Alan Stern is Senior Corporate Counsel at Cisco Systems, where he supports Corporate Development and M&A, and leads Open Source due diligence for Cisco's numerous acquisitions. As a member of Cisco's Open Source Review Board, Alan has led a number of initiatives to develop policies and processes for bringing Open Source software into the company. Last year, he was the recipient of Cisco's Pioneer Award, recognizing the development of IP Central, an innovative tool for vetting Open Source technology.
Prior to joining Cisco, Alan spent six years at Sun Microsystems, where he helped develop the company's open source tools and advised on the company's release of the Java Virtual Machine under the GPL. Before going in-house, he spent several years as an intellectual property and first amendment litigator with the firm of Holland & Hart in Denver.
In his pre-law life, Alan was a film and theater critic for the Boston Phoenix and the Denver Post.