Sarah Hinchliff Pearson
Sarah Hinchliff Pearson

Sarah has been writing, lawyering, and strategizing about creativity and collaboration in the digital age for more than 15 years. Over the span of 10 years at Creative Commons, she has functioned as in-house legal counsel, project manager, book author, fundraiser, event organizer, curriculum developer, team leader, and organizational strategist — often at the same time. 

As General Counsel, she oversees the legal services necessary to support the globally distributed operations of Creative Commons, and provides strategic legal and business counsel on all facets of nonprofit operations. She also plays a key role in CC’s programmatic work, leading the stewardship of CC’s legal tools and advising the organization on new programmatic initiatives.

Before joining CC, she did a fellowship at Stanford’s Center for Internet & Society and worked as an IP associate at Fried Frank in New York City. She has a journalism degree from Northwestern University, a law degree from the University of Michigan, and an Executive MBA from the University of Iowa. 

Photo credit: Amber Kaiser, CC BY

Sarah's News

What’s Next for CC Licenses

In this 20th anniversary year of the CC license suite, we are pleased to be renewing our commitment to license stewardship. Creative Commons has always taken its stewardship responsibilities seriously, engaging in multi-year consultation processes for versioning the tools, publishing official translations of the licenses into dozens of languages, and working to educate people about … Read More “What’s Next for CC Licenses”

A collage of people with their faces covered

Should CC-Licensed Content be Used to Train AI? It Depends.

Developments in artificial intelligence (AI) raise several questions when it comes to the use of copyright material and Creative Commons-licensed content in particular.1 One of them is whether CC-licensed content (e.g. photographs, artworks, text, music, etc.) should be used as input to train AI. To get a sense of the various views on this question, … Read More “Should CC-Licensed Content be Used to Train AI? It Depends.”

CC BY License in Slovenian

The CC License Suite 4.0 and CC0 Are Now Available in Slovenian!

We are very excited to announce the publication of the official translations of the CC License Suite 4.0 and CC0 into Slovenian. These legal code translations are the products of years of painstaking work by a team of volunteers at the Intellectual Property Institute in Slovenia, led by Dr. Maja Bogataj Jančič. The first drafts … Read More “The CC License Suite 4.0 and CC0 Are Now Available in Slovenian!”

Made with Creative Commons

Thank You for Translating “Made with Creative Commons”

In 2017, CC published Made with Creative Commons, a book examining 24 different business models built around CC licenses and CC-licensed content. Financially supported by more than 1600 backers on Kickstarter, the project itself is an example of how openly licensed work can be funded and how CC-licensed content can evolve over time.  After publishing … Read More “Thank You for Translating “Made with Creative Commons””

New official translations of CC legal tools published for Korean and Czech

The version 4.0 license suite and CC0 are now available in Korean as a result of the collaborative work of CC Korea volunteers. The 4.0 licenses are also now available in Czech, thanks to the work and leadership of CC community members from the Czech Republic.  For the Korean translations, the process was initiated by … Read More “New official translations of CC legal tools published for Korean and Czech”