OASIS Announces Open Innovation Veteran, Francis Beland, as Executive Director
New Leadership to Prioritize Innovation to Advance Open Collaboration Initiatives
20 September 2022 – OASIS Open, the global open source and standards consortium, announced Francis Beland as its Executive Director. A business builder and advisor, Beland brings more than 25 years of experience helping companies identify breakthroughs and elevate technical agendas, products, and achievements. He will utilize his open innovation background to drive new partnerships, ideas, and expertise to the wide range of open collaboration projects at OASIS.
“We welcome Francis Beland’s leadership, vision, and relationship-building experience,” said Gershon Janssen, chair of the OASIS Board of Directors. “His in-depth knowledge from different perspectives as an open innovation entrepreneur will be invaluable to the OASIS community.”
Throughout his career, Francis has served as partner at Global Accelerated Ventures and Oceans.Studio, E-TRON Technologies, and Deloitte/Monitor Group focusing on research, development, and commercialization of breakthrough technologies. In addition, he was vice president at the XPRIZE Foundation, where he led numerous innovation projects. Francis has helped organizations engineer Open Innovation practices into their ecosystem that bolstered innovation, transformed mindsets, and unlocked possibilities.
“It’s an exciting time to step into this role, and I’m grateful to have the opportunity to expand the OASIS community,” Beland said. “As Executive Director, my goals are to leverage OASIS Open’s systems to help governmental organizations and Fortune 500s alike change their thinking, enhance their strategic initiatives, and envision a world of possibility that hasn’t existed before. Working closely with OASIS members to continue advancing the organization’s goals while focusing on growing the membership base, will ultimately lead to a stronger and more collaborative OASIS community.”
In addition to his background developing large-scale innovation programs in healthcare, automotive, biotech, medical devices, governments, oil & gas and energy industries, Francis was an innovation advisor to Facebook, the United Nations, and the European Commission, and served as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the White House for the Food and Drug Administration.
As Executive Director, Beland leads an international staff that supports the collaboration of its members in more than 100 countries who are committed to advancing work across a broad technical agenda.
About OASIS Open
One of the most respected, nonprofit open source and open standards bodies in the world, OASIS advances the fair, transparent development of open source software and standards through the power of global collaboration and community. OASIS is the home for worldwide standards in cybersecurity, blockchain, privacy, cryptography, cloud computing, IoT, urban mobility, emergency management, and other content technologies. Many OASIS standards go on to be ratified by de jure bodies and referenced in international policies and government procurement. More information can be found at https://www.oasis-open.org/.
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