News & Press

Introducing Our Board

November 14, 2019
Ben Adida

VotingWorks is now a recognized 501(c)(3) public-benefitcorporation. We are incredibly thankful to the Center for Democracy and Technology that incubated us over the last year. And we want to tell you a little bit more about our governance structure.

VotingWorks was founded by me, Ben Adida, and Matt Pasternack in November 2018. I serve as Executive Director and lead product/engineering, and Matt runs operations. Together, we answer to the Board, which is composed of me and two wonderful individuals: John Lilly and Ryan Merkley.

John Lilly was one of our first champions. His experience developing products in mission-driven companies, both for- and non-profit, is second to none. He was a General Partner at Greylock, and before that he was Mozilla’s CEO. He sits on the board of a number of exciting product-focused startups, as well as on the board of Code For America, an organization I deeply respect and look up to as a model govtech non-profit.

Ryan Merkley is Chief of Staff at Wikimedia, before that CEO at Creative Commons. He brings unparalleled experience in non-profit operations and governance, especially around the creation of open-source-based movements. I had the pleasure of working with him when we were both at Mozilla.

John and Ryan continually challenge us to be true to our mission, while always finding ways to be helpful and supportive. We’re incredibly lucky to be working with them to make elections in America secure and affordable.