Just adding my personal thanks, Sue.
You've taken the Foundation from infancy to maturity - one of the hardest
spins in the life cycle of an organization and one of the most enduring
legacies any leader can leave behind. You've literally laid the foundation
for the Foundation. :)
It's been an extraordinary pleasure working with you and I hope (and
expect) that you will continue to go from strength to strength.
Raising my glass to you,
Bishakha
On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 12:56 AM, Jan-Bart de Vreede <jdevreede(a)wikimedia.org
Hello Everyone,
As Lila officially takes over from Sue as the Executive Director of the
Wikimedia Foundation after this weekend it really is a moment to not only
wish Lila a lot of succes in the coming years, but also to give a
tremendous thanks to Sue for her work in the past years. Of course I did so
last year in March when she announced her departure but it bears repeating
that Sue took us from a small organisation in St. Petersburg Florida, which
was struggling to create impact, to a mature and stable organisation which
makes a huge difference. Building up a professional staff who are dedicated
to our mission, incredible fundraising growth and working through complex
situations to create concepts such as the FDC stand out amongst many other
achievements.
It was Sue herself who indicated that it was time to find a new Executive
Director, someone who was more suitable for our focus on Engineering and
Grantmaking. As I mentioned more than a year ago, its hard to imagine the
Wikimedia Foundation without Sue at the helm. However, due in large part to
her efforts we have managed to find a new Executive Director who gives me
confidence in the future of the Foundation. I am happy that we managed to
find the “unicorn” that we were looking for, but that didn’t happen by
accident. Most of you know that we concluded the first round of our search
in early december with candidates that we did not feel were ideal for the
job. We decided to change our tactics and this involved both Erik and Sue
spending a lot of their (spare) time with potential candidates and making
sure that we were getting the right candidates. As a result our second
round had a great set of candidates, which ultimately led to the selection
of Lila. On the transition team Sue has been very crucial in holding up a
mirror and reminding us what we were looking for.
After a well deserved vacation Sue will be available as a Special Advisor
to both the Lila and the Board of Trustees and we are grateful to her for
making herself available to do this. However, what intrigues me more is
what she will end up doing in the coming years. I am hoping it is in the
space of Open Content or the Open Internet, as she will undoubtedly have a
tremendous impact in there, and we need her! I am also happy to inform you
that Sue will attend a part of Wikimania where she will for once not have
an packed schedule, so feel free to take the opportunity to thank her in
person if you are so inclined :)
On behalf of the entire Board and all the staff of the Wikimedia
Foundation: thank you so much all that you have given the Foundation, and
especially your efforts in the past year to ensure that there was both
stability within our organisation and a great succesor.
Jan-Bart de Vreede
Chair
Wikimedia Board of Trustees
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