appoint the <a href="/about/staff/">Executive Director and staff</a> to carry out the

day-to-day operations of the organization.  The Directorship of the

Conservancy includes both talented non-profit managers and experienced

FLOSS project leaders who can both guide the administrative operations of

the organization as well as mentor member project leaders as needed.  Our

Directors constantly search for additional directors who can contribute a

variety of expertise and perspective related to the Conservancy's

mission.</p>

<p>Currently, the directors of Conservancy are:</p>

<h2>Jeremy Allison</h2>

<p>Jeremy Allison is one of the lead developers on the Samba Team, a

group of programmers developing an Open Source Windows compatible file

and print server product for UNIX systems. Developed over the Internet

in a distributed manner similar to the Linux system, Samba is used by

all Linux distributions as well as many thousands of corporations and

products worldwide. Jeremy handles the co-ordination of Samba

development efforts and acts as a corporate liaison to companies using

the Samba code  commercially.</p>

<p>He works for Google, Inc. who fund him to work on improving Samba and

solving the problems of  Windows and Linux interoperability.</p>

<h2>Kate Chapman</h2>

<p>Kate Chapman is Chief Technology Officer of the Cadasta Foundation,

leading the organization’s technology team and strategy. Cadasta

develops free and open source software to help communities document their

land rights around the world. Chapman is recognized as a leader in the

domains of open source geospatial technology and community mapping, and an

advocate for open imagery as a public good. Over the past 15 years she’s

worked on geospatial problems of all kinds, including tracking malaria

outbreaks, mapping private residences for emergency response, and even

analyzing imaginary items used in geospatial games. Chapman co-founded the

Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team and served as the organization’s first

Executive Director. She currently serves as the Chairperson of the Board of

Directors of the OpenStreetMap Foundation.</p>

<h2>Dr. Laura Fortunato</h2>

<p><a href="http://www.santafe.edu/~fortunato/">Dr. Laura Fortunato</a>

is associate professor of evolutionary anthropology at the University

of Oxford, where she researches the evolution of human social and

cultural behavior, working at the interface of anthropology and

biology. An advocate of reproducible computational methods in

research, including the use of Free/Open-Source tools, she founded the

<a href="https://rroxford.github.io/">Reproducible Research Oxford</a>

project, with the aim to foster a culture of reproducibility and open

research at Oxford.</p>

<p>Laura holds a degree in Biological Sciences from the University of

Padova and masters and PhD in Anthropology from University College

London. Before joining Oxford she was an Omidyar fellow at the <a

href="http://www.santafe.edu/">Santa Fe Institute</a>, where she is

currently an External Professor and a member of the Science Steering

Committee. She is also a member of the steering group of the <a

href="http://www.ukrn.org/">UK Reproducibility Network</a>, a peer-led

consortium that aims to promote robust research practice in the UK.</p>

<h2>Mark Galassi</h2>

<p>Mark Galassi has been involved in the GNU project since 1984. He

currently works as a researcher in the International, Space, and Response

division at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he has worked on the

HETE-2 satellite, ISIS/Genie, the Raptor telescope, the Swift satellite,

and the muon tomography project. In 1997 Mark took a couple of years off

from Los Alamos (where he was previously in the ISR division and the

Theoretical Astrophysics group) to work for Cygnus (now a part of Red Hat)

writing software and books for eCos, although he continued working on the

HETE-2 satellite (an astrophysical Gamma Ray Burst mission) part

time. Mark earned his BA in Physics at Reed College and a PhD from the

Institute for Theoretical Physics at Stony Brook. </p>

<h2>Bdale Garbee</h2>

<p><a href="https://gag.com/bdale/">Bdale Garbee</a> has been a contributor

to the Free Software community since 1979.  Bdale's background also includes

many years of hardware design, Unix internals, and embedded systems work.

He was an early participant in the Debian project, helped port Debian

GNU/Linux to 5 architectures, served as Debian Project Leader, then

chairman of the Debian Technical Committee for nearly a decade, and remains

active in the Debian community.</p>

<p>Bdale served as an HP Fellow in the Office of the CTO until 2016 where

he led HP's open source strategy work.  Bdale served as President of

Software in the Public Interest for a decade.  He served nearly as long on

the board of directors of the Linux Foundation representing individual

affiliates and the developer community.  Bdale currently serves on the

boards of the Freedombox Foundation, Linux Professional Institute, and

Aleph Objects.</p>

<h2>Bradley M. Kuhn</h2>

<a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/">Bradley M. Kuhn</a> is

at <a href="/">Software Freedom Conservancy</a> and editor-in-chief

of <a href="https://copyleft.org">copyleft.org</a>. Kuhn began his work in

the software freedom movement as a volunteer in 1992, when he became an early

adopter of Linux-based systems, and began contributing to various Free

Software projects, including Perl.  He worked during the 1990s as a system

administrator and software developer for various companies, and taught AP

Computer Science at Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati.  Kuhn's

non-profit career began in 2000, when he was hired by the FSF.  As FSF's

Executive Director from 2001–2005, Kuhn

led <a href="https://www.fsf.org/licensing">FSF's GPL enforcement</a>,

launched <a href="https://www.fsf.org/associate/">its Associate Member

program</a>, and invented

the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html">Affero GPL</a>.  Kuhn

was appointed President of Software Freedom Conservancy in April 2006, was

Conservancy's primary volunteer from 2006–2010, and has been a

full-time staffer since early 2011.  Kuhn holds a summa cum laude B.S. in

Computer Science

from <a href="http://www.loyola.edu/academic/computerscience">Loyola

University in Maryland</a>, and an M.S. in Computer Science from

the <a href="http://www.cs.uc.edu/">University of

Cincinnati</a>.  <a href="http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn/articles/thesis/">Kuhn's

Master's thesis</a> discussed methods for dynamic interoperability of Free

Software programming languages.  Kuhn received

the <a href="http://www.oscon.com/oscon2012/public/schedule/detail/25039">O'Reilly

Open Source Award in 2012</a>, in recognition for his lifelong policy work on

copyleft licensing.  Kuhn has <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/">a

blog</a> and co-hosts

the audcast, <a href="http://faif.us/"><cite>Free as in Freedom</cite></a>.

<h2>Mike Linksvayer</h2>

<p>Mike Linksvayer serves on the boards of AcaWiki and OpenHatch,

and on the Open Definition Advisory Council, and is Policy Director at GitHub.

Previously Mike was CTO, VP, and a Senior Fellow at Creative Commons, and a

co-founder of Bitzi, an early open content/open

data mass collaboration platform.</p>

<h2>Martin Michlmayr</h2>

<p>Martin Michlmayr has been involved in various free and open source

software projects for over 20 years.  He acted as the leader of the

Debian project for two years, served on the board of the Open Source

Initiative (OSI) for six years and currently serves on the board of

Software Freedom Conservancy.  Martin earned a PhD from the University

of Cambridge and he received an O'Reilly Open Source Award in 2013 for

his contributions to the open source community.</p>

<h2>Allison Randal</h2>

<p>Over the course of multiple decades as a free software developer,

Allison has worked in a wide variety of projects and domains, from

games, linguistic analysis tools, websites, mobile apps, shipping

fulfillment, and talking smart-home appliances, to programming language

design, compilers, hypervisors, containers, deployment automation,

database replication, and operating systems.</p>

<p>She is a board member at the Perl Foundation, a board member at the

OpenStack Foundation, and co-founder of the FLOSS Foundations group for

free software community leaders. At various points in the past she has

served as president of the Open Source Initiative, president of the Perl

Foundation, board member of the Python Software Foundation, chairman of

the Parrot Foundation, chief architect of the Parrot virtual machine,

Open Source Evangelist at O’Reilly Media, conference chair of OSCON,

Technical Architect of Ubuntu, Open Source Advisor at Canonical,

Distinguished Technologist and Open Source Strategist at HP, and

Distinguished Engineer at SUSE. She collaborates in the Debian project,

and is currently taking a mid-career research sabbatical at the

University of Cambridge.</p>

<h2>Tony Sebro</h2>

<p>Tony currently serves as the Deputy General Counsel for

    the <a href="https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Home">Wikimedia

    Foundation</a>, where he manages the day-to-day operations of Wikimedia's

    legal department, and provide specific expertise on free and open source

    licensing, intellectual property, non-profit law, and privacy matters.

    Tony is also an organizer of

    Conservancy's <a href="https://outreachy.org">Outreachy</a> project,

    which provides paid internships in free and open source for people from

    groups traditionally underrepresented in tech.  Prior to joining

    Wikimedia, Tony served as General Counsel (and “Employee #2”)

    of Software Freedom Conservancy for over six years.  Tony has also spent

    time in the private sector with PCT Law Group and Kenyon & Kenyon, and as

    an intellectual property licensing and business development professional

    with IBM.  Tony received an O'Reilly Open Source Award in 2017.  Tony is

    an active participant in and supporter of the non-profit community, and

    lives in the Bay Area with his family.</p>

{% endblock %}

{% extends "base_about.html" %}

{% block subtitle %}Staff - {% endblock %}

{% block submenuselection %}Staff{% endblock %}

{% block content %}

<h1>Staff</h1>

<h2 id="karen">Karen M. Sandler - Executive Director</h2>

<p>Karen M. Sandler is the executive director of Conservancy. Karen is known

as a cyborg lawyer for her advocacy for free software, particularly in

relation to the software on medical devices. Prior to joining Conservancy,

she was executive director of the GNOME Foundation. Before that, she was

general counsel of the Software Freedom Law Center. Karen

co-organizes <a href="http://www.outreachy.org">Outreachy</a>, the

award-winning outreach program for women globally and for people of color

who are underrepresented in US tech. She is also pro bono counsel to the FSF

and GNOME. Karen is a recipient of the O’Reilly Open Source Award and cohost

of the oggcast <a href="http://faif.us/">Free as in Freedom</a>.</p>

<p>Karen received her law degree from Columbia Law School in 2000, where she

was a James Kent Scholar and co-founder of the Columbia Science and

Technology Law Review. Karen received her bachelor’s degree in engineering

from The Cooper Union.</p>

<h2 id="bkuhn">Bradley M. Kuhn - Policy Fellow and Hacker-in-Residence</h2>

<p><a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/">Bradley M. Kuhn</a> is

the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/about/staff/#bkuhn">Policy Fellow and

Conservancy</a> and editor-in-chief

of <a href="https://copyleft.org">copyleft.org</a>. Kuhn began his work in

the software freedom movement as a volunteer in 1992, when he became an early

adopter of Linux-based systems, and began contributing to various Free

Software projects, including Perl.  He worked during the 1990s as a system

administrator and software developer for various companies, and taught AP

Computer Science at Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati.  Kuhn's

non-profit career began in 2000, when he was hired by the FSF.  As FSF's

Executive Director from 2001–2005, Kuhn

led <a href="https://www.fsf.org/licensing">FSF's GPL enforcement</a>,

launched <a href="https://www.fsf.org/associate/">its Associate Member

program</a>, and invented

the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html">Affero GPL</a>.  Kuhn

began as Conservancy's primary volunteer from 2006–2010, and became its first

staff person in 2011.  Kuhn holds a summa cum laude B.S. in Computer Science

from <a href="http://www.loyola.edu/academic/computerscience">Loyola

University in Maryland</a>, and an M.S. in Computer Science from

the <a href="http://www.cs.uc.edu/">University of

Cincinnati</a>.  <a href="http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn/articles/thesis/">Kuhn's

Master's thesis</a> discussed methods for dynamic interoperability of Free

Software programming languages.  Kuhn received

the <a href="http://www.oscon.com/oscon2012/public/schedule/detail/25039">O'Reilly

Open Source Award in 2012</a>, in recognition for his lifelong policy work on

copyleft licensing.  Kuhn has <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/">a

blog</a> and co-hosts

the audcast, <a href="http://faif.us/"><cite>Free as in

Freedom</cite></a>.</p>

<h2 id="brett">Brett Smith - Director of Strategic Initiatives</h2>

<p>Brett Smith began his FLOSS advocacy in 2000 at college, organizing

student groups and discussing the issues with professors and journalists.  He

also spent a couple of those summers interning at the Free Software

Foundation, and working in various assisting roles there when he returned to

campus.  Later on he worked as the FSF's License Compliance Engineer from

2006-2012, helping to shepherd the GPLv3 drafting process and do outreach

after the license was released.  From there, he worked as a Systems Engineer

at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and

an <a href="https://arvados.org/">Arvados</a> maintainer at Curoverse before

joining Conservancy as Director of Strategic Initiatives in 2016.  He holds a

BS in Computer Science from the University of Kentucky.</p>

<h2 id="deb">Deb Nicholson - Director of Community Operations</h2>

<p>Deb Nicholson is the Director of Community Operations at the Software Freedom Conservancy where she supports the work of its member projects and facilitates collaboration with the wider free and open source software community. After years of local organizing on free speech, marriage equality, government transparency and access to the political process, she joined the free software movement in 2006. While working for the <a href="https://www.fsf.org/">Free Software Foundation</a>, she created the Women&rsquo;s Caucus to increase recruitment and retention of women in the free software community. She piloted messaging and directed outreach activities at the Open Invention Network, a shared defensive patent pool for free and open source software. She won the O’Reilly Open Source Award for her work as <a href="https://mediagoblin.org/">GNU MediaGoblin</a>&lsquo;s Community Liaison and as a founding board member at <a href="https://blog.openhatch.org/2017/celebrating-our-successes-and-winding-down-as-an-organization/">OpenHatch</a>. She also continues to serve as a founding organizer of the <a href="http://seagl.org/">Seattle GNU/Linux Conference</a>, an annual event dedicated to surfacing new voices and welcoming new people to the free software community.</p>

<p>Deb received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Bradford College and lives with her husband and her lucky black cat in Cambridge, Massachusetts.</p>

<h2 id="denver">Denver Gingerich - FLOSS License Compliance Engineer</h2>

<p>

Denver works part-time managing the technical side of Conservancy's

license compliance work, triaging new reports and verifying complete and

corresponding source (C&CS).  His roles elsewhere have recently

included financial trading software development on GNU/Linux and

previously involved writing system software for hardware companies,

including driver writing for the kernel named Linux at ATI (now AMD) and

Qualcomm.  He founded a company that designs and builds magnetic stripe

readers for security hobbyists where he designed the hardware and

developed the device's tools and firmware, which are both free software.

Denver also writes free software in his spare time, with patches accepted

into Wine, the kernel named Linux, and GNU wdiff.  Denver received his

BMath in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo.  He gives presentations

about digital civil rights and protecting the free software ecosystem,

having spoken at conferences such as CopyCamp Toronto, FOSSLC's

Summercamp, and the Open Video Conference.</p>

<h2 id="dimesio">Rosanne DiMesio - Technical Bookkeeper</h2>

<p>Rosanne DiMesio is the Technical Bookkeeper at the Software Freedom

Conservancy where she handles incoming and outgoing accounting

activities for all its member projects as well as financial operations

for Conservancy itself. Rosanne has been volunteering with the Wine

Project since 2008 where she focuses on user support and documentation.

She has worked as an English teacher, a freelance writer and as IT

support. She is passionate about helping free software projects improve

their user experience. Rosanne received her Masters in Communication &

Theater at the University of Illinois at Chicago and her Bachelor’s

degree in English from the University of Chicago.</p>

{% endblock %}