This press release is available online here:
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/
Wikimedia_Foundation_welcomes_Victoria_Coleman_as_Chief_Technology_Officer
And also as a post on the Wikimedia blog here:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/11/02/victoria-coleman-
chief-technology-officer/
Wikimedia Foundation welcomes Victoria Coleman as Chief Technology Officer
Victoria brings more than 20 years of experience leading development and
strategy for complex technologies at scale
San Francisco, California November 2, 2016 – The Wikimedia Foundation is
pleased to announce Victoria Coleman as our new Chief Technology Officer.
As the Foundation's senior technology executive, Victoria will be
responsible for setting the vision and strategy for technology and
operations behind the Wikimedia projects, in cooperation with the global
communities of volunteer contributors, users, and researchers. Her first
day is 7 November 2016.
The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization behind Wikipedia,
one of the world’s largest and most popular web properties. The
organization also operates 11 other Wikimedia projects
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/FAQ/en#What_free_knowledge_projects_do_you_support.3F>,
including MediaWiki, the open-source wiki software that powers Wikimedia
projects and many other online collaborations. Together, the Wikimedia
sites are visited by hundreds of millions of people each month from every
corner of the globe.
The Chief Technology Officer oversees the organization’s Technology
department <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Technology> and
technical roadmap, and is responsible for the evolution, development, and
delivery of our core platforms and architecture. In this role, Victoria
will work closely with the Wikimedia Foundation’s technology teams to
ensure an accessible and performant technology infrastructure and
anticipate scale and capability challenges for the Wikimedia projects.
“Victoria brings the right combination of deep technical knowledge,
operational expertise, and the steady hand that is needed in this unique
role, ” said Katherine Maher, Executive Director of the Wikimedia
Foundation. “Her experience leading development for a wide array of
technology platforms at scale, as well as her love for education and
passion for our mission, make her an excellent addition to our leadership
team.”
Victoria has more than 20 years of experience in consumer and enterprise
technology. She is a strong leader with expertise in strategy and
development in software engineering, mobile platforms, connected devices,
cyber security, and web services, and has been a longtime advocate for
innovation in education and the public sector.
“Over the past 15 years, Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects have
radically changed how people access knowledge,” Victoria said. “But the
vast majority of people today still don’t use or have access to these
resources. As we look ahead, we’ll consider how we can grow and evolve our
technologies to support the Wikimedia vision: a world where every person
has access to all knowledge. I look forward to collaborating with the
existing team at the Foundation and the Wikimedia communities in this
important work.”
Most recently, Victoria served as Senior Vice President and Chief
Technology Officer for the Connected Home Division of Technicolor, where
she was responsible for innovation strategy, product management, technology
roadmaps, and technical due diligence for acquisitions and partnerships.
Previously, as Senior Vice President of Research and Development at Harman,
she led the core technology platforms of the Infotainment Division
including systems and software, media, tuner, navigation, connectivity, and
advanced driver assist systems.
As Vice President Engineering at Yahoo! Inc., where she led Yahoo!
membership, web presentation technologies such as the Yahoo! User Interface
Library, mobile web services, notification services, backend SDKs including
accounts and messaging, mobile application testing, and the Yahoo!
Developer Network. Before joining Yahoo!, Victoria served as Vice
President, Emerging Technologies at Nokia, Vice President, Software
Engineering of Hewlett-Packard’s webOS global business unit, and Vice
President of Samsung's Advanced Institute of Technology. She has also held
director roles at Intel and SRI International, in security technology and
system design, respectively.
Before joining SRI International, Victoria was a Reader in Computer Science
for two years at Queen Mary and Westfield College and a Lecturer in
Computer Science at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College for six years,
both at the University of London. She designed the software engineering and
theoretical strands of the Royal Holloway undergraduate computer science
program. She also created the Masters program on Dependable Computer
System, and taught undergraduate and graduate classes in information
security, operating systems, software engineering, and dependable
distributed systems.
Victoria has also been selected to participate on numerous advisory
councils in higher education and the public sector. She serves on the
advisory Board of the Santa Clara University Department of Computer
Engineering. She is also a Senior Advisor to the Director of the University
of California Berkeley’s Center for Information Technology Research in the
Interest of Society. She serves as a volunteer advisor on the United States
Department of Defense’s Defense Science Board and is a member of Lockheed
Martin’s Technology Advisory Group. She is also an advisor to the
Automotive Security Review Board, a nonprofit consortium aiming to make
connected cars more cyber secure.
Victoria has deep familiarity with open source software development, having
witnessed the ascendancy of the Unix movement first as a student and
subsequently as an instructor. She passionately believes in the power of
open source and has been actively involved in the development of LiMo
(renamed Tizen), the first truly open, hardware independent, Linux-based
mobile operating system. Having used Webkit as the basis of the application
runtime of webOS, she is also very familiar with leveraging open source for
building products.
Victoria received her B.Sc and M.Sc in Electronic Computer Systems and
Computer Aided Logic Design respectively from the University of Salford, UK
and her Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Manchester, UK.
She holds four patents and is the author of more than 60 articles and
books. Born in Greece, she has worked with teams around the world,
including in Belgium, Brazil, China, France, Finland, Germany, India,
Israel, Korea, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
About the Wikimedia Foundation
The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization that supports and
operates Wikipedia and its sister projects. Wikipedia serves roughly half a
billion people each month. Every month roughly 80,000 people edit Wikipedia
and its sister projects, collectively creating, improving, and maintaining
its nearly 40 million articles across hundreds of languages -- this all
makes Wikipedia one of the most popular web properties in the world. Based
in San Francisco, California, the Wikimedia Foundation is a 501(c)(3)
charity that is funded primarily through donations and grants.
About Wikipedia
Wikipedia is the world’s free knowledge resource. It is a collaborative
creation that has been added to and edited by millions of people from
around the globe since it was created in 2001: anyone can edit it, at any
time. Wikipedia is offered in hundreds of languages containing a total of
nearly 40 million articles. Wikimedia and its sister projects are the
largest collection of free knowledge in human history.
Wikimedia Foundation Press Contact
Juliet Barbara
(415) 839-6885
press(a)wikimedia.org
--
*Samantha Lien*
Communications Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
149 New Montgomery Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
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