Photo of Karen Sandler

The Ohio LinuxFest is deeply honored and pleased to welcome Karen M. Sandler as a keynote speaker for this year’s event! She is the executive director of the Software Freedom Conservancy and has an extensive list of accomplishments within the free software community.

Karen is known as a cyborg lawyer for her advocacy for free software, particularly in relation to the software on medical devices. Prior to joining Conservancy, she was executive director of the GNOME Foundation and before that was General Counsel of the Software Freedom Law Center. Karen co-organizes Outreachy, the award-winning outreach program for women globally and for people of color who are underrepresented in US tech. She is also pro bono counsel to the Free Software Foundation and GNOME. Karen is a recipient of the O’Reilly Open Source Award and cohost of the oggcast Free as in Freedom.

Karen received her law degree from Columbia Law School in 2000, where she was a James Kent Scholar and co-founder of the Columbia Science and Technology Law Review. She received her bachelor’s degree in engineering from The Cooper Union.

The Ohio LinuxFest team is looking forward to hearing the thoughts gained from her many years of legal, community, and technical experience in free software. We hope you will join us!