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People

Small core, our research fellows, a great board, and our wise and generous advisors!

The Team

George Oates

Co-Founder & Executive Director
George is a designer and director who has worked on the web since 1996. She was the first designer at flickr.com from 2003-2008 and has centered her practice in the cultural heritage sector since then.
Email: glo@flickr.org

LinkedIn
Photo of Jessamyn West

Jessamyn West

Community Manager, Flickr Commons
Jessamyn is a veteran online community manager, library technologist, and creator of excellent documentation.

LinkedIn
portrait of Alex Chan

Alex Chan

Tech Lead
Alex is a software developer, with a particular interest in digital preservation. When not at a computer, they can often be found with needle in hand or dance shoe on foot.

Personal site | LinkedIn

Ewa Spohn

Project Manager, Data Lifeboat
Ewa is a product manager, business developer, engineer, and problem solver helping explore new terrain in our Data Lifeboat initiative.

LinkedIn
CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, TEDxKraków

Susan Mernit

Development Lead
Susan is into community engagement, open-source, and product innovation.

LinkedIn

Fattori McKenna

Researcher, Data Lifeboat
Fattori is an academic and commercial researcher focused on images, databases, community, and the recording of human experiences.

LinkedIn

Joshua Christman

Designer
Joshua specialises in branding, digital design, and video work.

LinkedIn

Research Fellows

Prakash Krishnan

Research Fellow, 2024
Prakash Krishnan (he/him) is an artist-researcher and cultural worker based in Tiohtià:ke (Montréal, Canada) on the stolen lands of the Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) Nation.

Meet Prakash
Image credit: Tamara Abdul Hadi

Eryk Salvaggio

Research Fellow, 2024
Eryk Salvaggio is a researcher and new media artist interested in the social and cultural impacts of artificial intelligence.

LinkedIn

Jenn Phillips-Bacher

Inaugural Research Fellow, 2023
Jenn is a digital and web all-rounder who’s managed products and projects, conducted user research and UX design, and genuinely enjoys organizing information. She’s been working in cultural heritage and non-profits since the early 2000s.

LinkedIn

Our Board of Directors

Ryan Merkley

Board Chair
Ryan is CEO of Conscience, and former managing director at Aspen Digital, and previously served as Chief of Staff at the Wikimedia Foundation, and CEO of Creative Commons before that.

LinkedIn

Stephanie McVey

Treasurer
Stephanie is the Chief Financial Officer at SmugMug + Flickr.

LinkedIn

Ben MacAskill

Board Observer
Ben is President & COO of SmugMug + Flickr, and Co-Founder of flickr.org.

LinkedIn
CC-BY Sebastiaan ter Burg

You?

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The Advisory Board

Adam Harvey

Adam Harvey (US/DE) is an artist and applied researcher based in Berlin focused on computer vision, privacy, and surveillance.
adam.harvey.studio

Anasuya Sengupta

Poet, author, activist, and a cited expert in representation for marginalized voices on the Internet.
whoseknowledge.org

Ben Cerveny

Strategist, designer, and co-founder of Foundation for Public Code.
publiccode.net

Clay Shirky

Writer, activist, and educator, Clay is Vice-Provost of AI and Technology at NYU.
CC=BY Nordiske Mediedager

Elizabeth Churchill

HCI/CogSci research leader and Director of UX.
Elizabeth on LinkedIn

Jennie-Rose Halperin

Commons and Libraries specialist and director of Library Futures, a project of The Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy at NYU Law.
Jennie's website

John Allspaw

CTO-type. Engineering and Ops veteran. Runs Adaptive Capacity Labs.
John on LinkedIn