Danese Cooper

VP of Special Initiatives
NearForm

Danese Cooper has been an outspoken Free and Open Source Software activist for more than 20 years. Over that time she has consistently worked for the health and welfare of the FOSS movement at jobs such as CTO of Wikipedia, Chief Open Source Evangelist (and founder of the first OSPO) for Sun, Senior Director of Open Source Strategy for Intel, and Board Member with the Drupal Association, the Open Hardware Foundation and the Open Source Initiative. Five years ago while running PayPal’s OSPO, Danese started thinking, talking, and writing about InnerSource as the logical next step to sustain the FOSS movement. Today Danese is VP of Special Initiatives at NearForm, Ltd., an Irish software consultancy and creator of the widely acclaimed Irish COVID Tracing App. NearForm normally specializes in bespoke coding and capability building for organizations looking to modernize their practices.