Mark Surman

The internet is one of our most valuable public resources – it’s Mark Surman’s job to keep it healthy.

Mark is President of Mozilla Foundation, the global nonprofit that does everything from making Firefox to standing up for issues like online privacy. Mark is focused on fueling the broader internet health movement by working with citizens, technologists and civic leaders around the world. Mark is also part of the team that develops Mozilla’s annual Internet Health Report.

Mark has been doing work like this for 20 years: ensuring the internet remains a global public resource, open and accessible to all. Mark was the founding Director of telecentre.org, a $26M initiative connecting community technology centers in more than 30 countries. He ran the Commons Group for 10 years, a boutique consulting firm that provided advice and insight on networks, open source and social enterprise to nonprofits and governments around the world. Mark was awarded the prestigious Shuttleworth Fellowship, where he explored how to apply open source approaches to philanthropy in the year before he joined Mozilla.

Mark is a prominent thinker and thought leader — his analysis and opinions have been featured in The Washington Post, NPR, CNN, the BBC, Fast Company and dozens of other publications. A seasoned and charismatic speaker, Mark has delivered keynotes on five continents at major global events as diverse as Mobile World Congress, Personal Democracy Forum, TEDx Kids, World Innovation Summit on Education and the O’Reilly Open Source Summit.

Mark lives in Toronto with his sons, Tristan and Ethan. He holds a BA in the History of Community Media from the University of Toronto.