website/conservancy/content/about/staff/index.html

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<h1>Staff</h1>

<p>The staff are listed alphabetically by surname.</p>

<h2 id="dimesio">Rosanne DiMesio &ndash; 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 &amp;
Theater at the University of Illinois at Chicago and her Bachelor&rsquo;s
degree in English from the University of Chicago.</p>

<h2 id="denver">Denver Gingerich &ndash; Director of Compliance</h2>

<p>Denver manages SFC's license compliance work, including its technical parts
(such as triaging new reports and verifying complete corresponding source) as
well as planning and carrying out our enforcement strategy (with advice and
input from SFC's Executive Director and Policy Fellow).  Outside of SFC, Denver
also co-runs a FOSS business. Previously, Denver authored financial trading
software on Linux.  Denver writes free software in his spare time: his patches
have been accepted into Wine, Linux, and wdiff.  Denver received his BMath in
Computer Science from the University of Waterloo.  He gives presentations about
digital civil rights and how to ensure FOSS remains sustainable as a community
and financially, having spoken at conferences such as LinuxCon North America,
Texas Linux Fest, LibrePlanet, CopyCamp Toronto, FOSSLC's Summercamp,
CopyleftConf, and the Open Video Conference.</p>

<h2 id="tracy">Tracy Homer &ndash; Operations Manager</h2>
<p>Tracy acts as Operations Manager at Software Freedom Conservancy.
Bringing her super-skills of organization and love of bureaucracy,
she helps things run at SFC smoothly behind the scenes.
Tracy also serves on the board of her local hackerspace, an organization
committed to teaching and promoting open technology exclusively.
She feels that open techonology allows people to express their creativity
regardless of their financial situation or technical background.
Tracy has a degree in GIS from the University of Tennessee and enjoys
making artistic maps using FOSS.</p>


<h2 id="bkuhn">Bradley Kuhn &ndash; Policy Fellow &amp; Hacker-in-Residence</h2>
<p>Kuhn began his work in the software freedom movement
as a volunteer in 1992 &mdash; as an early adopter of Linux-based systems and
contributor to various
<acronym title="Free and Open Source Software">FOSS</acronym> projects,
 including Perl.  Kuhn worked during the 1990s as a system administrator and software developer
for various companies, and also spent one year teaching high school Advanced Placement Computer
Science. As FSF’s Executive Director from 2001&ndash;2005, Kuhn led FSF’s GPL
enforcement, launched its Associate Member program, and invented the copyleft
network services clause found in the Affero General Public License
  (<abbr>AGPL</abbr>).</p>

<p>Kuhn was <acronym title="Software Freedom Conservancy">SFC</acronym>’s primary
volunteer from 2006&ndash;2010, and became its first staffer in 2011. Kuhn’s
work at SFC focuses
on <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/">enforcement of
copyleft and the GPL Agreements</a>, FOSS licensing policy, and non-profit
infrastructural solutions for FOSS. SFC kindly donates some of Kuhn's time as
 Co-Editor-in-Chief of <a href="https://next.copyleft.org">the copyleft-next license</a>.</p>

  Kuhn holds a summa cum laude B.S. in
Computer Science
from <a href="https://www.loyola.edu/academics/computer-science">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 FOSS
programming languages. Kuhn received the 2012 Open Source Award, and the 2021
Award for the Advancement of Free Software &mdash; both in recognition for
his lifelong policy work on copyleft licensing and its enforcement.</p>

<p>Kuhn writes about his work
  on <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/?author=bkuhn">SFC's blog</a>
  and as <a rel="me" href="https://fedi.copyleft.org/@bkuhn">@bkuhn@copyleft.org on
    the fediverse</a> (via Mastodon).

</p>

<h2 id="rick">Rick Sanders &ndash; General Counsel</h2>

<p>Rick Sanders, has over 20 years' experience as a intellectual-property
litigator. He started his legal career at Fenwick & West's Silicon Valley
office, then moved to Nashville to join Waller,   before co-founding Aaron &
Sanders, with the goal of providing sophisticated legal services to technology
clients in Middle Tennessee. Rick also taught copyright law at Vanderbilt
University School of Law, and he co-produced The Copyright Office   Comes to
Music City for many years. He is also a past chair of the American Bar
Association's Trademarks and the Internet   committee, and the Nashville Bar
Association's Intellectual Property Section. He is admitted to the bar of the
States of California and Tennessee, as well as the U.S. Court of Appeal for the
Sixth and Ninth Circuits and all U.S. District Courts in California and
Tennessee. Before becoming a lawyer, Rick was a college instructor in English
composition and literature, especially Shakespeare. He is a native of Mountain
View, California and now lives in Nashville.</p>

<h2 id="karen">Karen M. Sandler &ndash; Executive Director</h2>

<p>Karen M. Sandler is an attorney and the executive director of Software Freedom
Conservancy, a 501c3 nonprofit organization focused on ethical technology. As
a patient deeply concerned with the technology in her own body, Karen is known
as a cyborg lawyer for her advocacy for free software as a life-or-death
issue, particularly in relation to the software on medical devices. She
co-organizes Outreachy, the award-winning outreach program for people who face
under-representation, systemic bias, or discrimination in tech. She is an
adjunct Lecturer-In-Law of Columbia Law School and a visiting scholar at
University of California Santa Cruz.</p>

<p>Prior to joining Software Freedom Conservancy, Karen was the executive
director of the GNOME Foundation. Before that, she was the general counsel of
the Software Freedom Law Center. She began her career as a lawyer at Clifford
Chance and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.</p>

<p>Karen received her law degree from Columbia Law School where she was a James
Kent Scholar and co-founder of the Columbia Science and Technology Law Review.
She also holds a bachelor of science in engineering from
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.</p>

<p>Sandler has won awards for her work on behalf of software freedom, including
the O’Reilly Open Source Award in 2011. She received an honorary doctorate
from KU Leuven in 2023.</p>

<h2 id="sage">Sage Sharp &ndash; Project Manager, Outreachy</h2>
<p>Sage Sharp is the Project Manager of Outreachy, which is Conservancy's diversity
initiative that provides paid, remote internships to people who are subject to
systemic bias or impacted by underrepresentation in tech. Sage is a
long-standing free software contributor, and is known for their work as a
Linux kernel maintainer for seven years. They also founded their own company,
Otter Tech, which has trained over 400 people on how to enforce a Code of
Conduct.</p>

<h2 id="pono">Daniel Pono Takamori &ndash; Community Organizer & Non-Profit Problem Solver</h2>
<p>Pono joined Conservancy to help fill a community need for bridging technical
and non-technical roles. Having worked at FOSS foundations and organizations
for over a decade, his background in FOSS infrastructure led him to think more
deeply about how to better use community intelligence instead of technology
to solve governance questions. He is passionate about making FOSS a more
equitable and inclusive space. With a background in mathematics and physics,
he looks forward to mobilizing social intelligence and community goveranance
as a basis for solving both technical and non-technical problems.</p>

<h2 id="paul">Paul Visscher &ndash; Systems Administrator</h2>
<p>Paul has been using Linux and FOSS for over 26 years and working as a sysadmin
for over 20 years. Having fallen in love with computers at a young age, he
found it intellectually intersting and found the FOSS world an incredible
and natural place to learn. He brings a passion for how free and open source
software can make our society a much more equitable place, and work for us
rather than against us. </p>

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