[Wikimedia-l] Announcement *please read*

[Michael Snow]

As others have already said, it will be difficult to see Sue leave the 
organization (but not the movement). I thank her for the years of effort 
that have gone into first stabilizing and then building the Wikimedia 
Foundation. While I don't predict that this transition will be 
completely painless (that's okay, it's a good thing), I'm sure that it 
will be much less painful than it might have been (that's also a good 
thing).

During my time as chair of the Board of Trustees, I had some extended 
conversations with Sue about succession planning, partly because this is 
something the board always has to be thinking about, and partly because 
at that point we would have faced tremendous challenges if Sue were to 
leave and we were forced to find a successor. The issue has remained in 
the back of my mind ever since. As I have watched the organization 
develop, it has been good to observe how she has built the capacities of 
those around her, bringing us to a point where I feel much more 
comfortable that all of the good work can continue on without her 
personal involvement. There's a long list of things Sue has accomplished 
as Executive Director, but making an organization capable of surviving 
her departure is a critical one.

One of the things I believe we all try to do with the work on our 
projects is to leave things - a Wikipedia article, MediaWiki code, the 
culture of our movement, everything - in better shape than we found it. 
Sue has done that on an organizational scale, and impressively so. For 
that, Sue, and all of the other things on which we have worked together, 
thank you.

--Michael Snow