Heather Ford is an Information Science Professional who has worked on information policy projects in South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States. Heather graduated from Rhodes University with a Bachelor of Journalism degree and has a certificate in Telecommunications Policy, Law and Management from the University of the Witwatersrand Link Centre. After working in the United Kingdom for Greennet and Privacy International, she went on to Stanford University in 2003 where she worked as a fellow in the Reuters Digital Vision Fellowship Program. She went back to South Africa in 2004 to start Creative Commons South Africa and a programme entitled ‘Commons-sense: Towards an African Digital Information Commons’ at the Wits University Link Centre. From 2006-2008, she was the Executive Director of iCommons, an international charity linked to Creative Commons and open source organisations around the world. She then went on to co-found South African non-profit organisation, 'The African Commons Project' with the goal of mobilising communities through active participation in collaborative technology.