Skip to content

Ryan Merkley

Ryan was Chief Executive Officer at Creative Commons. He joined the organization in 2014 to define a new strategy and to establish long-term sustainability for CC. Today, CC is implementing its renewed strategy to build a vibrant, usable commons powered by collaboration and gratitude. Since 2014, CC nearly tripled the number of individual donors, and the commons grew to over 1.1 billion licensed works. In early 2016, CC announced a landmark $10M donation from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, supporting its ongoing work and renewed focus.

Prior to joining CC, Ryan was Chief Operating Officer of Mozilla. He also worked 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. Ryan is an experienced campaigner and advocate for social causes, and has advised political campaigns on the local and national levels. Ryan is an avid cyclist and an amateur barista. He lives in Toronto with his daughter.

Posts by Ryan Merkley

Welcome Kriti Godey, CC’s new Director of Engineering

About CC

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…

Statement on the death of CC friend and colleague Bassel Khartabil

Uncategorized

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…