Hello folks,
I'm delighted to tell you that the Wikimedia Foundation has a new
Chief of Finance and Administration (CFA): Garfield Byrd.
As you know, the Wikimedia Foundation has been searching for a CFA
since late February, when Veronique announced she would be leaving us
to relocate her family to Texas.
We then set out to find someone with deep expertise in a non-profit
context, whose main goal is to support excellence in programmatic
activity, and who is sufficiently comfortable with change and
ambiguity to flourish in our environment. And for our CFA as with all
our roles, we were looking for someone who is passionate about the
Wikimedia mission, who has an open-minded and inquisitive personal
style, and a strong inclination towards transparency.
Because Veronique gave us lots of notice, we were able to do an
unusually thorough search, which was great. Over four months, Lisa
Grossman of m|Oppenheim surfaced hundreds of candidates resulting in a
mid-list of about 22 excellent people and culminating in in-depth
panel interviews with about 10. Garfield I believe fits all our needs,
and I expect him to do a terrific job for us.
Garfield comes to us from being CFO at an organization called the New
Teacher Center, in Santa Cruz, California. There, he was part of the
team that spun the NTC out of the University of California at Santa
Cruz, and established it as an independent 501(c)3 with rapidly
growing revenues and operations in 50 states and three countries. He
was responsible for all accounting and grant-related activities, as
well as all administration including information technology, human
resources, and product and facilities operations. Prior to that,
Garfield was Business Manager and Treasurer for the Jesuit School of
Theology, in Berkeley, California, and before that he was Vice
President of Finance and Investments and Chief Finance Officer for the
Community Foundation Silicon Valley, in San Jose, California. Before
that he was Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of the Pacific
School of Religion, in Berkeley, where among other things he project
managed the building of a new IT centre, student computer centre and
multi-building LAN, as well as the building of a WAN connecting nine
schools. Before the Pacific School, Garfield worked for a library
cooperative in San Jose, and a medical school in San Francisco. He has
a B.S., Business Administration and an MBA, both from John F. Kennedy
University in Orinda, California. And he has served on a half-dozen
boards for arts and education non-profits. All in, he's got 20+ years
of non-profit experience.
There are a number of things about Garfield's work experience that
suggest he'll be a particularly good fit with us. Managing office IT
for a bunch of nerds can be kind of thankless and demanding, so I'm
happy Garfield has a fairly extensive tech background. It's great that
he has experience starting new things from scratch and supporting
growth. I very much like his experience with educational institutions.
And Garfield's former CEO describes him to me as someone with enormous
personal integrity who lifts the tone of every room he's in – which
should make him a lovely addition to our group. I'm really happy he's
joining us.
As CFA for the Wikimedia Foundation, Garfield will be responsible for
all our financial and accounting functions and for all adminstrative
support. Our Controller Tony Le and our interim Head of Office
Administration Isa Munne will report to him.
Many thanks as always to Lisa Grossman of m|Oppenheim for leading this
important search. My thanks also to everyone who helped us define the
CFA role or surface or interview the candidates –- those people
include Board treasurer Stu West, Audit Committee members Renata
Stasaityte and Ad Huikeshoven, and staff and community members Erik
Moeller, Cyn Skyberg, Geoff Brigham, Zack Exley, Tony Le, Barry
Newstead, Liam Wyatt, Joseph Seddon and Veronique Kessler. And I want
to also, once again, thank Veronique for being such a terrific CFOO
during her three years with the organization :-)
Please join me in welcoming Garfield to the Wikimedia Foundation. He
doesn't yet have a Wikimedia e-mail address, so you can't actually
reach him yet, but he will start work with us August 3.
Thanks,
Sue
--
Sue Gardner
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation
415 839 6885 office
415 816 9967 cell
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Sue Gardner
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation
415 839 6885 office
415 816 9967 cell
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate