Joshua R. Simmons

Booster for the commons 🌱

Josh Simmons is a community organizer, nonprofit leader, open source strategist, and activist based in the North Bay Area. He helps organizations mature, put their best foot forward, and collaborate with community partners. His background includes organizational development, program management, inclusive organizing, events, communications, marketing, and web development.

Josh works as the Managing Director of The Matrix.org Foundation and as a Partner at Open Chapters, serves as Vice President of Petaluma Pride, organizes the Public Health Pledge, is a co-organizer of North Bay Python, volunteers as an advisor to Independent Federated Trust and Safety (IFTAS), and sits on the City of Petaluma’s General Plan Advisory Committee.

Over the course of his career, Josh has worked as a freelancer, in corporate and nonprofit settings, and collaborated across public and private institutions. Josh is best known as a member of the worldwide open source software community, having served as President and Chair of the Open Source Initiative Board of Directors. During his six-year tenure he oversaw a restructuring of the board and staff to better serve the organization's members and the open source ecosystem.

More than anything else, though, Josh is a small town cat dad and happy husband. A queer disabled man and an outdoorsman. A concert goer and aspiring aviator. He dreams of going on sabbatical to pursue research, and daydreams about disappearing into the forest.

You can find Josh on the Fediverse, GitHub, and LinkedIn.