Ryan Merkley is the Chief Operating Officer at NPR, leading its work on strategy, technology, AI, product, and network growth. He is the founding chair of the Flickr Foundation. He was previously the CEO of Conscience, an emerging biotech non-profit, using AI and collaborative science to address areas of market failure in drug development. He was also a Fellow with the Aspen Institute, working on topics like AI, open source and intellectual property, data and privacy, and information integrity.
Merkley spent over a decade as a c-suite executive in technology non-profits, including Chief of Staff at the Wikimedia Foundation, where he helped grow and strengthen its global network; five years as CEO at Creative Commons, focused on products, education, and sustainability; and Chief Operating Officer and Chief Strategy Officer at Mozilla, helping to establish new strategy and build collaborative teams. He served as Director of Corporate Communications for the City of Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Games, and was a Senior Advisor to Mayor David Miller in Toronto, where he led the Mayor’s budget policy and initiated Toronto’s Open Data project.
I’m thrilled to share the first episode of our podcast, Plays Well with Others, with our community today. It’s about the art, science, and mechanics of collaboration.
I’m very excited to announce a new addition to the Creative Commons team. Please join me in welcoming Kriti Godey, who will be taking on the role of CC’s Director of Engineering. Kriti joins our staff after four years in engineering leadership roles at Ridecell and a CTO role at CasaHop. We asked Kriti if…
At this year’s Global Summit, board chair Molly Van Houweling emphasized that Creative Commons’ vision was not necessarily limited to the internet, but instead acts in support of the creative spirit that is enabled by the internet.
We are deeply saddened and completely outraged to learn today that our friend and colleague Bassel Khartabil has been executed by the Syrian regime. Bassel was Creative Commons’ Syrian project lead, an open source software programmer, teacher, Wikipedia contributor, and free culture advocate. He was also a devoted son and husband, and a great friend…
Unsplash, a photo sharing startup, has launched their own branded license and updated their terms to add new restrictions and remove CC0 from their platform.