Ryan Merkley

Ryan Merkley

Ryan Merkley in 2014
Born Toronto, Canada
Alma mater University of Waterloo
Occupation CEO, Creative Commons

Ryan Merkeley is the CEO of the American non-profit, Creative Commons. He is an advocate for open licenses, net neutrality and open data initiatives in the public sector.

Life and Work

Born in Cambridge, Ontario and educated at the University of Waterloo, in 2001 Merkley went on to work as Chief Communications Officer at Engineers Without Borders Canada. From 2003, Merkley worked for the City of Toronto and City of Vancouver in roles such as Director of Communications and Senior Advisor to the Office of the Mayor, leading the open government data initiative of Toronto mayor David Miller. In 2010 he moved to the Mozilla Foundation to take the role of Director of Programs and Strategy. In his time at Mozilla he contributed to the development of Mozilla products and programs supporting the open web, including Lightbeam, Webmaker, and Popcorn.[1][2]

Merkley is the Chair of the Open Worm Foundation board of directors [3] and a trustee at the Quetico Foundation.[4]

In 2014 he was recruited as CEO for Creative Commons,[5] vacated by Catherine Casserly in 2013, to focus on a new, long term strategy and sustainability of the organisation.[6][7][8] He writes and speaks on issues such as the sharing economy, academic publishing and legal infrastructure for sharing content.[9] His 2016 op-ed in Wired criticising the academic publishing industry was referenced by Vice-President Joe Biden in his speech to the American Association for Cancer Research, calling for more open research.[10][11] In 2016 he successfully secured a $10m grant from the The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to support Creative Commons' new strategy, re-focusing the organisation on encouraging sharing.[12][13][14]

In 2016, he was listed in the Globe and Mail's "Sixteen Torontonians to Watch in 2016".[15]

References

  1. "Ryan Merkley". LinkedIn.com. Retrieved 17 September 2016.
  2. "TED Talk: Ryan Merkley demos Popcorn". The Mozilla Blog. Retrieved 17 September 2016.
  3. "Our People".
  4. "Our People".
  5. Gannes, Liz. "Creative Commons Picks Former Mozilla COO Ryan Merkley as CEO". Recode.net. Vox Media. Retrieved 27 September 2016.
  6. "MLTalks Series: Diane Peters, Jane Park, Ryan Merkley and Johnathan Nightingale in conversation with Joi Ito | MIT Media Lab". www.media.mit.edu. Retrieved 19 September 2016.
  7. "Welcoming Creative Commons' new CEO, Ryan Merkley". Creative Commons. 14 May 2014. Retrieved 17 September 2016.
  8. says, Primah Kwagala (25 September 2013). "Catherine Casserly to step down as Creative Commons CEO". Creative Commons. Retrieved 17 September 2016.
  9. "In a true sharing economy, the reward is gratitude". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 17 September 2016.
  10. Merkley, Ryan. "You Pay to Read Research You Fund. That's Ludicrous". Wired.com. Retrieved 17 September 2016.
  11. "VP Joe Biden asks about CC's Ryan Merkley's op-ed in Wired". Vimeo.com. Retrieved 17 September 2016.
  12. "Creative Commons' Radical Plan to Bring Joy to the Commons". Shareable.net. Retrieved 17 September 2016.
  13. "Creative Commons awarded $10M grant from Hewlett Foundation to support renewed strategy". Creative Commons. 19 January 2016.
  14. "The Hewlett and Gates Foundations Award $9 Million to Pratham | Hewlett Foundation". www.hewlett.org. Retrieved 17 September 2016.
  15. "Sixteen Torontonians to watch in 2016". Retrieved 17 September 2016.

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 10/12/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.