For Harvey (and Jimmy, and Dick)

Chris Riley
4 min readDec 31, 2024

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From Pixabay: https://pixabay.com/photos/candle-smoke-wick-flame-burn-mood-4215628/

Some bright lights went out in 2024 — two of the brightest in its waning days: Jimmy Carter, whom you know, and Harvey Anderson, whom you may not, and who left us far too soon.

The news headlines are filled with stories about Jimmy Carter and the incredible, long life of service he has led in the four decades since his time as U.S. President. I won’t try to add to that list, much, but I have to raise one item: Did you know he survived metastatic melanoma in 2015 and helped raise awareness and adoption of immunotherapy treatment, for a disease formerly considered a death sentence?

Jimmy Carter was born roughly six months before my maternal grandfather, Dick Rossy, who came immediately to my mind when I read of President Carter’s passing. Grandpa Dick wasn’t a politician, and didn’t go to college — he drove a truck for Nickles Bakery (which as a kid growing up down the street, I thought was the best thing ever, because I got donuts out of it). He didn’t leave behind a famous legacy of accomplishments. But accomplishments don’t inherently make someone a force for good in the world. And Grandpa Dick, like President Carter, was kind and giving, brought joy, and left everything he touched, and every life he touched, better.

Grandpa Dick passed away in 2013, more than a decade ago. Just a few months after his funeral, I met Harvey Anderson. Harvey was a true force for good in the world. We overlapped for only a short time during his tenure at Mozilla, but he was the reason I was there. His leadership steered the organization to be different, to embrace its mission and pursue good policy outcomes, and to create the public policy leadership role that I would fill in the fall of 2013. My life and my career wouldn’t be where they are today but for that opportunity.

I remember well when Harvey interviewed me for my job at Mozilla. I had flown out to San Francisco from Washington DC, and Harvey was my skip-level to-be — the hiring manager’s manager. He cared deeply about the role I was pursuing, and I knew going into the interview that it would be a make or break moment for me.

Anyway, we talked about the internet and how technology and public policy can work together to make it better, and I got the job. I spent just under seven years at Mozilla, double the length of my prior longest tenure in a role. The position also brought me out to California, a place Harvey loved and where I might otherwise never have moved, after growing up in West Virginia and spending my entire life on the East Coast.

I loved working for Harvey. As many others have said, he was kind, and thoughtful, and whenever I interacted with him, it wasn’t with the kind of fear or anxiety that many people feel towards upper level executives — he genuinely helped, and made me feel excited to be doing the work. To be fair, I’ve always been an optimist, and I’ve usually been quite positive about what I am privileged to get to do in my career. But my time at Mozilla, beginning with Harvey (and because of Harvey), really set me on a course from which I don’t see myself ever turning back. Whatever I may be able to accomplish in my career, a portion of that should be attributed to Harvey, a sentiment that I expect many others would echo as well.

I won’t claim that Harvey and I were particularly close, although in a fortunate twist his wife Denelle Dixon was later a fantastic boss to me for several years, and knowing her so well leaves me even more heartbroken for this loss. I’m sad that I didn’t stay in touch with Harvey more. And I’m deeply sad he didn’t have more years on this world, at a time when good, kind, inspiring people like him are so desperately needed as leaders.

As 2024 winds down, I’m thinking about Harvey, and President Carter, and Grandpa Dick. Their footprints on the world were different sizes, to be sure. But the impacts they left make me think that it matters less what you do, and more how you do it. (That’s not an original sentiment, I know, but in a status-driven world, it’s easy to forget.) All three will be remembered for being genuinely good human beings and for leaving their marks on the world.

This has been a shitty year on so very many levels, far more for me personally than I’m going to write about here. It has also been a year when we’ve seen some of the worst of how humans can treat each other. But Harvey Anderson, Jimmy Carter, and Grandpa Dick remind me and should remind us all that there are also very good people in the world — albeit two fewer today than a month ago. All I can do now, all any of us can do, is try to honor and carry forward their spirits.

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Chris Riley
Chris Riley

Written by Chris Riley

Disruptive internet policy engineer, beverage connoisseur, gregarious introvert, contrarian order Muppet, and proud husband & father. Not in order.

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