Catherine Casserly, CEO
Started: March 2011

Catherine M. Casserly is CEO of Creative Commons. Cathy’s career is dedicated to openness, and particularly to leveraging possibilities at the boundaries of formal and informal learning to equalize educational opportunity. She has been a long-time advocate of open educational resources (OER). As the Director of the OER Initiative at The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation she managed investments totaling more than $100 million to harness the efficiency and effectiveness of knowledge sharing worldwide.

At the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Cathy spearheaded work in the areas of transparency and technology as a Senior Partner and the Vice President of Innovation and Open Networks. With the extended Carnegie team she launched a continuous performance improvement system to create alternative mathematics pathways for community college students.

Cathy has been instrumental in supporting many young organizations and currently sits on the Startl board, the Peer-2-Peer University board and serves on the advisory committee for MIT OpenCourseWare and the University of the People. She earned her Ph.D. in the economics of education from Stanford University and a B.A. in mathematics from Boston College.

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Before becoming Creative Commons’ Office Manager, Valeria worked for several non-profit organizations, lending her administrative and managerial skills to institutions like Planned Parenthood and MoveOn.org. Prior to making the move to Mountain View, CA, she spent three years teaching English to public school students in Seoul, South Korea. A native of the Sunshine State of Florida, she holds a B.A. in Political Science and Women’s Studies from the University of Florida. Outside of work you’ll find her practicing Bikram yoga, mastering her Scrabble skills, and planning her next trip abroad.

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Heidi Chen, Grants & Projects Manager
Started: March 2011

Heidi joined Creative Commons with several years of experience in development, open education, program coordination and event planning for nonprofit organizations. She taught English at public junior high schools in Yamanashi, Japan, and received her bachelor’s degree in American Studies and minor in Music from the University of California, Santa Cruz. In her free time, she likes to plan her next trip, play badminton with friends, and always be learning something new.

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Prior to joining CC, Jessica worked as a copyright specialist and community manager in Australia. There she spent much of her time as the Project Manager of Creative Commons Australia and the Creative Commons Clinic, a research program at the Queensland University of Technology. She has also had stints working as a copyright and broadcasting policy adviser for the Australian government and Australia’s commercial television broadcasters, as well as an academic, lecturer and educator. She has a Master of Laws from the University of Melbourne and both a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Arts (English Hons) from the Australian National University.
Photo by Joi Ito, licensed CC-BY 2.0

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Sara is responsible for generating revenue and aligning CC with a network of partners across sectors, with oversight for CC’s fundraising, communications, and grants management.

Most days, Sara can be found attempting diplomatic negotiation on behalf of open knowledge, crafting with words, or inventing easier ways to do things at the office. Otherwise, she is likely hiking, cooking, reading, or out and about in San Francisco; most always with her dogs.

From 2008-11, Sara was Head of Partnerships & Foundation Relations for the Wikimedia Foundation. Previously, she worked in development for Cambridge In America; and at several non- and for-profit ventures based in New York City. Sara is on the board of the Global Lives Project. She has a joint Masters in Journalism and French Studies from New York University, and a B.A. in French and English Literature from Georgetown University.

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Anna provides research and analysis within Creative Commons, primarily in the education sphere. Her career has focused on research/analysis around digital content and its use. She has worked across public, private and academic sectors including the Queensland University of Technology, Monash University, PricewaterhouseCoopers Financial Advisory, Accenture Strategy, Commonwealth Funds Management, Immigration Review Tribunal and Liverpool City Library. Her degrees include Arts (Media, Psychology and Literature), Library and Information Science, Management and a Business PhD that explored how technology has created opportunities in the music sector.

Anna was born in New Zealand, grew up in Australia and now lives in San Francisco/Mountain View. She is obsessive about music, coffee and travel. In her spare time she can be found plotting how to get the most cities into a ‘round the world’ flight package in order to see as much live music as possible, or helping on her parents tree/cattle farm.
Photo by Valeria Cavazos, licensed CC BY 3.0

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As Director of Global Learning, Cable Green leads the Education projects at Creative Commons. He works with the global open community to leverage open licensing, open content, open policies, and the affordances of digital things to significantly improve access to quality, affordable, education and research resources so everyone in the world can attain all the education they desire. His career is dedicated to increasing access to educational opportunity for everyone around the world. Cable is a strong advocate for open policies that ensure publicly funded education materials are freely and openly available to the public that paid for them.

Previously, as Director of eLearning & Open Education for the Washington State Board for Community & Technical Colleges, he led a project to build and share highest enrolled courses under a CC BY license. They call it the “Open Course Library.”

Cable also served as the Director of Technology for the Ohio Learning Network and Director of Educational Technology for the Ohio State University College of Pharmacy where he built Ohio State’s first online doctoral program. He earned his PhD in educational psychology at Ohio State University, MA in communication from Ohio State, MPC from Westminster College, and BS in international affairs from Lewis and Clark College.

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Greg focuses on how Open Education projects can better create, disseminate, and reuse educational materials. He recently moved to San Francisco from Michigan where he worked at the University of Michigan Library as Copyright Specialist and with the Open.Michigan initiative on OER related outreach and policy. After hours, Greg spends time with the Ubuntu project helping to create and promote the FLOSS operating system termed “Linux for Human Beings.” Greg graduated from the U-M School of Information with an MSI specializing in Information Policy and Library and Information Services. He’ll always miss the thunderstorms and blizzards of the Midwest.

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Elliot Harmon manages CC’s various communications and social media channels. He’s worked in the non-profit sector for eight years, mostly in the arts and technology. He has a degree in English and theatre from the University of South Dakota and a Master’s in writing from the California College of the Arts. When he’s not thinking about CC’s communications strategy, he’s often thinking about cooking, poetry, or music.

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Nathan has worked and tinkered in the area of computers and technology since around 1997. He has served as an Information Technology Volunteer with the Peace Corps in Belize, and holds a B.A. in history from Emory University.

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Puneet likes to write programs that manipulate, analyze and visualize information from large datasets, but he worries what would happen to those data and results 50 or 100 years from now. He is unable to read the two decades old original digital version of his M.S. thesis even while he can read Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata written a few thousand years ago. This, in part, motivates his passion for permanently free and open access to scientific data.

Puneet’s main focus at Creative Commons is on science data policy. His extra-curricular engagements include developing tools and techniques for management and analysis of earth sciences data at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and research at the National Academies/CODATA on policy issues related to citation and licensing mechanisms for digital scientific information. Any spare cycles are devoted to jazz and beer, preferably concurrently.

Puneet has worked, in order, at a rural development NGO in New Delhi, the World Bank in Washington DC, a for-profit GIS consulting company, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is happy to be back to his NGO roots at CC.

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Before joining Creative Commons, Meryl spent multiple years in communication and marketing roles at organizations in the law, academic research, media, and international spheres. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Communication and a double minor in Music Technology and Urban Studies and Planning from the University of California, San Diego.

She loves music and escaping to different locations for travel.

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Currently living in Chicago, IL; Jonathan writes code and designs graphics for CC. He graduated from Ripon College with a double major in Studio Art and Computer Science. Jonathan also moonlights as an archaeologist, and has participated in several projects in South America with a professor from his old school. When not working or traveling, he can be found painting, building things, and writing code for one of his many pet projects. Jonathan thrives on coffee, and generally doesn’t sleep.

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Jane is leading kick-off efforts for a School of Open, a collaboration with the Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU). A community project, the School of Open will offer online educational resources and professional development courses on the meaning and impact of “openness” in the digital age and its benefit to creative endeavors, education, research, and beyond. Participants will learn how to use free technology and tools, such as Creative Commons licenses, to achieve their goals. Jane also helps creators, institutions, and companies consider and adopt CC tools, while cultivating stories that exhibit the social and commercial value of CC licenses to different communities. As a founding volunteer of P2PU, she has designed and led two online courses on creative nonfiction writing, is co-developing a third on Open Governance, and hopes to eventually find time to explore a fourth on Terror Management Theory. She is based in Los Angeles, California.

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As Senior Counsel at CC, Sarah advises CC on legal issues and policy implications that arise for CC and its programs. She joins CC after spending two years as a Residential Fellow with the Fair Use Project at Stanford Law School, where she litigated cases and advised clients on fair use and copyright law. Sarah began her legal career as an intellectual property associate at Fried Frank in New York City. Prior to law school, Sarah had a brief stint as a journalist, including internships at New York Magazine and HARPO Studios. She has a journalism degree from Northwestern University and a J.D. from University of Michigan Law School.

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As General Counsel for CC, Diane oversees the organization’s legal strategy, affairs and projects. She serves on the board of the Software Freedom Law Center. Prior to joining CC, she served as general counsel for Open Source Development Labs (now, the Linux Foundation), and thereafter was legal counsel to Mozilla. She is experienced at providing strategic advice and leadership on an array of IP issues impacting communities and the technology industry, including open source projects, FOSS licensing, and IP reform efforts and policy. She is based in Portland, Oregon.

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Ted started his accounting career at Deloitte, and since 2005 he has worked as a Controller for both private and nonprofit organizations. He received a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Relations from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a master’s degree in Accounting from the University of Texas at Austin. He also serves as a board member of a nonprofit organization called Asia Connection Inc. Outside of work you’re likely to find Ted watching live music at the Fillmore, attempting to cook something palatable, taking a stroll with his dog at Golden Gate Park, or glued to the TV during a Carolina basketball game.

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Aurelia hails from Wisconsin, the land of green & gold and yummy cheese. Her main interests are in copyright and intellectual property in Sub-Saharan Africa, and she has lived and worked in Zambia and Nigeria. She received her BA in Religious Studies from Carroll College (now Carroll University) and her JD from Vanderbilt University Law School. When not frolicking in the wonderful world of IP, she can be found sewing, buying shoes or re-reading Pride and Prejudice for the umpteenth time.

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Paul is responsible for project planning and implementation of initiatives across Creative Commons ensuring alignment with organizational strategy, consistency of process across projects, and customer satisfaction with the results.

Paul’s entire career has revolved around innovative use of technology for adult education. Starting in the late 1990’s and going to present time, Paul’s work has been in the public higher education sector. From 1999 through 2003, Paul helped plan and launch a new online technical university in British Columbia. In late 2003, Paul joined BCcampus as the Director of Development supporting development of open educational resources across all postsecondary fields of study.

Paul has written widely and given many conference and keynote presentations on the Opportunity Side of Open. He has four degrees including a B.Sc in Biology, a B.A. in Psychology, a B.Ed in Education, and an M.Ed. in Adult Learning and Global Change. He works from his home just outside of Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada. He has wide-ranging interests including painting, spending time in the garden growing his own food, cooking yummy meals, and is an avid ocean kayaker who enjoys the big surf and sand off Canada’s west coast.

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Jenny is originally from Michigan but has lived in California for over 10 years. She started her career as an auditor at CPA firms in the Bay area, but has spent the remainder at various corporate industries doing general ledger accounting. She has a bachelor’s degree in Accounting from Grand Valley State University. Her hobbies include collecting arcade games, playing video games, hanging with friends, reading Stephen King, and watching TV.

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Timothy Vollmer is Manager of Policy and Data for Creative Commons, and has worked as a policy fellow, business development assistant, and intern. Prior to rejoining CC, Timothy was Assistant Director to the Program on Public Access to Information for the American Library Association Office for Information Technology Policy in Washington, D.C. Timothy is a graduate of the University of Michigan School of Information, with a specialization in information policy. While at Michigan, he was a research investigator for the Open.Michigan Open Educational Resource initiative, helped develop a student-centric OCW publishing pilot there. Timothy likes to ride bikes, take photos, and bake bread.

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Kat’s legal interests span the issues surrounding free culture, free software, and free expression, especially copyright and patent. She has been a board member of the Wikimedia Foundation since 2006, where her focus is on legal and community issues, and she was previously a policy analyst at the American Library Association Office for Information Technology Policy. Kat has a BA from Stetson University and a JD from George Mason University. In her secret double life, she is a classical musician, performing on bassoon and viola.
Photo by Lane Hartwell, licensed CC BY-SA 3.0

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Carolina Botero is a Colombian lawyer, researcher, lecturer, writer and consultant on issues related to law and technology, especially regarding access. She has developed a special interest on the challenges that the educational and scientific sector faces regarding copyright issues while working with Karisma Foundation in Bogotá where she leads a working group on law and Internet and serves as Legal Lead for Creative Commons Colombia. She is an active member of the Colombian Free Software community and is member of the Board of Conexions (an open education project of the University of Rice) on behalf of Creative Commons.

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Iris’ work at Creative Commons focuses on foundation grants and legal issues. Before joining Creative Commons, she was a lawyer at the Carnegie Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, a couple of biotech start-ups, Stanford University, and LDF (the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., as it was then). She is a graduate of Swarthmore College and Harvard Law School, and what she likes doing is reading, cooking, baking, traveling and doting on her grandchildren, although not in that precise order.

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Diane Cabell, Corporate Secretary for Creative Commons, was the founder of the Clinical Program in Cyberlaw at the Berkman Center for Internet & Societyl where she also served as Assistant Director. Her legal practice focuses on web-based nonprofit start-ups and she also serves as a domain name dispute panelist for the World Intellectual Property Organization. Based in Portsmouth, NH, Diane is currently serving as acting director of iCommons Ltd, a UK charity founded by CC in 2005.

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After falling in love with the Arab world and its cultures more than 15 years ago, Donatella has specialized in Arab media issues; she has published several chapters in collective books on Arab TV industries and two monographs on Pan Arab satellite channels. She is a Ph.D. fellow at Copenhagen University (DK) and at the Danish Institute in Damascus (Syria). Her Ph.D. work revolves around the production and distribution of Syrian TV drama.

Donatella is an affiliate at Harvard University, Berkman Center for Internet and Society. She blogs on Arab media at http://mediaoriente.com and tweets avidly on the Arab world, tech and society at @donatelladr.

Donatella speaks Arabic, English, French and her native language, Italian.

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Alex is an activist for openness and transparency and consumer empowerment. He discovered that Creative Commons responded well to his content aspirations on the belief that while “content is king” really, “context rules” as dictated by the creators and/or if with consumers’ contribution. His job entails strengthening, widening and deepening Creative Commons’ embrace across Africa.

He serves as Africa Representative- ICANN’s Non-Commercial Users Constituency, Council Member – Free and Open Source Foundation for Africa, Chair – Broadcasting Content Advisory Council, CCK (converged state regulator), ED- CODE-IP Trust, Kenyan non-profit catalysing enabling environment for local content development and its intellectual property protection. Consultant on ICT solutions, computer programming and digital content development.

Gakuru enjoys creative company; programmers, movie makers, artistes, artists, poets, bloggers, writers and publishers and others, and frequently contributes on technology to various media outlets. He enjoys reading, listening to music and swimming.

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Chiaki Hayashi is the co-founder of Loftwork Inc., a leading creator network in Japan. With 13,000 registered creators, Loftwork works as a CC-based creative platform which provides massive creative solutions. One of her roles are to develop projects which connect best practices and activities of CC in Asian countries. Since 2006 she also sits on the advisory board of Creative Commons Japan.
Photo by Joi Ito, licensed CC-BY 2.0

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Jane has previously led Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand where she worked with government officials and schools to encourage open access to publicly funded materials. Her background is classical ballet, publishing, and she has a BA(hons) in literature and film from Victoria University of Wellington. She currently works with the DigitalNZ project at the National Library of New Zealand. Jane grew up in the South Island and loves well designed gardens, strong coffee, and free culture activism.
Photo by Andrew McMillan, licensed CC-BY 2.0

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Paul Keller works as copyright policy advisor at Knowledgeland, an Amsterdam based think tank. He is the public project lead for Creative Commons in the Netherlands, coordinates the copyright related aspects of ‘Images for the Future‘ mass digitization project and is one of the developers of the Europeana Licensing Framework. Paul has been working on the relationship between Creative Commons and Collective Rights Management organizations since 2005. In August 2007 this work has lead to a first pilot project with the Dutch Collecting Society Buma/Stemra. Since 2006 Paul sits on the board of iCommons, currently serving as chairman of the board.

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David is a communications consultant and development writer from Chicago. He is working on funding proposals and how CC shares its story with the world. He worked for nearly a decade as a community organizer and enjoys playing hockey and photographing athletes, dancers and all kinds of skaters.

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Mike Linksvayer joined Creative Commons as CTO, became Vice President in April 2007, then a part-time Senior Fellow in April 2012. Previously he co-founded Bitzi, an early open content/open data service. He occasionally writes on his personal blog.

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Tal is a PhD student at UC Berkeley law school’s Jurisprudence and Social Policy program. Her research and interest revolves around copyright and collaborative works of authorship, cyber-policy and innovation. She enjoys the piano (actively and passively), food (as a consumer not a producer) and urban spaces. Tal worked for Israeli stratups first as a system analyst and then as a product manager. She is a Tel Aviv university Computer Science graduate and a Law graduate.

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Jonas is the Regional Manager for Creative Commons in Europe. During the last years, he’s been the coordinator for a network of Creative Commons groups in the Nordic countries and actively works to encourage artists to engage with and make use of Creative Commons. Apart from his work for Creative Commons, he’s also the executive director of the Swedish Society for Free Culture and Software and was for seven years previously the Vice President for the Free Software Foundation Europe.

Since 2008 he’s also been teaching project work at an international program with participants from over 20 countries at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. When he needs to avoid computers and technology, he’s renovating a 19th century house in northen Sweden or dreaming of going on longer trips abroad.

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Soohyun has been with CC Korea since 2008, playing her part as international coordinator and leadership roles in many different volunteer projects. She received a Master’s in translation from the Monterey Institute of International Studies and began her career as a full-time translator before she developed interest in CC and free culture movement. Other than translating and CC activities, she loves to read with a strong coffee and to try new things.
Photo by dreamdrawing, licensed CC-BY 2.0

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Claudio Ruiz is director of Derechos Digitales, a Chilean non-profit that works to promote, defend and develop rights and civil liberties in the digital environment. He is the public lead for Creative Commons Chile, coordinating projects related to the local music industry, netlabels and public sector, working closely with the local librarians community. He is experienced at free software licensing, fundamental rights and specially freedom of expression on the digital environment. He has a cat, loves indie rock and single speed bikes.

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Tobias is the legal lead of Creative Commons South Africa and the Principal Investigator for the Open AIR (African Innovation Research & Training) project, which investigates the relationship between IP and Innovation on the African continent. He previously worked as a Senior Manager for PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Technology & Innovation Law Division in Johannesburg and held a Postdoctoral Fellowship Position at the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Intellectual Property Law & Policy Research Unit – the hosting institution of Creative Commons South Africa. He studied and practiced law in Germany and San Francisco, U.S.A. Tobias’s Ph.D. dissertation was on copyright-related issues – with a special focus on copyright exceptions and limitations.

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Eric works with artists, media companies, technology developers, and cultural institutions on the use of Creative Commons licenses and CC-licensed content. Before joining CC, Eric was an editor for Wired magazine, where he is currently a correspondent, covering the intersection of technology and popular culture. He is on the board of CASH Music and is a musician whose recordings and remixes have been released by a variety of record labels.

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