Dear Wikimedia friends,

Our path towards an open digital society can only be achieved through open software solutions. This is why the Wikimedia Deutschland Supervisory Board adopted a governance reform at our meeting on 9 April and asked Franziska Heine, our current head of software development, and Christian Humborg, our current executive director, to jointly take on the leadership of Wikimedia Deutschland starting 1 August. Franziska will be the first female ED in the history of Wikimedia Deutschland and Wikimedia Deutschland might be the first Wikimedia chapter with a dual leadership.

We believe that our decision to introduce a dual leadership is very much in line with the sentiment of the Wikimedia communities that accessible and attractive software is and will always be essential for all current and future Wikimedia projects. Having two co-EDs lends equal weight to requirements of the community and the resulting software solutions. 

Together with the rest of the Supervisory Board, I am very much looking forward to continuing to work with Franziska and Christian as our new dual leadership. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Franziska and Christian for their work on our new governance structure and especially Christian for convincing us of this path forward.