There is nobody in existence whose advice is worth crossing serious bright lines in ethics of corporate governance and quite possibly legal ones. This isn't a parking ticket.
Whether the offer and acceptance were made in good faith or bad faith leads to the same conclusion: a completely unacceptable situation that must be remedied aggressively, not papered-over with corporate doublespeak. Whether poor ethics or poor judgment, neither trait ought to be welcome in a decision-making capacity. I would not want *any* person with input on the ED position who thought this was actually a good idea, even assuming the best possible faith. For this kind of skating on the edge of inurement, we should already be beyond the initial question of dismissal of the hire to the question of other, internal restructuring. This is several orders of magnitude worse than anything Dr. Heilman was removed for in 2015. If significant measures are not taken to remedy this situation, then this should be basically the only issue in the upcoming board elections, and it would be a shame to have an election in which the community is trying to deal with serious lapses of ethics or judgment rather than trying to decide the WMF's other, mission-connected priorities.
Best,
Dan
+1 to Paulo's point, personally I would like to see us ease up on María and this seemingly temporary paid role. It's not a sinecure, not an arbitrary nepotistic position—rather, it looks like WMF would benefit.
If the people in this thread truly have the good of the organization and the movement at heart, there are much bigger structural issues with WMF and this is just a reminder that we have to fix these. Save your energy for fighting actual corruption and not just the perception of it. How about we encourage María in her advisory role to help hire an ED committed to accountability to the communities, for example?