Deborah Bryant
Senior Director, Open Source and Standards, Office of the CTO, Red Hat

Deborah Bryant is senior director for open source and standards in the office of the CTO at Red Hat. An acknowledged international expert in the adoption and use of open source software and open development models as well as open source community health, Deborah is interested in the ethical use of artificial intelligence and machine learning, as well as industry accountability for use of personal information. Prior to her deep involvement in open source, Deborah helped build Oregon-based emerging technology startups, parallel and high-speed computing and commercialized internet and web applications in the ‘80s, and commercial wide-area networks, advanced telecommunications, and data/voice convergence in the ’90s. Her public sector background includes 10 years in state government, as deputy state CIO, an elected official in coastal Oregon, and public sector communities manager at Oregon State University, where she built the school’s Open Source Lab. Deborah serves on numerous boards with public trust agendas and an emphasis on open source software as enabling technology; her current roles include board adviser for the Open Source Elections Technology (OSET) Foundation and board director emeritus for the Open Source Initiative (OSI), the international standards organization for open source software. She also recently joined the freshly launched Mission AI project as an adviser to promote public education and discourse on the use of artificial intelligence. Deborah has authored or contributed to numerous published studies related to open source in the public sector, adaptation of new collaborative models for economic development, and the use of open source software in the US energy sector for cybersecurity. She received the prestigious industry Open Source Award in 2010 in recognition of her contribution to open source communities and for her pioneering advocacy of the use of open source software in the public sector.