Hi all!

I'm truly really excited to welcome Sophie Österberg to the Wikimedia Foundation's Education Program team. Her role will be to support the work that all of you are doing worldwide and encourage us all to be better about sharing our results. I'm sure many of you have met Sophie, and if you haven't had that privilege, I'm sure you've seen her emails on this list! Sophie joins us from Wikimedia Sweden, where she helped start their education program. Rod's official welcome to the staff list is below.

Over the next few months, I will ease back into a more traditional communications role, and Sophie will take on some of the program development support I've been doing. Of course, you're still encouraged to reach out to either or both of us; we'll be working closely together!

LiAnna

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rodney Dunican <rdunican@wikimedia.org>
Date: Tue, Jul 9, 2013 at 11:32 AM
Subject: [Wmfall] Fwd: Welcome Sophie Österberg

Hello everyone,

Please join me in welcoming Sophie Österberg to the Wikimedia Foundation as the Global Education Program Manager for the Wikipedia Education Program. Many of you may know Sophie from her work with Wikimedia Sweden; we're very excited that she's joined the Foundation to help us grow and support education efforts globally. She started Monday and she's already been hard at work, learning about all of the Wikipedia educational programs in 39 countries worldwide who encourage students to contribute to Wikimedia projects for their coursework.

Sophie is based in Stockholm for now, but we look forward to welcoming her to San Francisco in hopefully the near future! Sophie has introduced herself here -- be sure to click through on the link to her video and enjoy!

After graduating from my masters in leadership in June 2012 here in Sweden I went to Ukraine to try out 'WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on OrganicFarms)'. This led me to a mud-hut deep in the forest of the mountains of Ukraine, where our lovely host had not yet built the toilet nor the shower. So, there I was, in the middle of the forest in a mud-hut, with much time to contemplate. So whilst realising that I was not at all the laid-back camper and nature person I thought (or wished) I was, I made a list of my future life and what it should include, which was not a mud-hut. First thing on my list was Wikimedia. I have since started school, in a Montessori class, loved knowledge, the free accessability to it and education. So when finishing my masters and realising that the forest and mountains of Ukraine was not my future home I did nurture the idea that spending time working for, as a volunteer or employee, Wikimedia would instead be part of my future. After six weeks as a volunteer for Wikimedia Sweden I was offered a job working within education where we, among various other things, created this video. In June I applied to work for the Wikimedia Foundation within the Education team as a Global Education Manager. With much suprise, joy and humbleness I am today doing my very first day as that role for the Foundation and I am looking forward to many more days to come in this thrilling and challenging position. I am grateful to be part of this movement, and happy to be amongst so many others who share a common vision.

Welcome to the team Sophie!

Rod Dunican

Director, Global Education Program
Wikimedia Foundation