Winifred Mitchell Baker is the former chairwoman of the

Mozilla Foundation The Mozilla Foundation is an American non-profit organization that exists to support and collectively lead the Open-source software, open source Mozilla project. Founded in July 2003, the organization sets the policies that govern development, ...

and

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

of the

Mozilla Corporation The Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates and integrates the development of Internet-related applications such as the Firefox web browser, by a global community of open-source developers, s ...

, a

subsidiary A subsidiary, subsidiary company, or daughter company is a company (law), company completely or partially owned or controlled by another company, called the parent company or holding company, which has legal and financial control over the subsidia ...

of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates development of the

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

Mozilla Mozilla is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, publishes and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting free software and open standards. The community is supported institution ...

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

applications, including the

Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curren ...

web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...

. Baker coordinated business and policy issues and sat on the Mozilla Foundation

Board of Directors A board of directors is a governing body that supervises the activities of a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government agency. The powers, duties, and responsibilities of a board of directors are determined by government regulatio ...

and the Mozilla Corporation Board of Directors. In 2005, ''

Time Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...

'' included her in its annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. She stepped down as CEO in February 2024 and left Mozilla altogether in 2025.

Education

Baker received a BA in

Chinese studies Sinology, also referred to as China studies, is a subfield of area studies or East Asian studies involved in social sciences and humanities research on China. It is an academic discipline that focuses on the study of the Chinese civilization p ...

at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

, in 1979, achieving a Certificate of Distinction. She received her JD from the Boalt Hall School of Law,

, in 1987 and was admitted to the

State Bar of California The State Bar of California is an administrative division of the Supreme Court of California which licenses attorneys and regulates the practice of law in California. It is responsible for managing the admission of lawyers to the practice of law ...

in the same year.

Career

From January 1990 until October 1993, she worked as a corporate and intellectual property associate at Fenwick & West LLP, a law practice specializing in providing legal services to high-technology companies. She then worked for

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...

as an associate

general counsel A general counsel, also known as chief counsel or chief legal officer (CLO), is the chief in-house lawyer for a company or a governmental department. In a company, the person holding the position typically reports directly to the CEO, and their ...

from November 1993 until October 1994.

Netscape Communications Corporation and mozilla.org

In November 1994, Baker was hired as one of the first employees of the legal department of

Netscape Communications Corporation Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California, and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape (web browser), Nets ...

. Reporting directly to

Jim Barksdale, she jointly set up the initial department. She was responsible for

intellectual property Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, co ...

protection and legal issues relating to product development, reporting to the general counsel. She also created and managed the Technology Group of the Legal Department. She was involved with the Mozilla project from the outset, writing both the Netscape Public License and the

Mozilla Public License The Mozilla Public License (MPL) is a free and open-source weak copyleft license for most Mozilla Foundation software such as Firefox and Thunderbird. The MPL is developed and maintained by Mozilla, which seeks to balance the concerns of bo ...

. In February 1999, Baker became the general manager of mozilla.org, the division of Netscape that coordinated the Mozilla open source project. In 2001, she was fired during a round of layoffs at

America Online AOL (formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City, and a brand marketed by Yahoo! Inc. (2017–present), Yahoo! Inc. The service tra ...

, then-parent of Netscape. Despite this, she continued to serve as general manager of mozilla.org on a volunteer basis. In November 2002, Baker was employed by the Open Source Applications Foundation, helping to guide the group's community relations and taking a seat on OSAF's board of directors.

Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation

Baker was instrumental in the creation of the

, an independent

non-profit A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, not-for-profit organization, or simply a nonprofit, is a non-governmental (private) legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public, or so ...

that was launched on July 15, 2003, as America Online shut down the Netscape browser division and drastically scaled back its involvement with the Mozilla project. Baker became the president of the Mozilla Foundation and was appointed to the five-person board of directors. When the

was launched as a

tax A tax is a mandatory financial charge or levy imposed on an individual or legal entity by a governmental organization to support government spending and public expenditures collectively or to regulate and reduce negative externalities. Tax co ...

able subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation on August 3, 2005, Baker was named the CEO of the new entity. In addition, she joined the Mozilla Corporation's board of directors, though she kept her seat on the Mozilla Foundation's board and her role as chairperson. On January 8, 2008, Mozilla announced that Baker, while retaining her role as chairperson of the Mozilla Foundation, would no longer serve as CEO of the corporation and that MoCo's chief operating officer John Lilly would take over this role. The reasons cited for this change was Mozilla's rapid growth, which made it difficult for executives to continue to take on many different roles. In April 2020 she was named CEO of Mozilla Corporation again. In 2018, Baker received $2,458,350 in compensation from Mozilla. In 2020, after returning to the position of CEO, Baker's salary was more than $3 million. In 2021, her salary rose again to more than $5.5 million, and again to over $6.9 million in 2022. In August 2020, the Mozilla Corporation laid off approximately 250 employees due to shrinking revenues after laying off roughly 70 employees in January 2020. Baker stated this was due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, despite revenue rising to record highs in 2019, and market share shrinking. On February 8, 2024, Mozilla announced that Baker would be stepping down as CEO to "focus on AI and internet safety" as chair of the Mozilla Foundation. A year later on February 19, 2025, Mozilla announced her departure from her role as Chair and member of the boards for Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation.

Awards and recognition

Mitchell Baker was listed among the 2005 Top 100 by ''Time'', in the "Scientists & Thinkers" section. In 2009, Baker received the Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision Award for

Leadership Leadership, is defined as the ability of an individual, group, or organization to "", influence, or guide other individuals, teams, or organizations. "Leadership" is a contested term. Specialist literature debates various viewpoints on the co ...

. In 2012, Baker was inducted into the

Internet Hall of Fame The Internet Hall of Fame is an honorary lifetime achievement award administered by the Internet Society (ISOC) in recognition of individuals who have made significant contributions to the development and advancement of the Internet. Overview ...

by the

Internet Society The Internet Society (ISOC) is an American non-profit advocacy organization founded in 1992 with local chapters around the world. It has offices in Reston, Virginia, United States, and Geneva, Switzerland. Organization The Internet Society ...

Personal life

Baker's husband is Casey Dunn. She has one son.

References

External links

Firefox, Community and Lizard Wrangling
Mitchell Baker speaks at Stanford University
Mitchell Baker's weblog

(includes information about Baker's role at the

)
OSAF Mitchell Baker biography

BBC Profile of Mitchell Baker for series ''Valley Girls''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Baker, Mitchell Netscape people Living people Businesspeople from Oakland, California Mozilla people Lawyers from Oakland, California American chairpersons of corporations American technology chief executives American women chief executives Women Internet pioneers Internet pioneers UC Berkeley School of Law alumni UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science alumni 20th-century American businesswomen 20th-century American businesspeople 21st-century American businesswomen 21st-century American businesspeople 20th-century American lawyers Netscape Year of birth missing (living people)