Climate Campaign a multi-year campaign to open knowledge about the climate crisis and preserving global biodiversity. Climate change, and the resulting harm to our global biodiversity, is one of the world's most pressing challenges. If we are going to solve these global challenges, the knowledge (research, data, educational resources, software) about them must be open.
While doing her PhD in ecology at McGill University, Monica discovered that incentives in academia promote practices that make knowledge less accessible leading her to devote her career to making knowledge more equitable and open. Prior to coming to CC, Monica worked at Environment and Climate Change Canada as a Senior Policy Advisor on the Open Science Team and is presently on the Leadership Team of PREreview.
Monica lives in Ottawa, Canada with her partner where she enjoys performing improv with her troupe, building Lego sets and volunteering with the Ottawa Volunteer Search and Rescue Team.
Formerly the Executive Director of Creative Commons and a fellow at Stanford Law School's Center…
A 1972 graduate of Harvard Law School, Eric F. Saltzman began his career as a criminal defense attorney in Seattle's and Boston's public defender offices. While teaching in Harvard Law School's Criminal Trial Advocacy program, Saltzman took up filmmaking at MIT's renowned Film Section and re-created trials as teaching tools. Moving from re-creation to verite, Saltzman introduced cameras into actual courtrooms with The Shooting of Big Man: Anatomy of a Criminal Case (a two hour special on ABC News in 1979, now available for Creative Commons license here). For CBS News, he produced and directed Miami: The Trial That Sparked the Riots, an investigation of a police homicide, its cover-up, and the ultimate trial of the police officers. These and other films have won Emmy and ABA Silver Gavel awards, among others. In the mid-1980s, Saltzman moved into the film business and began acquiring and licensing libraries of classic motion picture and television rights for emerging media such as cable, microwave and satellite transmission. In 2000-2002, Saltzman was executive director of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. He is a member of the bars of Washington State and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and on the boards of not-for-profits in the area of race and poverty and the extension of Internet services to the human rights and legal services sectors. He lives with his wife and two boys in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Job Titles:
- Director of People and Operations at Creative Commons
Erika Drushka is the Director of People and Operations at Creative Commons. She has spent…
Esther Wojcicki has been teaching Journalism and English at Palo Alto High School, Palo Alto, California for the past 25 years, where she has been the driving force behind the development of its award-winning journalism program. It is now the largest high school journalism program in the U.S involving 400 students. All the publications can be found at http://voice.paly.net which is the school publication website. In the spring of 2008, she was recognized for inspiration and excellence in scholastic journalism advising by the National Scholastic Press Association. She has won multiple awards throughout the years. A couple of others included the 1990 Northern California Journalism teacher of the year in 1990 and California State Teacher Credentialing Commission Teacher of the Year in 2002. In 2009, she was awarded the Gold Key Award by Columbia University Scholastic Press for outstanding contributions to student journalism. She served on the University of California Office of the President Curriculum Committee where she helped revise the beginning and advanced journalism curriculum for the state of California. In 2005-6 she worked as the Google educational consultant and helped design the Google Teacher Outreach program, which includes the website www.google.com/educators and the Google Teacher Academy. She holds a B.A. degree from UC Berkeley in English and Political Science, a general secondary teaching credential from UC Berkeley, a graduate degree from the Graduate School of Journalism at Berkeley, an advanced degree in French and French History from the Sorbonne, Paris, a Secondary School Administrative Credential from San Jose State University, and a M.A. in Educational Technology from San Jose State University. She has also worked as a professional journalist for multiple publications and now blogs regularly for Huffington Post and HotChalk.
Gilberto C mara is a geoinformatics and environmental modelling researcher at the Image Processing Division (DPI) of Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE). Dr. C mara was INPE's general director from 2005 to 2012, after serving as INPE's director for Earth Observation from 2001 to 2005. He established a free and open access policy for his agency's data and products. More than two million satellite images were distributed by INPE between 2005 and 2012. INPE made public real-time change maps that were essential to reduce deforestation in the Brazilian Amazonia rain forest. Dr. C mara serves on the editorial board of the journals Earth Science Informatics, Journal of Spatial Information Science and Computers, Environment, and Urban Systems.
Glenn O. Brown works with a range of organizations on brand and identity, audience development, teambuilding, and fundraising. In addition to advising start-ups and corporations, Glenn is on the board of directors of nonprofits The Texas Tribune and Words Without Borders and is a senior advisor at MIT's Center for Constructive Communication.
Glenn has worked in creative and business roles at the intersection of media and technology at The Obama Foundation (Chief Digital Officer 2016-2020), Betaworks (Entrepreneur in Residence 2015-2016), Twitter (co-founder of Twitter Amplify video marketplace 2011-2015), and YouTube (head of U.S. music partnerships 2007-2011), Google/YouTube (product counsel, 2005-2007).
From 2002-2005, Glenn was CEO of Creative Commons, where he managed the launch of the first CC licenses and visual design framework, coined the phrase "Some Rights Reserved," and drove early CC adoption among creators, communities, and platforms around the world.
Glenn is a long-time movie buff, book lover, and amateur musician. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in Austin, Texas.
Job Titles:
- Advisory Council
- Professor of Computer Science
Hal Abelson is Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, and a fellow of IEEE. He is winner of several major teaching awards at MIT, as well as the IEEE's Booth Education Award, cited for his contributions to the teaching of undergraduate computer science.Abelson has a longstanding interest in using computation as a conceptual framework in teaching. He directed the first implementation of the Logo computer language for the Apple Computer, which made programming for children widely available on personal computers beginning in 1981. Together with Gerald Sussman, Abelson developed MIT's introductory computer science subject, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, a subject organized around the notion that a computer language is primarily a formal medium for expressing ideas about methodology, rather than just a way to get a computer to perform operations. This work, through a popular computer science textbook and video lectures has had a world-wide impact on university computer-science education. Abelson is a founding director of the Free Software Foundation and Public Knowledge, as well as a a founding director of Creative Commons. At MIT, Abelson is is co-director of MIT's Council on Educational Technology, which oversees the Institute's strategic educational technology planning.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Digital and Information Law at Cornell Tech
Job Titles:
- Member of the Audit Committee
- Vice President and Chief Strategy Adviser of the Open Data Institute
Jeni Tennison is the Vice President and Chief Strategy Adviser of the Open Data Institute, which has a mission to work with companies and governments to build an open, trustworthy data ecosystem. She gained a PhD in AI from the University of Nottingham then worked as an independent consultant, specialising in open data publishing and consumption. She was the technical architect and lead developer behind legislation.gov.uk, before joining the ODI as Technical Director in 2012, becoming CEO in 2016 and Vice President in 2020. She has a long-standing interest in open and web standards, served on the W3C's Technical Architecture Group from 2011 to 2015 and co-chaired the W3C's CSV on the Web Working Group. She is the co-chair of the Data Governance Working Group within the Global Partnership for AI, and sits on the Advisory Boards for the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data and the Information Law and Policy Centre. She loves board games and is the proud co-creator of the open data board game, Datopolis.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder of the Wikimedia Foundation
The co-founder of the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit corporation which operates Wikipedia and several other wiki projects. Wales is also founder of the for-profit company Wikia, Inc. (legally unrelated to Wikimedia).
Job Titles:
- Community and Licensing Program Manager
Jocelyn manages projects and programs related to the CC Global Community & License Stewardship. Prior to this role, she worked for over a year as CC's Open Culture Manager.
Before CC, Jocelyn worked at The New York Public Library for over five years, first as a Special Projects Manager in the President's Office, and later as a Program Manager for their Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Access team. This work helped her cultivate a passion for furthering equitable policies and practices, collaborative project management, and supporting the free exchange of knowledge and culture.
When not she's not working, Jocelyn can be found in yoga class, reading about history, or dancing at one of her favorite concert venues. Jocelyn is based in Brooklyn, New York.
John Wilbanks currently runs the Consent to Research project (CtR), a massive clinical research study in which people take the data they can gather about their own health and donate it for computational analysis. Mr. Wilbanks is also one of the founders of the Access2Research petition. As part of CtR, Mr. Wilbanks is a Senior Fellow in Entrepreneurship at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a Research Fellow at Lybba, and supported by Sage Bionetworks. Mr. Wilbanks has worked at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, the World Wide Web Consortium, the US House of Representatives, and most recently Creative Commons. Mr. Wilbanks also started a bioinformatics company called Incellico, which is now part of Selventa.
Job Titles:
- Founder and Partner at Raw Signal Group
Johnathan Nightingale is a founder and partner at Raw Signal Group. He is editor of The Co-pour and bestselling author of "How F*cked Up Is Your Management? An Uncomfortable Conversation About Modern Leadership."
Johnathan has built and operated organizations from 2 people to 250. He was the Vice President of Firefox for Mozilla during a period of intense turmoil inside Mozilla and in the web at large, helped build and launch the first Firefox offerings on Android and iOS, and still cheers every time the open web wins.
After Mozilla he joined Hubba as their Chief Product Officer, and helped that team triple in size while improving their diversity stats instead of watching them slide. In addition to Raw Signal Group's board, he is proud to sit on the board of The Dresscode Project, and the Creative Commons advisory board as a former board member.
He has strong opinions about your coffee infrastructure.
Job Titles:
- CEO and Co - Founder of Harbour
Josh Elkes is the CEO and co-founder of Harbour, a digital contracting platform for the creator economy. Businesses use Harbour's fast and modern e-signature and contract management tools to securely work with creators at scale.
Prior to Harbour, Josh spent 10 years at Viacom, Downtown Music, and Getty Images, Josh's focus has always been to empower creators while keeping integrity in their work.
Kat Walsh - Chief Legal Officer
Job Titles:
- General Counsel
- Member of the Board
Kat Walsh is the General Counsel at Creative Commons. She was on the CC legal team 2012-2015 during the drafting and initial publication process of version 4.0 of the license suite and returned as Deputy General Counsel in 2021.
She has a nearly 20-year history in the free and open culture movements, including many years on the boards of the Wikimedia Foundation and the Free Software Foundation, and has previously worked in library policy, technology startups, and online community management.
Kat is an advocate for free access to knowledge and for CC licensing as part of the infrastructure for an internet that belongs to everyone. As General Counsel, she oversees the legal support for all aspects of CC's activities, provides strategic input, leads the stewardship of CC's legal tools, and advises the organization on new programmatic initiatives.
When not practicing law, Kat is also a bassoonist, violist, choral singer, and powerlifter. She is based in Novato, California.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder and President of DotSUB
Laurie Racine is co-founder and President of dotSUB, a young technology company that has developed a free, browser based tool for subtitling films from one language into any other language. Racine holds the position of Senior Fellow at the Norman Lear Center of the Annenberg School of Communications, University of Southern California. She is Chair of the board of Teachers Without Borders and serves on the board of directors of National Video Resources. Until she closed the foundation in January of 2006, Racine served as President of the Center for the Public Domain, a private foundation endowed by the founders of Red Hat, Inc. During her tenure, she co-founded Public Knowledge, a Washington, D.C. based public interest group that is working to sustain a vibrant information commons. She serves as Chair of the Board. Racine was the first managing director of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and then served as President of Doc Arts for six years, the non-profit corporation that produces the festival. Before starting the Center for the Public Domain, Racine was the Director of the Health Sector Management Program at the Fuqua School of Business of Duke University. She has spent many years as a strategist and consultant for non-profit and for-profit enterprises
Job Titles:
- Founder
- Member Emeritus of the Board
Lawrence Lessig at ETech 2008 / Ed Schipul / CC BY-SA I am thrilled to welcome Ryan Merkley as the incoming CEO of Creative Commons. This is an important moment in the history of the organization. After eleven years, CC licenses are globally recognized as the definitive tool for sharing creative works. Millions across the…
Lawrence Lessig and Aaron Swartz (2002) / Rich Gibson / CC BY Friends and Commoners, It is with incredible sadness that I write to tell you that yesterday, Aaron Swartz took his life. Aaron was one of the early architects of Creative Commons. As a teenager, he helped design the code layer to our licenses,…
Lawrence Lessig is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. Prior to rejoining the Harvard faculty, Lessig was a professor at Stanford Law School, where he founded the school's Center for Internet and Society, and at the University of Chicago. He clerked for Judge Richard Posner on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court.Lessig serves on the Board of Creative Commons, MAPLight, Brave New Film Foundation, The American Academy, Berlin, AXA Research Fund and iCommons.org, and on the the advisory board of the Sunlight Foundation. He is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Association, and has received numerous awards, including the Free Software Foundation's Freedom Award, Fastcase 50 Award and being named one of Scientific American's Top 50 Visionaries.Lessig holds a BA in economics and a BS in management from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in philosophy from Cambridge, and a JD from Yale.
Lisa Rogers is the Accountant for Creative Commons. She graduated from the University of New Orleans in Louisiana with concentrations in business administration, finance and human resources. She has spent most of her career as the Financial Controller/Director of HR for multi-company enterprises. Her diverse background includes establishing and directing financial processes and procedures for the pharmaceutical (retail, wholesale and mail-order), biotechnology, restaurant and funeral home industries. She was also a lead auditor in the Deepwater Horizon BP Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Project. Over her 32-year career, she has established computerized accounting systems, designed inventory control systems, designed corporate employee policy and procedure manuals and created reports for monitoring key performance indicators to evaluate company progress.
In her free time, she enjoys the fairs and festivals of the local New Orleans culture, yoga, stock trading, swimming, photography and fundraising for animal rescue organizations.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Audit Committee
Luis Villa has made significant contributions to the open community since the late 90s, taking on a multitude of roles. He started as a developer, later transitioning into legal and board positions. His experience spans renowned organizations like Mozilla and the Wikimedia Foundation, where he held critical positions. In addition, he has provided legal counsel to a spectrum of companies, from small startups to giant Silicon Valley firms. His involvement in the open-source community extends beyond his professional roles. As a community member and informal advisor, he has worked with organizations such as Open Street Map, the Open Knowledge Foundation, the World Wide Web Consortium, and OpenETdata.org. Luis is also a co-founder and General Counsel at Tidelift, where the mission is making open source work better for everyone, including the maintainers behind the projects we all rely on, and the enterprises benefiting from their creations.
Kat Walsh is the General Counsel at Creative Commons. She was on the CC legal…
Luis Villa has made significant contributions to the open community since the late 90s, taking…
CC team members based in Canada work through 0941176 B.C. Ltd. - a wholly owned subsidiary of Creative Commons whose sole activity is to provide services to CC. 0941176 B.C. Ltd. is operated separately from our CC Canada chapter.
Juncai Ma is a bioinformatics researcher working on microorganisms information, bio-grid and parallel indexing, and in charge of the development of China Microbial Resource Database, E-Science Bio-Grid, Information Network of Chinese Biotechnology and Industry, as well as Asian Network for Bio-Resource Centers, Global catalogue of microorganisms (GCM). Dr. Ma is currently the Director of Information Center at Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Science (CAS); the Director of WFCC-MIRCEN World Data Center of Microorganisms (WDCM); and executive of World Federation of Culture Collections.
Mackenzie Smith is the University Librarian at the University of California, Davis. Ms. Smith was most recently research director for MIT Libraries from 2011-2012. She led cutting-edge research projects in digital libraries and archives, Web applications for scholarly communication, and digital data curation in support of e-science. Ms. Smith also consults widely in the library field, most recently for the Association of Research Libraries to design and lead a new E-Science Institute, helping research libraries to develop strategic plans to support digital research data curation.
Marlena oversees CC's fundraising efforts.
Prior to joining Creative Commons, she took on a range of program and fundraising roles in arts, storytelling, education and youth based nonprofit organizations. She is also a lover of creative reuse. Her most recent project is focused on making artisanal soap out of recycled cooking oil.
Marta Belcher holds multiple esteemed positions in the tech and legal sectors, notably serving as President and Chair of the Filecoin Foundation and the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web. Additionally, she is the General Counsel and Head of Policy at Protocol Labs. She also lends her expertise to the Electronic Frontier Foundation as a Special Counsel. Marta is also a Board member of the Blockchain Association and the Zcash Foundation, and a member of Paradigm's Crypto Policy Council. Marta is a pioneer in blockchain law and policy, and has testified in Congress and state legislatures, as well as speaking in European Parliament. Marta was previously an intellectual property litigator at Ropes & Gray, and has submitted briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court and U.S. appellate courts for high-profile public interest organizations, including EFF, the Center for Democracy & Technology, Public Knowledge, the Cato Institute, the National Consumers' League, the Blockchain Association, and Project Gutenberg. Marta has been recognized by the Financial Times Innovative Lawyer awards, by Law360's list of Top Attorneys Under 40, by CryptoWeekly's list of Most Influential Women in Crypto, and as Business Intelligence Group's Woman of the Year.
Job Titles:
- Director of the Program
- Visiting Professor of Law at the American University
Michael W. Carroll is a Visiting Professor of Law at the American University, Washington College of Law in Washington, D.C. Starting in September 2009, Professor Carroll will permanently join the American University faculty and be the Director of the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property. His teaching and scholarly interests focus on intellectual property and the law of the Internet. Professor Carroll has been a member of the Creative Commons Board since 2001, and he is a member of the subset of Directors who advise Science Commons and ccLearn.Prior to entering law teaching, Professor Carroll was an attorney in the Washington, D.C. office of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, where his practice focused on intellectual property and Internet-related issues. He also served as a law clerk to Judge Judith W. Rogers of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Judge Joyce Hens Green of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Carroll received his A.B. with general honors from the University of Chicago and his J.D. magna cum laude from the Georgetown University Law Center.Before attending law school, Carroll worked as a journalist, a high school teacher in Zimbabwe, and a program officer for democracy and governance projects in Africa.
Michael Carroll is the Director of the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, American University where he teaches intellectual property law and cyberlaw. Professor Carroll's research focuses on the search for balance in IP law over time in the face of challenges posed by new technologies. Professor Carroll has been a founding member of the Creative Commons board since 2001. Prior to entering academia, he was an attorney at the Washington, D.C. office of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering. He also served as a law clerk to Judge Judith W. Rogers of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Judge Joyce Hens Green of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
Job Titles:
- Executive Director of Creative Commons
Formerly the Executive Director of Creative Commons and a fellow at Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, Molly Van Houweling is Associate Dean (J.D. Curriculum and Teaching) and Co-Director at Berkeley Center for Law & Technology where she also holds the title of Harold C. Hohbach Distinguished Professor of Patent Law and Intellectual Property. Van Houweling graduated in June 1998 from Harvard Law School, where she was Articles Editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology. Following graduation, Ms. Van Houweling was a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, and one of the first staff members at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). She then served as a law clerk to Judge Michael Boudin, of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and Justice David Souter of the United States Supreme Court.
Job Titles:
- Director of Communications & Community ( He / Him )
- Director of Communications and Community for Creative Commons
Nate is an evangelist focused on community development, digital communications, meaningful education, open technologies, and sustainable growth. He has worked across a wide variety of organizations, including open-source technology providers like Hypothesis and rSmart, Oregon startups like Lumen Learning and Little Bird, global communities like the Apereo Foundation, Creative Commons, Mozilla Open Leaders, and Virtually Connecting, and public/nonprofit institutions like Portland State University and the Oregon Museum of Science & Industry. Nate is ABD for a PhD in American Civilization with a focus on critical media studies. Nate lives in Portland, Oregon USA with some other cats and humans. Learn more about Nate on his blog, or connect with him on Twitter or Mastodon.
Paul Brest is emeritus professor and former dean of Stanford Law School, having recently returned from a twelve-year stint as President of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Together with Professor Deborah Hensler, he is developing the law and public policy laboratory at the Law School, and he is a faculty co-director of the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society.Paul received an A.B. from Swarthmore College in 1962 and an LL.B from Harvard Law School in 1965. He served as law clerk to Judge Bailey Aldrich and Supreme Court Justice John M. Harlan, and practiced with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., in Jackson, Mississippi, doing civil rights litigation.In 1969, he joined the faculty of Stanford Law School, where he was the Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law. His research and teaching focused on constitutional law, including articles on constitutional interpretation, race discrimination, and affirmative action. From 1987 to 1999, he served as the dean of Stanford Law School where he spearheaded the expansion of the School's curriculum in business, environmental law, high technology, and negotiation, and led a $115 million capital campaign.Paul is co-author of Money Well Spent: A Strategic Guide to Smart Philanthropy (Bloomberg Press, 2008); Problem Solving, Decision Making, and Professional Judgment (Oxford University Press, 2010); and Processes of Constitutional Decision Making: Cases And Materials (Aspen Publishers, 2006)
Job Titles:
- Vice - Chair of Kennisland
Paul Keller is vice-chair of Kennisland, an Amsterdam-based think-tank focused on innovation in the knowledge…
Peter Murray-Rust is a Reader in Molecular Informatics at the University of Cambridge and a Senior Research Fellow at Churchill College. His research interests include the automated analysis of data in scientific publications, creation of virtual communities, e.g. The Virtual School of Natural Sciences in the Globewide Network Academy and the Semantic Web. Dr. Murray-Rust is a co-developer of Chemical Markup Language. He campaigns for Open Data, particularly in science, and is on the advisory board of the Open Knowledge Foundation and a co-author of the Panton Principles for Open scientific data. In 2011 Dr. Murray-Rust received the Herman Skolnik Award of the American Chemical Society.
Job Titles:
- Communications Manager for the Open Climate Campaign
- Communications Manager, Open Climate Campaign
Rebecca is the Communications Manager for the Open Climate Campaign, a multi-year campaign that aims…
Renata Avila is a human rights lawyer specialised in Intellectual Property and Technology. She worked…
Job Titles:
- Director of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network
Robert Chen is the Director of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) at the Earth Institute, Columbia University. Dr. Chen is also the manager of the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) and co-manager of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Data Distribution Center. He has recently completed two four-year terms as secretary-general of the Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) of the International Council for Science (ICSU) and is currently a member of the Board on International Scientific Organizations (BISO) of the U.S. National Research Council.
Ryan Merkley / Rannie Turingan / CC0 After an extensive search, the Creative Commons board of directors is pleased to announce that Ryan Merkley will be our new CEO. He'll start work on June 1, and we're all looking forward to working with him. Ryan joins us after a career working to advance social causes…
Ryan is currently the Chief of Staff at Wikimedia Foundation. He was CEO at Creative…
As a Full Stack Engineer for Creative Commons, Sara supports CC's websites, applications, open source…
Job Titles:
- Learning and Training Manager
As Learning and Training Manager, Shanna supports all of CC's programs and projects by identifying…
Job Titles:
- Project Lead, Open Knowledge
Taylor leads the Open Climate Data Project at Creative Commons, which provides practical guidance to…
Thomas C. Rubin is a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School and Special Counsel…