Invest in Open Infrastructure Welcomes Kaitlin Thaney as Executive Director

Invest in Open Infrastructure is excited to announce the appointment of Kaitlin Thaney as the program’s inaugural Executive Director. Thaney has over 15 years experience in the open research and technology space where she’s built and scaled infrastructure, programming, and long-term funding for organizations including Creative Commons, Digital Science, Mozilla and, most recently, the Wikimedia Foundation.

Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI) is a not-for-profit project designed to foster a shared, interoperable, and community-driven network of open infrastructure to advance research. The project aims to serve as a trusted ally and resource for a global coalition of projects, organizations, and funders in the open research space, together working to build a sustainable future for open scholarly infrastructure.

“We created IOI to address a gap: a gap between the promise of open scientific and scholarly infrastructure and where it is now,” said Dan Whaley, founding IOI Steering Committee member and CEO of Hypothesis. “Our belief is that working together, we can substantially improve the coordination and interoperability between projects, and dramatically expand the global funding into this critical space. We began a search for a uniquely qualified individual to lead this effort and were thrilled when Kaitlin signaled her interest. Those of us who know her achievements understand what a remarkable match she is for this role. We’re looking forward to the transformation we can achieve together.”

Prior to joining Invest in Open Infrastructure, Thaney was the Endowment Director at the Wikimedia Foundation, where she worked to build a $60M endowment to support Wikipedia and other free knowledge projects. In addition to her time at Wikimedia, she has led programmatic work at Mozilla, helped launch and grow scientific software businesses for Digital Science, and built open access and open data infrastructure for Creative Commons. She also serves on the board of LYRASIS, an open technology vendor serving higher education, libraries, archives and museums, and recently served as the Board Chair of Code for Science & Society, Invest in Open Infrastructure’s fiscal sponsor.

“I’ve dedicated my career advocating for, building, and sustaining open infrastructure to advance research and society,” Thaney said. “I’m excited I get to continue that mission as we ensure a healthier ecosystem for open research for years to come.”

IOI is generously supported by Schmidt Futures and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. For more information about the project, visit investinopen.org, subscribe to our mailing list, or email info@investinopen.org.