MZLA Technologies Corp.

Ryan Sipes is CEO of Thunderbird, a Mozilla company making productivity software that is both good and good for people.Ryan has been with MZLA / Thunderbird in various roles since 2017. He is an open source enthusiast who works on technology that enriches people's lives - focusing on digital well-being, productivity and privacy.

Angela Plohman is Chief Operating Officer of the Mozilla Foundation, one of the world’s most recognizable tech-for-good organizations. She is an experienced nonprofit executive and strategic operations professional with a long track record of building and growing nonprofit organizations and programs.

Based in Montreal, she has spent over twenty years playing key leadership roles in the fields of arts and culture, community building, and technology in the U.S., Canada and Europe.

Angela joined Mozilla in 2012. She has played many critical roles since, eventually building up a team that serves as the bedrock of all of Mozilla Foundation’s work. Over the last few years, she has: developed a strategy and a team aimed at helping Mozilla Foundation become an effective, healthy and sustainable movement building organization; and, at the same time, she has played a role in supporting the Board and executive leadership in growing the scope of Mozilla’s efforts. Angela also plays a critical role as the Secretary and Treasurer of multiple Mozilla Boards.

Since 2019, she has also served on the Board of OpenMedia, a community-driven organization that works to keep the Internet open, affordable, and surveillance-free. She serves on the Board of the Toronto Biennial of Art, and is also the President of the Board of Le Livart, a non-profit organization whose mission is to democratize access to art and culture, located in a former presbytery in Montreal.

Mark Surman has spent three decades building a better internet, from the advent of the web to the rise of artificial intelligence.

Mark is President of Mozilla, a non profit that works with companies and communities around the world to ensure the internet is built for people, not for profit. Mozilla's double bottom line portfolio includes the public benefit companies that make Firefox, Thunderbird and open source AI developer tools; a venture fund that invests in double bottom line tech companies; and a global foundation which backs the work of artists, educators and builders. Mark works across this whole portfolio to ensure Mozilla's people and resources are aimed at bending tech — and the tech industry — in a direction that serves all of humanity.

Mark was Executive Director of Mozilla Foundation for 15 years. He grew the organization into an international movement-building force, renowned for its fellowships, philanthropy, advocacy, and insights work, launching projects including Common Voice, the world's largest open source voice data set, and the Mozilla Festival, a yearly conference that brings together technologists, activists, artists, and others to collaboratively shape a healthier and more just digital future.

Prior, Mark was the founding Director of telecentre.org, a $26M initiative connecting community technology centers in more than 30 countries. He ran the Commons Group, a boutique consulting firm specializing in open source and social enterprise. And he was awarded the prestigious Shuttleworth Fellowship to explore open source approaches to philanthropy.

Mark serves on the Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation Boards, and on the Boards of Ushahidi, a global not-for-profit technology company that develops integrated tools and services to enable people to generate solutions and mobilize communities for good, and ROOST, a non-profit building open source tools that aim to radically improve the state of trust and safety across the tech industry. He is a professor of practice in the MacMaster University Masters in Public Policy program, and is engaged as a writer, speaker and thinker in global conversations about open source, trustworthy AI and the future of the internet.

Mark lives in Toronto. He holds a BA in the History of Community Media from the University of Toronto. You can keep up with Mark on Linkedin, and see his recent talks here.