Hi everybody,
We have made some changes to our Product and Technology departments which
we are excited to tell you about. When Wes Moran, former Vice President of
Product, left the Wikimedia Foundation in May, we took the opportunity to
review the organization and operating principles that were guiding Product
and Technology. Our objectives were to improve our engagement with the
community during product development, develop a more audience-based
approach to building products, and create as efficient a pipeline as
possible between an idea and its deployment. We also wanted an approach
that would better prepare our engineering teams to plan around the upcoming
movement strategic direction. We have finished this process and have some
results to share with you.
Product is now known as Audiences, and other changes in that department
In order to more intentionally commit to a focus on the needs of users, we
are making changes to the names of teams and department (and will be using
these names throughout the rest of this update):
-
The Product department will be renamed the Audiences department;
-
The Editing team will now be called the Contributors team;
-
The Reading team will be renamed the Readers team.
You might be asking: what does “audience” mean in this context? We define
it as a specific group of people who will use the products we build. For
example, “readers” is one audience. “Contributors” is another. Designing
products around who will be utilizing them most, rather than what we would
like those products to do, is a best practice in product development. We
want our organizational structure to support that approach.
We are making five notable changes to the Audiences department structure.
The first is that we are migrating folks working on search and discovery
from the stand-alone Discovery team into the Readers team and Technology
department, respectively. Specifically, the team working on our search
backend infrastructure will move to Technology, where they will report to
Victoria. The team working on maps, the search experience, and the project
entry portals (such as Wikipedia.org) will join the Readers team. This
realignment will allow us to build more integrated experiences and
knowledge-sharing for the end user.
The second is that the Fundraising Tech team will also move to the
Technology department. This move recognizes that their core work is
primarily platform development and integration, and brings them into closer
cooperation with their peers in critical functions including MediaWiki
Platform, Security, Analytics, and Operations.
The Team Practices group (TPG) will also be undergoing some changes.
Currently, TPG supports both specific teams in Product, as well as
supporting broader organizational development. Going forward, those TPG
members directly supporting feature teams will be embedded in their
respective teams in the Audiences or Technology departments. The TPG
members who were primarily focused on organizational health and development
will move to the Talent & Culture department, where they will report to
Anna Stillwell.
These three changes lead to the fourth, which is the move from four
“audience” verticals in the department (Reading, Editing, Discovery, and
Fundraising Tech, plus Team Practices) to three: Readers, Contributors, and
Community Tech. This structure is meant to streamline our focus on the
people we serve with our feature and product development, increase team
accountability and ownership over their work, allow Community Tech to
maintain its unique, effective, and multi-audiences workflow, and better
integrate support directly where teams need it most.
One final change: in the past we have had a design director. We recognize
that design is critical to creating exceptional experiences as a
contributor or a reader, so we’re bringing that role back. The director for
design will report to the interim Vice President of Product. The Design
Research function, currently under the Research team in the Technology
department, will report to the new director once the role is filled.
Technology is increasingly “programmatic”
The Technology department is also making a series of improvements in the
way we operate so that we can better serve the movement.
The biggest change is that all of our work in fiscal year 2017-2018 will be
structured and reported in programs instead of teams (you can see how this
works in our proposed 2017-2018 Annual Plan).[2] This will help us focus on
the collective impact we want to make, rather than limiting ourselves to
the way our organization is structured. These programs will be enabled by
the platforms (MediaWiki, Fundraising Tech, Search, Wikimedia Cloud
Services, APIs, ORES, and Analytics) that the Technology department builds
and maintains, and they will be delivered by teams that provide critical
services (Operations, Performance, Security, Release Engineering, and
Research). Distinguishing the work of the Technology department into
platforms and services will also allow us to treat platforms as products,
with accountable product managers and defined roadmaps.
In addition to moving the Search subteam into Technology, we are creating a
separate ORES team. These changes mark the start of something big -
investing in building machine learning, machine translation, natural
language processing and related competencies. This is the first step
towards supporting intelligent, humanized, user interfaces for our
communities - something we’re thinking of as “human tech”. Not because we
think that machines will replace our humans, but because these tools cans
help our humans be much more productive.
Why these changes, why now?
When the Product and Technology departments were reorganized in 2015,[1]
the stated goal was establishing verticals to focus on specific groups of
users and to speed execution by reducing dependencies among teams. These
smaller changes are meant to “tune-up” that structure, by addressing some
of its weaknesses and making additional improvements to the structure of
our engineering work.
The process that brought us to these changes began informally shortly after
Victoria arrived, and took on a more formal tone once Wes announced his
departure in May. Katherine asked Anna Stillwell, the Foundation's
newly-appointed Chargée d’Affaires in the Talent & Culture department, to
facilitate a consultation with both departments to identify their pain
points, and better understand their cultural and structural needs. After
collecting feedback from 93 people across the two departments, as well as
stakeholders around the organization, she offered a draft proposal for open
comment within the Foundation. After making some changes to reflect staff
feedback, the Foundation’s leadership team decided to proceed with the
changes described above.
The leaders of some of the teams involved will be following up in the next
few days with the specifics of these organizational moves and what they
mean to our communities. If you still have questions, please ask here or on
the talk page of this announcement:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Engineering/June_2017_changes.
Best regards,
Toby Negrin, Interim Vice President of Product
Victoria Coleman, Chief Technology Officer
PS. An on-wiki version of this message is available for translation:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering/June_2017_changes
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Engineering_reorganiza…
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2017-2018/…
Hi all,
We have recently published our Annual Report 2016. If you would like
to learn more about examples of Wikimedia Deutschland's projects and
programmes from last year, you might want to read about one or more of
the following:
* our new editors campaign,
* our successes with Wikidata,
* our Technical Wishes project,
* our achievements in the political and legal field,
* our work for Open Education & Open Science
* our growth in membership numbers
* our regionalisation efforts
* our work for the international movement
Inspired by the WMF's recent Annual Reports, we have – for the first
time – created a visually appealing, responsive online version that
also works pretty well on mobile. https://2016.wikimedia.de/en
If you rather prefer to print it, please be patient: We will publish
the oldschool PDF version and link it on the meta [[Reports]] page
next week.
Happy reading,
Nicole
--
Nicole Ebber
Adviser International Relations
Movement Strategy Track Lead: Organized Groups
Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e.
V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts
Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig
anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin,
Steuernummer 27/029/42207.
Hello Wikimedia community,
To help better understand how teams at the Wikimedia Foundation work on
partnerships, staff from multiple departments have been regularly meeting
over the last year to exchange ideas and reflect on this important area of
our work.
In these discussions we realized that the Foundation had not laid out the
common practices that we developed for managing partnerships. It wasn’t
clear why, how, or with whom we partnered, what worked best, and what was
best to avoid.
If it wasn’t clear to us, then it couldn’t be clear to the community
either. Inspired by Wikimedia France’s Démarche partenariale
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikim%C3%A9dia_France/D%C3%A9marche_partena…>,
we recognized the value of sharing our own best practices with the
community.
After much drafting and revising, we are happy to announce the publication
of what we have learned in our *Wikimedia Foundation partnership
reflections*
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia%20Foundation%20partnership%20refl…>,
now live on Meta-Wiki. The page will be an evolving document, and we
encourage feedback from the community: please join us in the conversation
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia%20Foundation%20partnership%2…>
.
**What we hope this can be used for**
We hope that the reflections document offers an expression of what we do as
Wikimedia Foundation employees and also helps the volunteer community and
Wikimedia movement Affiliates think about how they define the scope and
measure the impact of their work on partnerships.
We also want this document to help facilitate better interaction between
the Foundation the global community. Take for example, the Partnerships &
Global Reach team’s recent collaboration with the Iraqi Wikimedian User
Group <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_Wikimedians>. They were able
to work closely with the local community over the course of a year to
develop a partnership with one of the leading mobile organizations in Iraq
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/02/28/wikipedia-zero-iraq/>, providing
data-free Wikipedia access over mobile phones through the Wikipedia Zero
program.
Departments at the Foundation including Legal, Communications, and
Community Engagement frequently work with volunteers and organizations to
find the right combination of tools and support for their partnerships. We
look forward to doing more with you.
**Doing even more in collaboration with Affiliates**
The Wikimedia Foundation is certainly not the only organization within the
Wikimedia movement with expertise and experience creating partnerships with
external organizations. With the lead of Wikimedia Sverige, Wikimedia
France, and Wikimedia Deutschland, an informal working group has been
meeting to bring together Wikimedians working on developing and maintaining
partnerships.
This ‘Affiliate Partnerships Group’ helps support activities and has
collected the public learning and resources from their experience doing
partnerships in a Partnerships and Resource Development portal on Meta-Wiki
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Partnerships_%26_Resource_Development/Team>
that includes support materials, lessons learned, frequently asked
questions, and other resources.
After meeting at the Wikimedia Conference 2017
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2017> in April, the
Affiliate Partnerships working group have launched a Facebook group:
the *Wikimedia
& Partnerships Learning Circle*
<https://www.facebook.com/groups/313443389072903/>. If you participate in
Wikimedia Partnerships for your local volunteer community, we encourage you
to join the group, and ask questions of various teams that work on
partnership activities.
**Join the conversation**
This effort has involved contributions from multiple individuals and team
at the Wikimedia Foundation, including Strategic Partnerships, Legal,
Communications, Community Programs, Community Resources, Language
Engineering, and more. We want to hear what you think!
Please join us in conversation at the Partnership Reflections page and in
the Wikimedia & Partnership Learning Circle: we want to learn from and with
you on how to best benefit the community with partnerships.
*Wikimedia Foundation partnership reflections on Meta:*
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia%20Foundation%
20partnership%20reflections
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia%20Foundation%20partnership%20refle…>
>
*Partnerships learning circle on Facebook:*
<https://www.facebook.com/groups/313443389072903/>
Thank you!
Jake Orlowitz
User:Ocaasi (WMF)
Head of the Wikipedia Library
Wikimedia Foundation
[1] <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikim%C3%A9dia_France/D%
C3%A9marche_partenariale/en >
[2] <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia%20Foundation%
20partnership%20reflections
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia%20Foundation%20partnership%20refle…>
>
[3] <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia Foundation partnership
reflections <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia>
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia>>
[4] <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_Wikimedians>
[5] <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/02/28/wikipedia-zero-iraq/>
[6] <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Partnerships_%26_
Resource_Development/Team>
[7] <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2017>
[8] <https://www.facebook.com/groups/313443389072903/>
REMINDER: This meeting starts in 30 minutes.
On Thu, May 18, 2017 at 4:11 PM, Lena Traer <ltraer(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> The next Wikimedia Foundation metrics and activities meeting will take
> place on Thursday, May 25, 2017 at 6:00 PM UTC (11 AM PDT). The IRC channel
> is #wikimedia-office on irc.freenode.net, and the meeting will be
> broadcast as a live YouTube stream.[1]
>
> During the May metrics meeting, we'll hear research and stories about
> developing an inclusive Wikimedia movement. We'll explore some of our
> challenges to becoming an inclusive movement, and what people around the
> movement are doing to create a more inclusive, welcoming space where
> everyone can participate.
>
> Meeting agenda:
>
> * Welcomes, theme introduction
> * Movement update
> * New filters for edit review
> * The Keilana effect
> * Executive update
> * Questions and discussion
> * Wikilove
>
> Please review
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_
> metrics_and_activities_meetings
> for further information about the meeting and how to participate.
>
> We’ll post the video recording publicly after the meeting.
>
> Thank you,
> Lena
>
> [1] https://youtu.be/rAGwQdLyFb4
>
> Lena Traer
> Project Assistant // Communications // Advancement
> Wikimedia Foundation
>
*May 25, 2017 metrics meeting -- Movement update Appendix *
WikiMed
* January 2017 marked the completion of the 4th iteration of the course.
* 106 medical students participated in the course, almost 50% of them women.
* The majority of participants were Hebrew native speakers, but many were
Arabic native speakers, and some Russian and French native speakers.
* On average, each student wrote 2 articles during the semester,
collectively contributing over 200 new articles (about 8% of the medical
content on Hebrew Wikipedia), which by now got over 4 millions page views.
* More information:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sackler_Faculty_of_Medicine_at_Tel_…
Art + Feminism
* March 2017 marked the completion of the 4th annual Wikipedia edit-a-thon.
* 2,500 participants across 200 events in 42 countries around the world
created or improved 6,500 articles. Almost double the outcomes from the
2016 campaign.
* Anyone can participate, by joining an event, or organizing their own with
their local community. To this end, there is an organizer’s kit available
for consultation.
* More information:
https://artandfeminism.tumblr.com/post/159717690675/the-results-are-in-over…
Wikiquote at the hospital
* A project to work with patients from a mental institution. Coordinated by
User:Jaluj, funded with a Rapid Grant.
* Editing skills as a way to construct a more inclusive society: “[He found
the workshop] useful because the negative thoughts, which told him that he
would not be able to do anything, disappeared when he managed to began to
edit.”
* Many valuable lessons on how to work with patients from a mental health
institution, and how it can influence their relationship to other people.
* More information:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Rapid/Jaluj/Wikiquote_at_the…
Dear All,
Please see email below on behalf of Jaime Villagomez, CFO of the Wikimedia
Foundation.
Hello everyone,
The Wikimedia Foundation has submitted to the US Internal Revenue Service
(IRS) and posted on-wiki[1] our annual Form 990 filing. The Form 990 is the
annual financial reporting which is required by the federal government for
active nonprofit organizations in the United States.
In addition to posting the Form 990 on-wiki, we have also posted an
accompanying page with answers to frequently asked questions related to the
form and information we submitted.[2] Almost all financial reports by their
very nature can be confusing, so to add clarity here is a simple breakdown
of what this form covers.
It was pointed out last year that the dates covered by our financial
reports can be confusing given our fiscal year is different from the
calendar year. This "2015 Form 990" covers the financial activities of the
Wikimedia Foundation for the 2015-2016 fiscal year, which ran from July 1,
2015 to June 30, 2016. A notable exception is information related to the
compensation of our officers, key employees, highest paid staff and
independent contractors, which is instead based on the 2015 calendar year.
The Wikimedia Foundation's total revenue from fiscal year 2015-2016 was
US$78,691,737. Our total expenses from this period were US$65,061,845 and
our total net assets at the end of the fiscal year were US$91,782,795.
Included in the approximately US$65 million expenses from this period is a
US$5 million seed contribution to the Wikimedia Endowment, building on the
initial donation by Jim Pacha of approximately US$1 million. This
contribution accounts for the bulk of the increase from the year before in
"grants and similar amounts paid" listed on the summary page. It is listed
as an expense in the form because the Endowment is an independent fund
housed at Tides. To learn more about the purpose and structure of the
Wikimedia Endowment, visit its Meta-Wiki page.[3]
The Form 990 also includes information about the salaries of the Wikimedia
Foundation's five highest paid employees. The salaries for all paid
positions are set according to salary bands which are determined
bi-annually based on independent third party survey data.[4] Executive
salaries are subject to this same standard. All executive salaries, with
the exception of the Executive Director's salary, are set by the Executive
Director in discussion with the Board of Trustees. The Board of Trustees
uses the independent third party survey data, as well as comparative data
from other nonprofit organizations, to set the salary of the Executive
Director, and to assess and advise on other executive salaries.
The largely technical and high-skilled nature of some of our work requires
competitive wages to recruit the best talent and compensate them fairly for
their expertise and commitment. We believe that the Wikimedia Foundation
continues to pay competitively, but within in the average (50th percentile)
when compared to tech companies, and higher average (90th percentile)
compared to nonprofits.
In addition to salary information, the report includes other payments made
to the highest paid employees upon their departure from the organization
(known as severance payments). Following our regular practice for staff
departures, these amounts are set on a case-by-case based on a person's
tenure with the organization. We recognize that people have an interest in
this topic, and that there will be some questions. However, as an employer
we are limited in what we can discuss publicly. Out of respect for the
people involved, and in consideration of the laws and ethics related to
sharing human resources information, we will not be commenting on the
specific nature of the severance payments or circumstances which may be
related to them.
Through reports and discussions like these, the Wikimedia Foundation will
continue to strive to provide a responsible level of transparency and
accountability for our work. I imagine there are other questions, and I
invite you to review the on-wiki FAQ[2], or email me if your question is
not answered there.
Thank you to the Foundation's Talent & Culture, Legal, Advancement and
Communications departments for their assistance with developing this year's
Form 990 and related communications. A very big thank you to our Finance
and Administration department for their hard work once again preparing this
important public filing.
Best,
Jaime
[1] Wikimedia_Foundation_2015_Form_990
<https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundation_2015_Form_99…>
[2] Wikimedia_Foundation_Form_990_Frequently_Asked_Questions
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRS_tax_issues_and_information/2015_Wikimed…>
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment
[4] https://www.radford.com/home/surveys/gts/
--
Tony Le
Wikimedia Foundation
Ph: 415-839-6885 ext 6749 <(415)%20839-6885>
Fax: 415-882-0495 <(415)%20882-0495>
tle(a)wikimedia.org
This message is confidential and may be legally privileged or otherwise
protected from disclosure. If you are not the intended recipient, please
telephone or email the sender and delete this message and any attachment
from your system; you must not copy or disclose the contents of this
message or any attachment to any other person.
Greetings,
The certified results of the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
election are now available on Meta-Wiki: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2017/Results
Congratulations to María Sefidari (User:Raystorm), Dariusz Jemielniak (User:pundit), and James Heilman (User:Doc James) for receiving the most community support. Subject to a standard background check, they will be appointed by the Board at their August meeting at Wikimania.
These results have been certified by the elections committee, the Wikimedia Foundation staff advisors to the committee, and the Board of Trustees.
There were 5,581 votes cast, with 5,120 of those being valid. The 461-vote difference comes from recast ballots, where eligible voters recast ballots to change their votes, and struck votes, of which there were 34. (Some of the recast votes were also struck.)
Additional information is available on the Wikimedia Blog: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/05/20/board-of-trustees-elections-2017/
More statistics on the elections and a post-mortem from the committee will be published in the coming days. In the meantime, we would appreciate your input—what went well for you in this election? What could we do better next time? These reports are crucial to helping future elections be even more successful, and we hope that you will offer your feedback and ideas: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2017/Post_mo…
The committee would like to thank everyone that participated in this year’s election for helping make it, again, one of the most diverse and representative in the movement’s history.
Sincerely,
– Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee
*[TL;DR]*
FDC elections are coming up. If you want to run or know someone who would
be good on the FDC or as an ombudsperson, please see https://meta.wikimedia.
org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2017
========
Dear Wikimedians,
As you may know, the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) [1] is a volunteer
committee that makes recommendations to the Board of Trustees on how to
spend funds to achieve the movement’s goals. Each year, the FDC meets twice
in person to deliberate on annual plan grant proposals submitted by
affiliates and aligned partners of the Wikimedia movement. Allocated
through a participatory, transparent, collaborative grantmaking process,
these funds are used by organizations to expand and deepen participation
and enable the creation and curation of quality content on Wikimedia
projects.
As foreseen in the FDC framework [2], five seats on the committee are open
to election this year, as is the position of the ombudsperson. Serving on
this committee is an opportunity to deepen your engagement in the movement,
build your leadership and experience, and work closely with other
colleagues who are interested in helping the movement achieve more impact.
The commitments are significant: you will be expected to come to at least
two face-to-face meetings each year that last up to 5 days, in addition to
reviewing more than 15 proposals and significant background documents each
year. For most committee members, participation in the meetings also
includes significant international travel. Note that the committee will
meet for a four/five-day period mid-November, possibly in San Francisco, so
you must be available during this period. The other mandatory face to face
meeting usually happens around mid-May.
We're looking for a diverse group of people with the following attributes:
* Experience directing or evaluating programs, within or outside of the
Wikimedia movement;
* Expertise with grants (you have received or managed grant funds or you
have experience making grants);
* Knowledge and understanding of, and personal credibility within the
Wikimedia movement and on the Wikimedia projects (that is, experience with
Wikimedia programs, Wikimedia organizations, or on-wiki leadership roles);
* We seek gender, geographic and linguistic diversity on the committee, as
well as experience with diverse roles within the Wikimedia movement (e.g.
content contributors, program leaders, user group leaders, functionaries,
chapter board members)
* To find more information about eligibility requirements, how to nominate
candidates, or to publish your self-nomination, please visit the election
homepage:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_2017
Please reach out to me with any questions about these elections or the work
the FDC does.
Cheers,
Delphine Ménard
[1]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Funds_
Dissemination_Committee
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Funds_
Dissemination_Committee/Framework_for_the_Creation_
and_Initial_Operation_of_the_FDC
--
Delphine Ménard
Program Officer
Wikimedia Foundation
User:Delphine_(WMF) <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Delphine_(WMF)>
Hello everyone,
The next Wikimedia Foundation metrics and activities meeting will take
place on Thursday, May 25, 2017 at 6:00 PM UTC (11 AM PDT). The IRC channel
is #wikimedia-office on irc.freenode.net, and the meeting will be broadcast
as a live YouTube stream.[1]
During the May metrics meeting, we'll hear research and stories about
developing an inclusive Wikimedia movement. We'll explore some of our
challenges to becoming an inclusive movement, and what people around the
movement are doing to create a more inclusive, welcoming space where
everyone can participate.
Meeting agenda:
* Welcomes, theme introduction
* Movement update
* New filters for edit review
* The Keilana effect
* Executive update
* Questions and discussion
* Wikilove
Please review
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_metrics_and_activities…
for further information about the meeting and how to participate.
We’ll post the video recording publicly after the meeting.
Thank you,
Lena
[1] https://youtu.be/rAGwQdLyFb4
Lena Traer
Project Assistant // Communications // Advancement
Wikimedia Foundation
Hi all,
The Board of Trustees have approved and published minutes from the Board
meeting on February 24, 2017. You can find the minutes on the Foundation
Wiki here: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2017-02-24
Best,
Stephen
--
Stephen LaPorte
Senior Legal Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
*NOTICE: As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal and ethical
reasons, I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community
members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more
on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer>.*
This press release is available online here:
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia_Foundation_we…
And as a blog post on the Wikimedia blog here:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/05/16/eileen-hershenov/
*Wikimedia Foundation welcomes Eileen Hershenov as General Counsel *
*Experienced general counsel brings nearly three decades of leadership in
media, intellectual property, civil liberties, and not-for-profit law*
(San Francisco, California) May 16, 2017 - The Wikimedia Foundation is
pleased to announce that Eileen Hershenov has joined the organization as
General Counsel. Eileen brings nearly 30 years of experience in media and
intellectual property law, civil rights and civil liberties law,
not-for-profit law and governance, and privacy and cyber-security.
Throughout her career, she has worked with mission-driven organizations to
promote equality, free expression, and openness.
The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit organization that supports
Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects. Together, Wikipedia and the
Wikimedia projects are visited by more than a billion unique devices every
month. The Wikimedia Foundation is driven by its mission to build a world
in which every single person can freely share in the sum of all human
knowledge.
As General Counsel, Eileen will lead an experienced team of attorneys and
public policy experts to defend the Wikimedia projects, communities, and
Foundation. She will be responsible for maintaining and developing the
legal infrastructure, policy, and relevant legal defenses for the Wikimedia
Foundation. She will also advise the Foundation on ethical and policy
positions around access to knowledge, freedom of speech, privacy,
copyright, and other issues relevant to the Wikimedia movement.
“Eileen is deeply committed to the values that make the Wikimedia movement
possible: free expression, access to knowledge, and a secure, open
internet,” said Katherine Maher, Executive Director of the Wikimedia
Foundation. “Her knowledge, passion, and leadership make her an excellent
addition to the Wikimedia Foundation and our global community.”
Previously, Eileen served as the founding general counsel for Consumers
Union, the not-for-profit publisher of Consumer Reports magazine and
ConsumerReports.org. In that role, in addition to defending against legal
attacks on the organization’s product reviews and investigative journalism,
she was part of the executive leadership team charged with rethinking the
organization’s approach to public policy and advocacy. Eileen supported the
work of tens of thousands of volunteers who advocated for healthcare reform
and net neutrality, among other issues. She also played a lead role in
developing and implementing Consumer Reports’ evolving business policies,
which are designed to ensure and protect the organization’s independence
from commercial influence and special interests.
Prior to joining Consumers Union, Eileen spent 11 years at the Open Society
Foundations, where she served as General Counsel to the global foundation
network. In this position, Eileen led the development of an in-house legal
counsel department, overseeing the legal work of the foundations in more
than 30 countries. Her work with the Open Society Foundations supported the
efforts of local advocates in the former Soviet Union, Central Europe, as
well as in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. During her time at the Open
Society Foundations, Eileen also served as the founding general counsel for
Central European University, the first U.S.-accredited liberal arts
university located in a former communist country.
“Wikimedia is a shining example of what’s possible when the values of the
free and open internet are preserved,” Eileen said. “I’ve spent much of my
career supporting many of the same principles that have allowed Wikipedia
to flourish. I’m thrilled to join a global movement of people who are
committed to these values.”
Eileen began her career in public interest as an organizer and advocate for
victims of toxic substances who were denied court access to seek
restitution. Her legal work for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
marked the start of her passion for supporting free expression, free
access, and freedom of association. She currently serves on the boards of a
number of public interest justice organizations, including the advisory
board of the Future of Privacy Forum, and the governing board of the
Appleseed Foundation.
Eileen received her BA in Economics from Yale College, and graduated from
Yale Law School. She currently lives in the state of New York with her
family, and will be relocating to the Bay Area this summer.
*About the Wikimedia Foundation*
The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit organization that supports and
operates Wikipedia and its sister free knowledge projects. Wikipedia is the
world’s free knowledge resource, spanning more than 40 million articles
across nearly 300 languages. Every month, more than 200,000 people edit
Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects, collectively creating and improving
knowledge that is accessed by more than 1 billion unique devices every
month. This all makes Wikipedia one of the most popular web properties in
the world. Based in San Francisco, California, the Wikimedia Foundation is
a 501(c)(3) charity funded primarily through donations and grants.
*About Wikipedia*
Wikipedia is the world’s free knowledge resource. It is a collaborative
creation that has been added to and edited by millions of people from
around the globe since it was created in 2001: anyone can edit it, at any
time. Wikipedia is offered in hundreds of languages containing a total of
more than 40 million articles. Wikimedia and its sister projects are the
largest collection of free knowledge in human history.
*Wikimedia Foundation press contact*
Juliet Barbara
jbarbara(a)wikimedia.org
(415) 839-6885
--
*Samantha Lien*
Communications Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
149 New Montgomery Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
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