Amy Keating: Why I am joining the Mozilla board
The Mozilla Manifesto originally described the Mozilla Project as “a global community of people who believe that openness, innovation, and opportunity are key to the continued health of the internet.” That statement was prescient at the time and remains on point today. The pace of change and explosion of creativity we see around the internet today fuels the ongoing need for prioritization of openness, innovation, and opportunity – and the embracing of community – just as when the Mozilla Project began 25 years ago.
Mozilla’s broad global community is welcoming of those who step away and come back to it, and I appreciate being a part of that living, breathing community. I first joined Mozilla Corporation in 2018 as General Counsel, because I believed in the power of Mozilla’s products and was wowed by the caliber of minds it drew into its orbit. In 2021 I left to join Planet Labs PBC (“Planet”), to help Planet find its path as a public benefit company focused on using space to help life on Earth. And in doing so I have learned firsthand about building and developing public benefit missions, while also learning about community-building from a new lens.
Today I’m returning to Mozilla to participate in a new way. I’m joining the Mozilla Foundation board to contribute to the Mozilla Project as a board member, in service of my belief that technology, society, and the internet itself deserves the kind of thoughtful, passionate, inclusive, and dedicated advocates that Mozilla brings to the table in many forms. And because the concepts of “openness, innovation and opportunity” in the Mozilla Manifesto remain so very important to the issues we see facing technology and the internet today.
We’ve seen these cycles of accelerated progress and innovation before. At each step along the way as a society, these moments of expansion and innovation need people and organizations, like the Mozilla Foundation, to help us collectively take a step back and think about what we are building and what the impact of building it will be. I’m so grateful to have the opportunity to come back and contribute to the Mozilla Project again.