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, Program 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, practice shorinji kempo and badminton with friends, and always be learning something new.

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Jessica has spent a decade as a copyright adviser and community manager in Australia. She comes to us from a short sojourn advising Australia’s commercial television broadcaster as the Director of Copyright Law and Media Policy at Free TV Australia.

Prior to this, Jessica spent four years as the Project Manager of both Creative Commons Australia and the Creative Commons Clinic, a research program of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Innovation at Queensland University of Technology. Both organizations aim to further the implementation Creative Commons in Australia through the promotion of research, community development and usage. In this role she was a university lecturer, a frequent conference presenter and the author of a number of publications on copyright, open access and Creative Commons.

Jessica has also spent six years as a copyright and communications policy officer with the Australian government, where she took a major role in the development and implementation of copyright reform in Australia, including the Digital Agenda Amendments and the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement.

She has 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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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 mixes digital technologies, open licensing, standards and policies to significantly improve access to quality, affordable, open educational resources. 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.”

He 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 (educational technology) from Ohio State University, MA (communication) from Ohio State, MPC from Westminster College, and BS (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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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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Mike Linksvayer joined Creative Commons as CTO and became Vice President in April 2007. Previously he co-founded Bitzi, an early open content/open data service.

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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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In addition to managing communications for CC, Jane works closely with creators, institutions, and companies, cultivating stories that exhibit the social and commercial value of CC licenses to different communities. A California native, she has a degree in Philosophy and Creative Writing from UC Berkeley, where she also worked with the National Writing Project and AmeriCorps, Destination College. She is a founding volunteer of the Peer 2 Peer University and has designed and facilitated two courses on creative nonfiction writing, an addition to leading kick-off efforts for a School of Open. She lives in New York.

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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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Timothy Vollmer is Policy Coordinator for Creative Commons, and has worked as a policy fellow, business development assistant, and intern for Creative Commons. 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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Christopher Webber is a programmer and free software activist living in Chicago, IL. He has a BA from DePaul University in the Interdisciplinary Humanities. Previously he did work with the Participatory Culture Foundation on the Miro family of projects. He hacks code, makes artwork and animations with the GIMP and Blender, and generally forgets where he puts things or where he’s going.

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Jennifer Yip hails from the midwest. She holds a Bachelors’ degree in Anthropology from the University of Michigan. She came to Creative Commons with several years of experience in research and administration for non-profit institutions. She enjoys the bay area’s temperate climate and cultural offerings.

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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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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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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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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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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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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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