Dear all,
I am writing with an update on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Audit Committee Chair search process.
You may recall that in July 2023, I wrote about the Board’s need to identify a replacement for trustee and Audit Committee chair Tanya Capuano [1] and the requirements that the Board had identified for the position [2]. The Governance Committee conducted a search over a months-long process, which included a search firm as well as a call for candidates through the communities; the main components of the recruitment process are described here [3]. In August at Wikimania, the Governance Committee made a recommendation to the Board to move forward with the top finalist, and the Board accepted it [4]. I am pleased to announce that Kathy Collins [5] will be joining officially at our next Board meeting on December 6, 2023.
Kathy has extensive financial and nonprofit governance experience that she brings to this role. She has worked as a financial expert for her entire career, across both higher education institutions and state and federal governments in the United States. She was Vice President of Finance at Rice University in Houston, Texas for nearly 20 years, a position she held until last year when she retired. She has also been a trustee at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, where she served in multiple Board leadership roles including Vice Chair of the Board, Chair of the Finance Committee and member of the Audit, Governance and Development Committees and the DEI (Diversity, equity, and inclusion) Task Force. Her experience and expertise are very relevant to the challenges we as the Board are seeing for this role. Please join me in welcoming her!
This is a planned role succession, with a very clear profile needed, and as I mentioned before [4], over the past year, there have been quite a lot of intentional improvements to all of our processes (e.g., recruitment, appointments, onboarding, succession planning), so that Trustees with no or limited Wikimedia experience can start engaging in community conferences, events, and on-wiki discussions as soon as possible, and as the role of a Trustee is complex, it is better if the process can start before the official appointment, when already a certain level of knowledge is expected to start making informed decisions. And Kathy has wasted no time in pre-onboarding to the Wikimedia Foundation and learning about the Movement and Board. She has been joining the Audit and Governance Committee meetings for the past few months. Kathy also will also be joining other Trustees in person at the WikiConference North America event in Toronto, which will be her first community event, and also an opportunity to get to know some of her future colleagues on the Board better.
I would like to thank Tanya Capuano for continuing to support the Foundation while Kathy is pre-onboarded to the Audit Committee and the Board. Tanya has also graciously agreed to remain an Advisor to the Audit Committee after her term officially ends in December.
Recently, Maryana Iskander announced Talking: 2024 [6], conversations to share, listen, and learn with intention as we all continue to plan our future as a movement. If you would like to talk to me about this or any other Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees topics, you can use the Let’s Talk feature to sign up for a time to speak with me [7].
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Governance_Committee/Board_recruitment
[3] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees/Recruiting_procedure
[7] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Community_Affairs_Committee/Talking:_2024#Let's_talk