WEBFWD - Key Persons
Alex is a Mozilla Rep based in London, Great Britain, originally from Romania. He is also a Mozilla TechSpeaker, giving talks all around Europe. In the last 2 months Alex held several technical talks all over Europe (CodeCamp Cluj, OSCAL in Albania, DevTalks in Bucharest and DevSum in Sweden just to name a few) to promote Mozilla's mission and the Open Web. With his enthusiasm in tech he is a crucial force to promote our mission and educate developers all around Europe about new Web technologies. He covered both the transition we are doing shifting from Firefox OS to a more innovative area with Connected Devices but also changes in Firefox and why you should consider the improvements made on the DevTools side.
Job Titles:
- VP of Marketing Communications
As the VP of Marketing Communications, Alex Salkever is responsible for driving strategic positioning and marketing communications campaigns. Alex oversees the global communications, social media, user support and content marketing teams and works across the organization to develop impactful outbound communications for Mozilla and Firefox products.
Before joining Mozilla, Alex was Chief Marketing Officer of Silk.co, a data publishing and visualization startup, where he led efforts focused on user growth and platform partnerships. Alex has held a variety of senior marketing, marketing communications and product marketing roles. Prior to his role at Silk, Alex served as Director of Marketing at Picarro focusing on scientific instruments; as Senior Director of Product Marketing at Joyent working on cloud computing and Internet of Things; and as Global Product Manager IaaS for Telefonica focusing on cloud computing, telecommunications and Internet of Things. In these various capacities, Alex has managed campaigns across all aspects of marketing and product marketing including PR, content marketing, user acquisition, developer marketing and marketing analytics.
Among his many accomplishments, Alex is a former Technology Editor at BusinessWeek.com, and the co-author of "The Immigrant Exodus", a book named to The Economist Book of the Year List in the Business Books category in 2012.
Alex holds a B.A. in Political Science, Russian Language and Literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Job Titles:
- EVP
- Executive
- Executive Vice President, Operations
Angela Plohman is an experienced nonprofit executive and strategic operations professional with a long track record of building and growing nonprofit organizations and programs. She has spent close to two decades playing key leadership roles in the fields of art, culture and open source technology. She joined Mozilla, one of the world's most recognizable tech-for-good organizations, in 2012.
As Executive Vice President, Operations, Angela has been critical in evolving the Mozilla Foundation into an advocacy and education organization; more than doubling the size of the Foundation's staff and revenue; and leading the growth of its operational infrastructure. Angela also co-leads Mozilla's diversity and inclusion initiatives, and serves as Secretary on the Foundation's board of directors.
Prior to Mozilla, she was Director of Baltan Laboratories, a laboratory for art and technology based in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Angela also served in key roles at the European Cultural Foundation in Amsterdam, the Blender Foundation in Amsterdam, and the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science and Technology in Montreal, among others. She has written and spoken extensively on art and the importance of research and production spaces for artists and professionals working creatively with technology. Angela holds a B.A. from the University of Winnipeg and an M.A. from Concordia University.
Ashley leads Mozilla's work to fuel the open internet movement and mobilize millions to stand up for a free, open web. Mozilla's mission is ambitious: making the health of the internet a mainstream issue. It is also vital: as centralization, surveillance, exclusion and other online threats proliferate, we need a movement to keep the web a global public resource.
Ashley works with other teams within Mozilla, with ally organizations and with digital citizens around the world through advocacy campaigns and public education initiatives.
Prior to joining Mozilla, Ashley was Vice President & Chief Field Officer for MomsRising, a national grassroots organization in the U.S. As a founding staff member, she was instrumental in building MomsRising into an organization of one million grassroots supporters, 200 partner organizations and over 20 funding partners.
Ashley has over two decades of experience in public interest advocacy, with a specialization in effective uses of technology and public engagement. During her career, she has worked with leading public interest advocacy organizations in the U.S. and India including M&R Strategic Services, the Advocacy Institute, the Self Employed Women's Association (India) and AmericaSpeaks. She has led multi-state organizing efforts around the issues of health reform, paid family leave, social security reform and the national budget.
Ashley has a Master's Degree in Rhetoric from the University of Maryland, College Park.
Job Titles:
- Chief Executive Officer
- CEO of Mozilla Corporation
Chris Beard is the CEO of Mozilla Corporation and a member of the Board of Directors. He is a passionate advocate for open source and has been leading open source projects in engineering, product and marketing roles for the past 20 years.
A member of Mozilla's founding team in 2004, Chris led marketing and product management, building the Mozilla and Firefox brands, community and core products from zero to hundreds of millions of users globally. As Mozilla's first Chief Innovation Officer, he was responsible for Mozilla Labs, developing new technology and product concepts that formed the foundation for Mozilla's mobile, social and identity products.
He joined Greylock Partners as an Executive-in-Residence in early 2013 until his appointment as Mozilla's interim CEO in April, 2014, and subsequent appointment as CEO in July, 2014.
Prior to Mozilla, Chris served in a variety of senior marketing and product roles at Cluster File Systems (acquired by Sun), HP and Linuxcare. He was also co-founder and CEO of The Puffin Group (acquired by Linuxcare), an early open source technology startup that was focused on Linux kernel and device driver development.
Chris studied economics and biochemistry at the University of Ottawa and received his MBA in International Business from the University of Edinburgh, where he was also awarded the John McFarlane Prize for Leadership. He is a member of the national board of directors of Make-A-Wish.
Job Titles:
- Executive
- VP, Leadership Network
Chris Lawrence is an experienced non-profit executive who has spent the last decade as a dedicated educator and network builder. He joined Mozilla in 2011.
As Vice President, Mozilla Leadership Network, Chris oversees the development and expansion of a global network of leaders who will build the values of the open internet into all aspects of human society. The Mozilla Leadership Network finds, connects and provides learning opportunities and robust resources to organizations and individuals in fields like science, public policy, education and technology.
In his time at Mozilla, Chris has been critical in leading the organization's efforts around network building, as well as bringing web literacy to the forefront of Mozilla's issues agenda. He oversaw the development of the Mozilla Clubs initiative, the expansion of Hive Learning Networks, and the Maker Party campaign, which has become Mozilla's largest celebration of making and learning on the web. These efforts have reached hundreds of thousands of people in over 90 cities across the globe. He was also instrumental in developing multi-year relationships with funders including the John D. and Cathering T. MacArthur Foundation, the National Science Foundation and others.
Prior to Mozilla, Chris was Director of Formal and Informal Teaching and Learning at the New York Hall of Science where he conceived and managed educational programs that utilized digital and web-based tools for on-site and distance learning opportunities. Chris was also an educator at the Museum of the City of New York, The New York Historical Society and the Museum of Television and Radio. He taught Museum Technology as an adjunct professor at Seton Hall's Museum Professionals graduate program, and he holds an M.S. in Museum Education from the Bank Street Graduate School of Education.
As a Fellow in our Emerging Technologies organization, David is responsible for providing technical expertise and representation for engineering broadly in all aspects of company decision making. In the past he has held a variety of roles leading product engineering, marketing, sales enablement and technology licensing businesses at Bell Laboratories, Sun Microsytems and Nokia. He was at Bell Labs during the formative years of Unix, working on signal processing and computer graphics components for running the long distance network and, after divestiture, exploring new business opportunities for AT&T. At Sun he managed product teams responsible for key components of Solaris and Sun's enterprise Internet software stack, including as part of the Sun/Netscape alliance, as well as for the Java platform in embedded and desktop systems. In the CTO unit at Nokia, David's team prototyped emerging hardware and software technologies to accelerate delivery of differentiated mobile computing products. Throughout his career he has been motivated by building Internet and computing technology solutions for real-world problems that matter to people. David grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, and holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Engineering degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Tennessee.
Job Titles:
- Chief of Staff and SVP of Operations
David Slater serves in dual roles as Mozilla's SVP of Operations, overseeing Facilities, Human Resources, IT, and Metrics, as well as Chief of Staff. As Chief of Staff, David facilitates the functioning of the senior executive team, provides executive program management, promotes greater internal communication, increases transparency into organizational accountability, and drives special strategic projects.
David has spent his career in executive roles at Adobe, Leapfrog, and start-ups, as well as a previous role as Mozilla's Vice President of Product Marketing. Before this, as CEO and President of Flixlab he built a small company whose first product became the top photo/video app in the Apple App store across 11 countries. Prior to Flixlab David held product marketing and product management positions at Adobe, Reed Elsevier, Leapfrog and DeVry, Inc.
David was inspired early on by Mozilla's mission, first using Phoenix in 2002, before it was renamed Firefox and became a fan of the efficiency gains realized with the introduction of tabbed browsing. He has a Masters from Stanford University and an MBA from UC Berkeley.
Job Titles:
- Chief Legal and Business Officer
Denelle Dixon-Thayer spearheads Mozilla's business, policy and legal activities in defense of an open, transparent and commercially sustainable Web. She leads Mozilla's team responsible for negotiating partnerships and revenue relationships that ensure Mozilla's sustainability. Denelle has been a vocal advocate for encryption, the disclosure of vulnerabilities by governments and greater user choice and control.
Denelle was an outside advisor to Mozilla for several years before joining as Associate General Counsel in 2012. Denelle's experience prior to joining Mozilla includes working at UK-based private equity firm Terra Firma on brand issues and risk assessment, as well as managing Yahoo!'s legal team advising on products, human rights, antitrust and litigation issues.
Denelle is a qualified lawyer with a B.A. from the University of California, Davis and a J.D. from University of California, Hastings College of Law. She also clerked at the United States District Court for the District of Hawaii.
Denelle has appeared on NBC Press:Here, CNN "Quest Means Business", Bloomberg Radio, EFE, TIME, The New York Times and Advertising Age. She defended the pro-encryption motion during a debate at the Oxford Union and has spoken at Collision, MIT EmTech Digital, Mobile World Congress and ANDICOM on data privacy, net neutrality and user choice.
Eric is a Fellow working on Firefox, focused on developing the next generation of internet technologies for networking, security and real-time media.
Faisal, is an inspiring mentor from India, he recently organized an annual event MozConnect in central India to bring different sub communities under one roof.
As Chief Marketing Officer, Jascha Kaykas-Wolff leads Mozilla's global marketing strategy and organization.
Jascha believes in two key principles: Find opportunities where no one else is looking; And, never fail the same way twice. It's a methodology centered around Agile marketing practices and marketing technology. Coupled with a B.A. in Psychology from Whittier College, it's one that's served him well professionally and personally.
Prior to joining Mozilla, Jascha most recently served as CMO for BitTorrent, CMO for Mindjet, senior vice president of marketing and customer success at Involver and he previously headed Global Marketing for Webtrends. He also has experience at Microsoft and Yahoo!
Job Titles:
- Advisor
- Chief Finance Officer
- Chief Financial Officer of the Mozilla Corporation
Jim has been the Chief Financial Officer of the Mozilla Corporation since 2005. In that time he has led the worldwide effort to grow the Mozilla team and operational infrastructure from less than 25 employees in Mountain View to a worldwide operation of more than 750 employees in 11 offices on 4 different continents.
Prior to joining Mozilla, Jim held several executive financial and operational roles for several high profile growth startups and has been lucky enough to help build the foundational financial and operational infrastructures of a few brand name, multibillion-dollar companies. As one of Netflix's six co-founders, Jim built and managed all financial and operational functions from the company's founding in 1997 until 1999. His public company experience includes Intuit, where he worked closely with the original founders from 1991-1996, including driving several M&As, the company's 1993 IPO and as Divisional Controller for the $100M Small Business Division (QuickBooks).
Jim currently serves as an advisor to several venture-backed companies, VCs, Silicon Valley Bank's CFO Advisory Group and as a Director for the Alliance of CEOs.
Jim graduated from the University of Southern California (GO TROJANS!) in 1989, majoring in Business Admin (Finance) and minoring in Biology after deciding not to be an Aerospace Engineer/Space Doctor.
Job Titles:
- Interim VP, Human Resources
As the acting head of Human Resources for Mozilla, John is responsible for all aspects of Human Resources - hiring, compensation, employee relations, management development. John has built and managed Human Resource functions at some of the world's leading technology companies, including Apple Computer, Nvidia, and Cloudera. At Nvidia, John started the HR function and oversaw the role as the company grew from 100 to over 5,000 employees.
For the last 10 years, John has held HR leadership jobs and run an active HR consulting business building HR functions in small and mid-sized tech companies. His most recent assignments were: EVP HR at Financial Engines, Acting VP HR at Cloudera and CPO at Sitecore. John has a BS in Marketing from Ohio State University.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Emeritus Board
Job Titles:
- Chief Innovation Officer
- Mozilla 's Chief Innovation Officer
As Mozilla's Chief Innovation Officer, Katharina serves as the senior executive broadly responsible for fostering and enriching our culture of open innovation, internally and externally.
Katharina has a background that includes more than a decade of new business growth and technological innovation in media and journalism, most recently as CEO at Spiegel Online, the online division of one of Europe's most influential magazines. Prior to that, Katharina was Editor-in-Chief and CEO at WAZ Media Group, where she completely reimagined the way local and regional journalism could be done, launching a new portal "Der Westen" based heavily upon user participation, integrated social media, and one of the earliest with a focus on location-based data in journalism.
Katharina studied law (with a focus on humanitarian law) and journalism in Hamburg and Lausanne. She previously worked at the UN Center for Human Rights.
Bio
I'm working on Mozilla Reps program dealing with swag and budget requests and helping the council with everything they need. I'm also helping the Greek facebook page of Mozilla by answering questions.
Job Titles:
- Head of All Things Firefox
- SVP, Firefox
Mark Mayo is the head of all things Firefox, leading the combined Cloud, Desktop and Mobile groups at Mozilla. Mark's responsibilities include overseeing strategic direction for Firefox, and the associated services that allow Mozilla to be a major force in the world building a safer, better, open Web. Mark came to Mozilla in 2011 to build Mozilla's cloud offerings, including the Identity, Sync and Location platforms.
Before joining Mozilla, Mark founded an e-commerce company that pioneered mobile flash sales for the outdoor retail market. Previously, Mark was CTO of cloud computing pioneer Joyent where he stewarded Node.js from idea phase to the world's fastest growing developer ecosystem. Mark's other professional passion is systems biology, and he spent five years at the Nobel laureate Michael Smith's Genome Sequencing Center ensuring the human genome was a public resource. His background is in operating systems and bioinformatics, and he holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Guelph, Canada.
Job Titles:
- Executive Director
- President
The web is one of our most valuable public resources - it's Mark Surman's job to protect it.
Mark is Executive Director of the Mozilla Foundation, a global community that does everything from making Firefox to taking stands on issues like privacy and net neutrality. Mark's main job is to build the movement side of Mozilla, rallying the citizens of the web, building alliances with likeminded organizations and leaders, and growing the open internet movement. Mark's goal is nothing short of making the health and accessibility of the internet a mainstream issue around the world.
Mark has been doing work like this for 20 years: standing up for open source and putting technology into the hands of everyday people. Mark was the founding Director of telecentre.org, a $26M initiative connecting community technology centers in more than 30 countries. He ran the Commons Group for 10 years, a boutique consulting firm that provided advice and insight on networks, technology and social enterprise to nonprofits and governments around the world. Mark was awarded the prestigious Shuttleworth Foundation fellowship, where he explored how to apply open source approaches to philanthropy in the year before he joined Mozilla.
Mark is a prominent thinker and thought leader - his analysis and opinions have been featured in The Washington Post, NPR, CNN, Fast Company and dozens of other publications. A seasoned and charismatic speaker, Mark has delivered keynotes on five continents at major global events as diverse as Mobile World Congress, Personal Democracy Forum, TEDx Kids, World Innovation Summit on Education and the O'Reilly Open Source Summit.
Mark serves as a trusted advisor on the boards of the World Bank Solutions for Youth Employment Consortium, the Toronto Arts Foundation and Peer-to-Peer University. He is a past board member of the Connected Learning Alliance, Telefonica's Think Big, the Association for Progressive Communications, Wild Canada and rabble.ca.
Mark lives in Toronto with his wife Tonya, founding Executive Director of the Centre for Social Innovation, and his sons Tristan and Ethan. He holds a BA in the History of Community Media from the University of Toronto.
Mary Ellen is the VP of Brand Engagement, responsible for the brand strategy positioning and narrative of Mozilla and Firefox, as well as the design and production of many of the engagement assets we develop to create relationships with people around the world.
Prior to joining Mozilla, Mary Ellen spent several years at Wolff Olins, a global brand consultancy where, as leader of their San Francisco office and the US strategy team, she worked with clients like Mozilla, the Smithsonian, Target and Google to help them identify what makes them unique and relevant to their audiences and then apply that strategic idea both internally, to guide their culture and capabilities, and externally, to influence their products, services and communications. Mary Ellen also held brand and marketing roles during her 10 years at Target and learned the retail ropes in regional marketing at McDonald's and store management at The May Company Department Stores.
Mary Ellen holds a B.S. in Business from Miami University and an M.L.S. from the University of Minnesota.
Nukeador, flanked by Guillermo Lopez (Spain), Arturo Martinez (Venezuela), Gloria Meneses (Colombia), and Ricardo Pontes (Brazil) all represented Mozilla's volunteer community at the 2013 Mobile World Congress. All received amazing reviews from media, event visitors, and Mozillians alike, as they demonstrated how volunteers and Reps can bring energy and enthusiasm even in huge undertakings like the Firefox OS global launch. Despite spreading Fx OS love around the clock for 5 days straight, the group even found time to create a great recap video for the broader community.
This month's Rep is Michael Kohler from Berne in Switzerland. He started contributing Firefox patches as a teenager in 2008. Four years later he became a Mozilla Rep. Michael is continuously firing up the Swiss community. Most recently he organized swag for an event in Zurich which was all about Rust. Since Michael is super-charged with organization superpowers, he also started to set up events in Germany and Austria. Among his 2014 achievements is the successful organization of the German-speaking Community Meeting in Berlin in early February. This makes Michael one of the few people who manage to pull off events in three different countries within a couple of months. Further broadening our community growth Michael is reaching out a wide range of Mozillians covering areas such as L10N, hacking and Webmaker. Please join us in wishing Michael all the best for his future Mozilla endeavors!
Job Titles:
- Member of the Emeritus Board
Job Titles:
- Chairman
- Executive Chairwoman
Mitchell Baker co-founded the Mozilla Project to support the open, innovative web and ensure it continues offering opportunities for everyone. As Executive Chairwoman of Mozilla, Mitchell Baker is responsible for organizing and motivating a massive, worldwide, collective of employees and volunteers around the world who are building the Internet as a global public resource, open and accessible to all. Mitchell is deeply engaged in developing product offerings that promote the mission of empowering individuals. She also guides the overall scope and direction of Mozilla's mission.
Mitchell is a strong advocate for the open web and open source, and is highly regarded as one of the pioneers who have built the web as it is today. She was instrumental in Netscape's decision in 1998 to release its source code to the public. This later led to the release of the Firefox browser and the creation of the Mozilla Project as one of the most influential technology organizations in the world, spanning software product development, educational initiatives, and participatory movements. After co-founding the Mozilla Project, Mitchell served as its general manager and CEO from 1999 until January 2008, when the organization's rapid growth encouraged her to split her responsibilities and add a CEO.
Mitchell is a Board Member for the OpenMRS, the world's leading open source enterprise electronic medical record system platform, and is an MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate, Open Agriculture Initiative. She co-chairs the U.S. Department of Commerce Digital Economy Advisory Board and serves on the United Nations High Level Panel on Women's Economic Empowerment. Mitchell was co-Chair of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting of the New Champions in 2015 and a member of the ICANN High Level Panel on Global Internet Cooperation and Governance Mechanisms.
A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Mitchell received her B.A. in Asian Studies from UC Berkeley and her J.D. from Berkeley Law. In her early career, she worked as a Corporate and Intellectual Property Lawyer at Fenwick West LLP and as Associate General Counsel for Sun Microsystems.
TIME Magazine profiled Mitchell in its global list of "100 Most Influential People" under "Scientists and Thinkers". Bloomberg listed her as one of the "25 Most Influential People on the Web". She was honored as winner of the Anita Borg Institute's 2009 Women of Vision Award and received the Aenne Burda Award for Creative Leadership in 2010. In 2012, Mitchell was inducted into the founding group of the Internet Society's Hall of Fame. She has appeared on NBC "Meet the Press", BBC "HardTalk", "The Charlie Rose Show" and "CNN Global Office". She has spoken at high-level events like the World Economic Forum, Mobile World Congress, The Web Summit, Collision, Singularity University and Bits&Pretzels.;
Job Titles:
- Product Strategist for Mozilla
- VP of Product, Firefox
As a product strategist for Mozilla, Nick is responsible for leading strategic product initiatives to advance our mission by building great products that help people take control of and explore the full potential of their online lives, while empowering them with technology, know-how and opportunity to advance the Open Web.
Nick is passionate about building mobile product experiences that make people happy. Mostly recently he served as Sr. Director of Mobile Products at Walmart Labs following the acquisition of Tasty Labs, a mobile and social startup he co-founded and where he served as Chief Operating Officer and Vice President of Products. At Walmart Labs, he was responsible for launching award-winning Android and iOS apps for Walmart, Sam's Club and Asda. Prior to this he served as Director of Addons for Mozilla where he was responsible for Firefox ecosystem development and customization features. He has also held a variety of product leadership and software development roles at Yahoo!, Trilogy and Ford Motor Company. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Ohio State University.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Emeritus Board
Job Titles:
- SVP, Emerging Technologies
- Tech Executive
Sean White is a high-tech executive, entrepreneur, inventor, and musician who has spent his career leading innovative development of the experiences, systems, and technologies that enable creative expression, connect us to each other, and enhance our understanding of the world around us. He was most recently the founder and CEO of BrightSky Labs, a company he incubated while an EIR at Greylock Partners, and is currently teaching CS377m: HCI Issues in Mixed & Augmented Reality at Stanford University.
Before Greylock Partners, Sean founded and built the Interaction Ecologies Group at Nokia, leading multiple innovative efforts in new mobile forms and experiences in the areas of wearables, Internet of Things, and augmented reality. His previous roles include Chief Technology Officer of NeoCarta Ventures, Vice President of Technology for Lycos, Inc. (acquired by Terra Networks), and Chief Technology Officer of WhoWhere? (acquired by Lycos). Prior to that, Sean was a project lead and member of the research staff at Paul Allen's Interval Research Corporation. He holds Advisory Board positions with Perch, and Virtual Workflow, and previously held Advisory Board positions with NY Sun Works, Environmental Defense, Evite, Gravity and OpenVoice.
In addition to 30+ peer reviewed publications and 20+ patents granted or filed, Sean is a 2009 Tech Award Laureate for his work on computer vision-based mobile botanical species identification. He has lectured and taught in the Stanford Program in Human-Computer Interaction and at Columbia University, mentored for Engineers without Borders, and served as facilitator for the Clinton Global Initiative. He held an appointment as a Visiting Scientist at the Smithsonian Institution and served on the Steering Committee for IEEE's International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR).
Sean earned his B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University and his M.S. in Mechanical Engineering and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Columbia University.
Job Titles:
- Mozilla 's Vice President of Business Development
- VP, Business Development
Susan is Mozilla's Vice President of Business Development. She is responsible for sourcing, negotiating and executing major business deals and partnerships for Mozilla across its product lines including search, commerce, content, communications, mobile and connected devices. She is also in charge of managing the business development team working across the globe.
Susan brings over a decade of experience in sourcing, structuring and negotiating complex deals at global technology companies and startups. Since joining Mozilla in 2011 as Head of Strategic Development, Susan has worked with the Mozilla team to structure and execute multiple complex negotiations and concluded hundreds of millions dollar revenue and partnership deals for Mozilla products and services.
Prior to Mozilla, Susan was the VP of International Market Development at Entertainment Shopping AG, a venture backed startup where she led the market entry strategy and plan for Japan, China, Brazil and Australia. At Yahoo! Inc., Susan was the VP of Business Development for Yahoo! Asia Region where she managed a team that generated over 1 billion dollar in revenues from partnerships. She also led the market development and partner strategies for Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture) in Asia and Latin America.
Susan holds an AB in Economics from Cornell University.