Career
He supports the notions of web literacy (the skills and competencies needed for reading, writing, and participating on the web) and Open Philanthropy (which advocates the transparency of the operations of nonprofit organizations toward the public). Surman received his bachelor"s degree in the history of community media from the University of Toronto in 1994. In 1998, Surman co-founded and became president of the Commons Group, providing advice on networks, technology, and social change.
From 2005 to 2008, Surman was the managing director of telecentre.org.
Created by Canada"s International Development Research Centre, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, and Microsoft, telecentre.org worked to network the global telecentre community, and improve their sustainability. There he helped advance thinking about how to apply open source approaches to philanthropy.
In August 2008, Surman became the executive director of the, an independent non-profit 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 As executive director, Surman oversaw the launch of Drumbeat, a "global community of people who steward the open web, explaining and protecting the internet as a critical public resource," by supporting projects and local events that gathers creative people "around big ideas, solving problems and building the open web." In 2012 Surman launched Mozilla’s Maker Party.
In those events, volunteers associated with the teach web-literacy classes, focusing on tools, projects, and community.
In 2013, foundation volunteers conducted 1,700 teaching events in 331 cities. In 2015 the and Surman started expanding this work by launching Mozilla Learning Networks in 500 cities. These networks design, deliver and spread web literacy curriculum and teaching tools.