Ryan is 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.
One of the projects I knew I wanted to take on when I joined Creative Commons as CEO was a major website redesign. The CC site has always been a valuable source of information about our mission, our community, and the legal tools we offer. While there’s a lot of new things happening at CC, … Read More “A long-awaited new look for our website”
You may have seen our recent blog post explaining Creative Commons’ involvement in a court case between Great Minds, a publisher of educational materials, and FedEx Office, the retail chain that provides on-demand copying and printing services. To recap, Great Minds created educational materials under a U.S. federal government grant that required them to be … Read More “Why we’re fighting to protect noncommercial uses”
We’re pleased to announce that the next Creative Commons Global Summit will take place in Toronto, Canada from April 28-30, 2017.
Photo: Cancer Immunotherapy by National Institutes of Health, CC BY 2.0 Under the direction of Vice President Joe Biden, the National Cancer Moonshot Initiative seeks to make ten years of progress on cancer research in half that time, with a goal to end cancer in our lifetime. Today, Creative Commons will participate in Biden’s Cancer … Read More “Supporting Open Collaboration to Achieve Cancer Cures”
I’m very excited to share three new job postings with Creative Commons today, supporting three essential areas of our work: technology, communications, and fundraising. It’s a very exciting time for CC: we have new revenues, a new strategy, and a growing Commons and an energetic movement around the world. There is new energy, a great … Read More “New Job Opportunities at Creative Commons”
Creative Commons is pleased to announce the appointment of two new senior-level positions to help implement our new strategy. Last week, CC announced a renewed vision to create a vibrant, usable commons, powered by gratitude and collaboration. These two positions will be fundamental to bringing this strategy to life. I’m pleased to appoint Jane Park … Read More “New CC directors to focus on platforms and content creation”
Over the past week, we’ve talked about sharing, and its fundamental role in societies, and I’ve shared our goal of a vibrant, usable commons, powered by collaboration and gratitude (Read our previous posts: “We need to talk about sharing”, and “Towards a vibrant, usable commons.”). What follows next is our plan for bringing the strategy … Read More “Let’s light up the global commons”
