About Ruby

Ruby Sinreich is a web developer, technologist, and strategist who has worked in progressive advocacy organizations and online communities since the early 1990s. She created the first website for the North Carolina Justice Center, was the first online field organizer at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, consulted on network-centric organizing strategies for Greenpeace International and the American Civil Liberties Union, and led the development and management of one of the most active Drupal Commons communities in the world at HASTAC.

Since 2015, Ruby has worked as the Web Developer and Senior Technologist at MomsRising, a community where mothers and the people who love them go to change the world. She was also a founding member of the leadership team for Drupal Diversity and Inclusion in 2016, and served as an advisor to DDI until 2021.

Ruby is passionate about open source software and open space meetings. She is a life-long activist and organizer, who can sometimes still be found at Black Lives Matter protests and PTA meetings. She founded OrangePolitics, a progressive multi-author blog with a vibrant community discussing local issues around her hometown of Chapel Hill, NC. After being the editor and czar for 10 years she recruited and collaborated with new editors, successfully transitioning herself out of leadership in 2013.

“Ruby is one of the most smart and principled people I know, and a real force in the community.”
– Doc Searls

Ruby was previously Director of New Media Strategy at HASTAC, an innovative interdisciplinary network that works to build understanding of how digital media is changing how we teach and learn. She provided expertise on Internet policy and trends, as well as day-to-day management and on-going development of hastac.org, a complex and heavily-used Drupal web site that served as the public face, community center, competition winners’ hub, and operational home of HASTAC.

Before that she served as the Co-Director of Communications at the Fellowship of Reconciliation, an interfaith organization working for peace and justice through active nonviolence since 1914. Her other professional experience includes social network analysis, blogger outreach, organizer capacity-building, web site design and development, online communication strategy, and all manner of trainings. Ruby has helped hundreds of nonprofits use technology more effectively in service of their educational, movement-building, and political missions. She has worked with organizations of all sizes and scopes including local women’s centers, statewide advocacy organizations, and national and international institutions such as Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Greenpeace International, and the American Civil Liberties Union.

“Ruby Sinreich turned concept into reality for [Social Source Commons in 2005]… Ruby made a huge impact by drafting the wireframes for the initial user interface. Drawing on her savvy sense of emerging internet trends, Ruby’s design set SSC on the course that it still tracks to this day.”
– Allen Gunn, Social Source Commons History & Appreciations

Ruby is also an engaging and informative public speaker and and “open space” (a.k.a. unconference) facilitator. She has been a speaker, panelist, keynote, or facilitator at over 40 different conferences. Ruby has spoken at DrupalCon, South by Southwest Interactive, Harvard’s Berkman Center, NetSquared, IPDI’s Politics Online Conference, the Nonprofit Technology Conference, and many other events for advocacy organizations and technology communities.long shadows of a short curvy adult and a child walking in a London park

Ruby earned a BSPH from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1993, and a Certificate in Nonprofit Management from Duke University in 2000. She is a queer single parent, practices Engaged Buddhism, and lives with her son and their cats in Durham, NC.

Please see résumé for more information and links.

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