Tal Niv is the Vice President of Law & Policy at GitHub. Her mission (in life) is to figure out ways to improve the public policy environment in a way that is conducive to software development, to open source, and to creative activity in general, to help create essential policy tools that are helpful to developers and the users of the systems that they build, and that promote balanced policy standards that contribute to innovation. Before GitHub Tal was an adjunct professor of Intellectual Property and previously worked at Creative Commons. While still a Tel-Aviv-ian, Tal worked as a product manager in Israeli startups. Tal also plays the harp and drinks unfiltered 3rd wave coffee.