Join Creative Commons international Chief Executive Ryan Merkley and CC Aotearoa NZ Public Lead Mandy Henk for a lively discussion of the value of our home-grown Open Access movement: where we're at and where we're headed.

This session is part of NetHui Day Zero and is sponsored by InternetNZ.

Please join us for afternoon tea beforehand from 3pm.

Ryan is the Chief Executive Officer at Creative Commons. He joined the organisation in 2014 to define a new strategy and to establish long-term sustainability for CC. 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.