Deb Nicholson is a free software policy expert and a passionate community advocate. After years of local organizing on free speech, marriage equality, government transparency and access to the political process, she joined the free software movement in 2006.She’s won the O’Reilly Open Source Award and the Award for the Advancement of Free Software for her efforts to broaden the free software movement. She is also a founding organizer of the Seattle GNU/Linux Conference, an annual event dedicated to surfacing new voices and welcoming new people to the free software community.

She lives with her husband and her lucky black cat in Cambridge, Massachusetts.