Archive for July 25th, 2012

Please join me in welcoming Cathy Davidson to the Mozilla Foundation Board of Directors.  Cathy has been working with Mozilla for some time now, and we are very pleased that she has is  joining our Board.  Mozillians active in the education, web-literacy, or badges work may have seen Cathy and her Mozilla-related work already.  Mozillians active primarily in building Firefox and other general consumer products may have met her and can do so in the future through ongoing Town Hall, brown bag and related discussions.

I’ve been impressed by degree to which Cathy’s work intersects with Mozilla.  Her academic focus has been on the intersection of technology, collaboration, learning, and digital life.   In 2002 she co-founded HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory), an organization dedicated to rethinking the future of learning in the digital age.  We saw HASTAC in action during the first Mozilla Festival (“Learning, Freedom and the Web”) in Barcelona a couple of years ago.  I was struck by the innovative approach.

Here’s a bit more detail about Cathy’s involvement with Mozilla-related activities, and a bit more general info about Cathy.

Cathy joins Brendan Eich, Joi Ito, Bob Lisbonne, Brian Behlendorf and me on the Mozilla Foundation board.    We expect the board to grow a bit more as we seek to bring expertise in new areas and geographies.

Welcome, Cathy!

The Mozilla Foundation is welcoming a new board member. I’ll introduce
her in a moment. First I’ll describe the role of a board member, and
what we looked for. In June 2008 I wrote a description of the role of a
board member and I’ll start by quoting that piece:

The board of directors is generally responsible for the conduct and the
management of affairs of a company. More specifically, they have
fiduciary and ethical responsibility and accountability for what a
company does. There are many opinions about specifically what these
means as a couple of Wikipedia entries make clear. The main point for
this discussion is that a Board is really not like the operational
groups. To use more traditional terms, the Board is not like the
“management team.” The Board asserts authority in the areas of
governance and accountability; it provides assistance, guidance and
support in strategic decisions and tactical activities. There’s no one
better equipped to understand our world than the people building it
every day. We look to the Board to support and improve those efforts,
rather than try to micro-manage those efforts.

As in all roles related to Mozilla, we’re looking for individuals who
are fundamentally excited about the Mozilla mission and what makes us
different, and are highly attuned to [the organization’s] role as part
of a much larger community. For a board member we’re also looking for
someone who can execute the fiduciary and accountability
responsibilities required of a board, and is likely to work well with
the existing members of the board and the people with whom the board
works most closely.

For the Mozilla Foundation, we’re also looking for people who are
energized by Mozilla’s deep technical and consumer product focus, and
who are eager to expand Mozilla’s impact into additional areas.
Operational experience with nonprofit organizations and communicating
our mission are very helpful. Expertise in one or more of the areas
where Mozilla operates programs (education, journalism, “story-telling,”
Internet life, are also a big plus). The Mozilla Foundation board also selects the Board of Directors of its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation.

All Mozilla directors are volunteers. There is no compensation for being
a board member. This is true of many non-profits but a difference from
board membership in many private and public companies.