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.
Creative Commons staff, affiliates, and supporters were active participants and contributors at this year’s Mozilla Festival, which has become an annual rallying point for the Open Web and our shared values. Our sessions covered a wide range of issues, from new technology, to open education and science, to working as an open organization. Thanks to…
Today, we’re releasing a new report that we think you will want to see. State of the Commons covers the impact and success of free and open content worldwide, and it contains the most revealing account we’ve ever published, including new data on what’s shared with a CC license. We found nearly 900 million Creative…
Creative Commons wasn’t done after we created our first license suite, or even after hundreds of millions of licensed works were shared. The web is changing — and so are the ways we get, share, and use content — so we’re trying new things. One new idea is our mobile app, The List, supported by a prototype…
I joined CC in June of this year, and immediately set out to update our strategy. I spent the summer working with our staff, affiliates, board, partners, and funders to understand the needs and the opportunities, and to plan for 2015 and beyond. Today, we’re focused on three strategic objectives: A vibrant commons. Supporting the…
Today, the Knight Foundation announced the selected recipients of its latest Prototype Fund. We’re very proud to be among them, with a new project that probably sounds a bit outside of our normal work to those familiar with CC. Here’s why we’re doing it: When I joined as CEO, I was tasked with imagining the…