Meet the staff
Richard Stallman's Assistant
Jeanne Rasata
Jeanne works as assistant to our president, Richard Stallman, organizing speaking engagements and working on Stallman's 2nd edition of Free Software Free Society.
Outside of work, Jeanne enjoys volleyball, gardening, reading books and collecting fine wines. She is also a keen amateur cartographer, with a large and varied collection of memorabilia from the 1964 World's Fair.
Image courtesy of former systems administrator Justin Baugh KSC, EKU, OBE. CC-BY-SA.
Systems and Programming Team
Ward Vandewege
Ward discovered GNU/Linux in 1995 and never looked back. He likes to do both sysadmin and programming work and doesn't mind wielding the occasional soldering iron. He's been with the FSF as a sysadmin since 2005, and was a volunteer before that.
Ward has been removing proprietary BIOS code from FSF machines by upgrading them to a free BIOS. In this context he has contributed code and documentation to the Coreboot project. Ward also works as an independent contractor doing a mix of sysadmin and development work with a strong focus on free software.
sysadmin@gnu.org (GnuPG Keyring)
Danny Clark
Danny has previously worked with One Laptop per Child and IBM, and now works closely with Richard Stallman to achieve a fully free laptop computer.
He works at administrating, maintaining, deploying, and improving the FSF and GNU server infrastructure.
His interests include system administration with an emphasis on configuration management tools, political activism and vegan-friendly co-ops. He really likes owls.
sysadmin@gnu.org (GnuPG Keyring)
Peter Olson
Peter Olson has used free software since the early '90s when he was working for the online service Delphi in support of the BIX Information Exchange. He joined the FSF as an associate member in 2004, and has been a vocal proponent of GNU/Linux for over a decade.
Prior to joining the FSF, he was principal developer of a large GNU/Linux based software package for speech enabled computing which is being released under the GPLv3.
sysadmin@gnu.org (GnuPG Keyring)
Membership coordinator
Deb Nicholson
Deborah is our Membership Coordinator and has been with the FSF since August 2007.
Before that, she spent 13 years working for equality and social justice by pushing legislation and supporting progressive candidates. As our society becomes more dependent on digital methods for access to power and information, she is glad to be part of the struggle towards freedom for computer users.
Campaigns Team
Matt Lee
Matt Lee is a Campaigns Manager. He was previously a GNU Webmaster, with a two-year position as the GNU Chief Webmaster.
Away from the FSF, Matt makes noises with his band, wrote the book "Exploring Freedom" and is the founder of Libre.fm.
Holmes Wilson
Holmes is an FSF Campaigns Manager. Previously, he was a co-founder of Downhill Battle, OpenCongress and the Participatory Culture Foundation, makers of the free software video tool Miro.
Holmes likes learning languages; he speaks Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. He also likes karaoke, and can DJ a karaoke night using free software.
Licensing Compliance Lab
Brett Smith
Brett works in the Licensing Compliance Lab as our Compliance Engineer and licensing guru. He joined the FSF in August 2006 and handled the GPLv3 process. He was introduced to free software in high school and immediately became an advocate for the idea, writing papers and giving speeches on the subject.
While studying for a B.S. in computer science at the University of Kentucky, he helped the FSF in various different positions, from webmaster to Richard Stallman's assistant. After a brief stint as a developer at Indiana University, he returned to the foundation.
Donald Robertson
Donald is our Copyright Administrator and also works on licensing with Brett. Donald is a graduate of New England School of Law and interned for the Hon. William G. Young at the federal district courthouse in Boston. Donald was previously the Managing Editor of the New England Law Review and wrote and published An Open Definition: Derivative Works of Software and the Free and Open Source Movement, 42 New. Eng. L. Rev. 339 (2008).
Directory Maintainer
Kelly Hopkins
Kelly maintains the Free Software Directory, the Hardware Directory and the Jobs in free software pages.
Outside of the office Kelly teaches children at the Museum of Science in the Overnight program, is an antique and fine jewelry dealer, is a dog trainer and animal rescuer, has trained as a professional singer, and is a regular performer in the Boston classical music scene.
GNU Press and online store
Jasimin Huang
Jasimin is our Operations Assistant and runs the FSF office and GNU Press. Jasimin is a graduate of San Francisco State University where she studied Business Administrative and she is currently studying part-time for her MBA at Northeastern University.
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