Hi folks,

I'm delighted to tell you that the Wikimedia Foundation has just hired its first-ever Chief Talent and Culture Officer. Cyn Skyberg will begin work with us this coming Monday, September 13. She'll report to me.

As CTCO, Cyn will have two major first priorities: to help the Wikimedia Foundation's hiring managers recruit amazing staff (including key new positions such as the director of operations [1] and the national program director for India [2]), and to continue the work of creating and entrenching a staff culture that fits inside the bigger Wikimedia culture and shares its values of independence, openness, community, transparency and diversity. In this work, she'll be supported by Daniel Phelps, the Wikimedia Foundation's Human Resources Manager.

This is a really important job, and as I worked through the hiring process it became clear that I needed to find someone unusually creative and flexible, with a real passion for understanding and supporting people in voluntary online communities. Cyn stands out as exactly that.

For the past five years, Cyn has worked at Linden Labs, the organization behind Second Life. There, she held a series of increasingly-responsible positions culminating in Vice President of Partnerships -- all of which included responsibility for the Second Life user community. Both the Second Life and Wikimedia communities are known for being iconoclastic and independent of spirit – nobody is exactly like us, LOL, but I think that Cyn's experience at Second Life will nonetheless help equip her to do well in our world :-)

And, Linden is pretty much identical in age to the Wikimedia Foundation, and went through a massive growth spurt during Cyn's time there, which has I think enabled her to understand and navigate the challenges and opportunities that come with growth and change. She has done lots of recruiting, including outside the United States: during her time at Linden she hired in the UK, Germany, Australia, the Netherlands, France, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Korea and Singapore. She also incorporated an outsourced group in Newcastle, and was the executive sponsor of Linden's Brighton office. And, she worked with other Linden executives to develop Linden's internal culture, including its employee and mentorship programs.

Prior to Linden, Cyn worked in museums: first at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History where she worked with the Anthropology department and managed the retail operations, followed by running the retail organizations (including managing both paid staff and volunteers) at the Portland Art Museum and the San Jose Museum of Art. Cyn has a bachelor's degree in cultural anthropology from the University of California (Santa Barbara). While at Linden she developed an interest in helping organizations focus on individual empowerment and collaboration, and she's now about to receive a master's degree in organizational psychology from The Chicago School of Professional Psychology.

I am delighted Cyn will be joining us: please help me welcome her. But -- she doesn't yet have a Wikimedia e-mail address, and she's not yet subscribed to our mailing lists. So maybe wait for Monday :-)

I'd also like to take a second to thank the people who helped with the hiring process --- including Erik, Veronique, Barry, Danese, Zack, Daniel, Jay, Bill, Tomasz, Sal Giambanco of the Omidyar Network and HR consultant Jane Creech. And of course my thanks to our recruitment firm m|Oppenheim, who –as always-- did a terrific job.

I also want to particularly thank Veronique, who's been handling the HR portfolio, with Daniel, to date. When Veronique first joined us, a lot of HR basics were missing -- such as health insurance and a retirement savings plan, vacation allotments, and procedures for hiring staff and evaluating performance. Veronique has done a great job looking after the Wikimedia Foundation's HR needs, and I'm grateful to her for it.

Thanks, Sue

[1] http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Director_of_Technical_Opera... [2] http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/National_Program_Director,_...