Ryan Merkley

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.

Posts by Ryan Merkley

Creative Commons announces three new staff members

by Ryan Merkley About CC

I’m excited to announce three new members of the Creative Commons team: Jennryn Wetzler, Assistant Director of Open Education; Sophine Clachar, Data Engineer; and Jay Walsh, Chief of Staff. Jennryn joins us following her work at the U.S. Department of State, where she piloted open educational resources (OER) use for public diplomacy. There, she helped…

How can we make the world a better place?

by Ryan Merkley About CC

What are the values that resonate the most for you in the Commons? Transparency? Innovation? Sharing? Gratitude? In today’s polarized political environment, how can we come together to champion values that we share, and make the world a better place? I’ve repeated three truths to guide CC’s message, and I’d like to share them with…