Meet the Open Organization Ambassadors

The Open Organization Ambassadors are a global community of writers, speakers, consultants, and experts committed to helping others understand the ways open values are changing the way we build organizations.

You can learn more about them below.

The Ambassadors

Jono Bacon

Jono Bacon

Jono Bacon is a leading community manager, speaker, and author, and was formerly the Ubuntu Community Manager at Canonical, optimizing and growing the global Ubuntu community.

Areas of expertise: Building community

Learn more about Jono.


Rebecca Fernandez

Rebecca Fernandez

Rebecca Fernandez is a Principal Program Manager at Red Hat, leading projects to help the company scale its open culture. She's an Open Organization Ambassador, contributed to The Open Organization book, and maintains the Open Decision Framework. She is interested in the intersection of open source principles and practices, and how they can transform organizations for the better.

Areas of expertise: Scaling open principles and practices in the enterprise, making open decisions

Learn more about Rebecca.


Laura Hilliger

Laura Hilliger

Laura Hilliger is an artist, educator, writer, technologist, multimedia designer, developer, technical liaison, project manager, and Open Web hacktivist who is happiest in collaborative environments.

Areas of expertise: Open and inclusive leadership, building community, open principles in non-profits

Learn more about Laura.


Sam Knuth

Sam Knuth

Sam Knuth leads the Customer Content Services team at Red Hat.

Areas of expertise: Making open decisions, open leadership

Learn more about Sam.


Ron McFarland

Ron McFarland

Ron McFarland has been working in Japan for 40 years, and he's spent more than 30 of them in international sales, sales management training, and expanding sales worldwide.

Areas of expertise: Building trustful teams

Learn more about Ron.


Allison Matlack

Allison Matlack

Allison Matlack is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer turned Principal Product Communications Strategist at Red Hat who is known for her enthusiastic speaking style and passion for helping leaders inspire their teams.

Open leadership and management, owning your career in an open organization

Learn more about Allison.


Lauri Apple

Lauri Apple

Lauri Apple is senior program manager with Workday's public cloud team, and the creator of both the Awesome Leadership and Management List and Feedmereadmes.

Areas of expertise: Open leadership, documentation, building agile teams

Learn more about Lauri.


Jimmy Sjölund

Jimmy Sjölund

Jimmy Sjölund is a senior IT service manager and innovation coach at Telia Company, focusing on organizational development, agile and lean workflows, and visualisation practices.

Areas of expertise: Agile/lean workflows, visualization methodologies, open meetings

Learn more about Jimmy.


Jonas Rosland

Jonas Rosland

Jonas Rosland is a community builder, open source advocate, blogger, author, and speaker at many open source focused events.

Areas of expertise: Building community, coordinating dispersed teams

Learn more about Jonas.


Heidi Hess von Ludewig

Heidi Hess von Ludewig

Heidi Hess von Ludewig is an Interlock Program manager who researches networked workplace creativity from the systems perspective, which means that she examines the relationships of multiple elements within the workplace that influence how individuals and groups perform innovative and creative work.

Areas of expertise: Interlock, innovation, social systems and culture

Learn more about Heidi.


Ben Owens

Ben Owens

Ben Owens is a freelance education innovator and strategist with Open Way PBL, LLC and the co-author of Open Up, Education! How Open Way Learning Can Transform Schools.

Areas of expertise: Open education, schools as open organizations

Learn more about Ben.


Heather Leson

Ben Owens

Heather Leson is the Data Literacy Lead at International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies supporting 191 National Societies and 11.6 million volunteers.

Areas of expertise: Open communities, open principles in humanitarian organizations

Learn more about Heather.


Ben Cotton

Ben Owens

Ben Cotton works as the Fedora Program Manager at Red Hat. He co-founded a local open source meetup group, and is a member of the Open Source Initiative and a supporter of Software Freedom Conservancy.

Areas of expertise: Open leadership, communities

Learn more about Ben.


Ambassadors emeriti

Huiren Woo Huiren Woo
Chad Whitacre Chad Whitacre
Philip Foster Philip Foster
Robin Muilwijk Robin Muilwijk
Angela Robertston Angela Robertston
Michael Doyle Michael Doyle
Jen Kelchner Jen Kelchner
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.