[PRESS RELEASE] Wikimedia Foundation announces new members, leadership for Board of Trustees at Wikimania in Mexico City - WikimediaAnnounce-l

17 Jul 2015


      This press release is also available online in English here:
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia_Foundation_ann...
And in Spanish here:
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/La_Fundacion_Wikimedia_a...
English Press Release
Wikimedia Foundation announces new members, leadership for Board of
Trustees at Wikimania in Mexico City
-
Wikimedia Foundation appoints new trustees for three Board seats; Board
   selects new Chair and Vice Chair
Today the Wikimedia Foundation announced the selection of a new Chair and
Vice Chair, and the elections of three new additions to its Board of
Trustees https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees.
The new Trustees were elected by the international community of Wikimedia
volunteers who create and support Wikipedia and its sister projects. The
new Trustees are Dr. James Heilman, Dr. Dariusz Jemielniak, and Dr. Denny
Vrandečić. Shortly thereafter, the Board, including the newly seated
Trustees, selected Patricio Lorente as the new Chair and Alice Wiegand as
the new Vice Chair. The Foundation announced these changes at Wikimania,
the annual Wikimedia conference, held this year in Mexico City.
The Wikimedia Foundation’s Board of Trustees oversees the Wikimedia
Foundation and its work, and serves as the organization’s ultimate
corporate authority
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Bylaws#Section_1._General_Powers..
Open seats this year were reserved for Wikimedia community members selected
through direct elections by the Wikimedia community. Wikimedia community
members voted online from May 17 - 31, 2015 for the three open Board
positions, each a two-year term. The new Chair and Vice Chair will serve as
officers for one year terms.
Other seats on the Board include one seat for Wikipedia’s founder Jimmy
Wales, two seats selected by independent Wikimedia affiliate organizations,
and four seats appointed by the Board for specific expertise and other
needs.
The Wikimedia Foundation and Board of Trustees are pleased to announce the
new Chair and Vice Chair, who bring many years of service and commitment to
the Wikimedia community and mission:
Patricio Lorente joined Spanish Wikipedia as an editor in 2005. He is a
founding member of Wikimedia Argentina and was its President from 2007 to
2012. He was responsible for the organization of Wikimanía 2009 in Buenos
Aires. He is General Prosecretary at La Plata National University, in La
Plata, Argentina. He has been a member of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of
Trustees since 2012.
Alice Wiegand joined German Wikipedia as an editor in 2004. She joined the
board of Wikimedia Deutschland in 2008, serving as secretary and vice
president, focusing on strategy, organizational structure, and executive
accounting and assessment. She is head of information technology and
organizational development for the municipality of Meerbusch, Germany. She
has been a member of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees since 2012.
The Wikimedia Foundation and existing Board members are also pleased to
welcome this year’s new additions to the Board of Trustees, and recognize
their diversity of experience and commitment to the Wikimedia mission:
Dr. James Heilman is a founding member of both Wikimedia Canada and Wiki
Project Med Foundation, which promotes quality medical contributions on
Wikimedia; currently, he serves as the president of the Wiki Project Med
Foundation. James is on the faculty of emergency medicine at the University
of British Columbia and an active contributor to WikiProject Medicine.
Dr. Dariusz Jemielniak serves as the head of the Center for Research on
Organizations and Workplaces and is an active contributor to Polish
Wikipedia. He has conducted extensive academic research on the social and
ethnographic environments of Wikipedia, in addition to holding a number of
prominent positions with educational organizations in Poland.
Dr. Denny Vrandečić is a Croatian computer scientist. He is co-developer of
Semantic MediaWiki, founding administrator of Croatian Wikipedia, and
founding project director for Wikidata. Denny has published extensively on
semantic web and ontologies, serving as chair of the research track for
Wikimania 2008 in Egypt. He is currently an ontologist at Google.
Terms for these newly appointed roles and elected members started on July
16 and will continue for two years. The new members join the new Chair of
the Board Patricio Lorente, Vice Chair Alice Wiegand, Wikipedia founder
Jimmy Wales, and Board members Frieda Brioschi, Jan-Bart de Vreede, Guy
Kawasaki, and Stu West.
The Wikimedia Foundation Board was formed in 2003. Today, the Board
consists of up to ten Trustees
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees#Current_members.
Its work is captured in part in resolutions
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions and votes. It appoints
four officers: a Chair https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Chair and
Vice Chair, and a Treasurer https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Treasurer
and Secretary https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Secretary. Other work
is delegated to its committees, including Board Governance, Audit, and
Human Resources committees.
The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees for 2015-2016
Patricio Lorente, Board Chair
Alice Wiegand, Vice Chair
Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia Founder
Frieda Brioschi
Jan-Bart de Vreede
James Heilman
Dariusz Jemielniak
Guy Kawasaki
Denny Vrandečić
Stu West
About the Wikimedia Foundation
The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization that operates
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Wikipedia consists of more than 35
million articles in 290 languages. Every month, tens of thousands of active
volunteers contribute to Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects. With
nearly half a billion monthly users, projects operated by the Wikimedia
Foundation are one of the most popular web properties in the world. Based
in San Francisco, California, the Wikimedia Foundation is a 501(c)(3)
charity that is funded primarily through donations and grants.
About Wikimania
Wikimania is an annual conference centered on the Wikimedia projects
(Wikipedia and its sister projects) and the Wikimedia community of
volunteers. It features presentations on Wikimedia projects, other wikis,
free and open source software, free knowledge and free content, and the
social and technical aspects which relate to these topics. Wikimania 2015
marks the 11th year of the conference.
Press Contact
Katherine Maher
Wikimedia Foundation
+1 415-839-6885 ext 6633
press@wikimedia.org
Board Profiles
Patricio Lorente
Patricio Lorente is General Prosecretary at the National University of La
Plata https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_University_of_La_Plata, in
La Plata, Argentina, and Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of
Trustees.
Originally from La Plata, Patricio studied at the National University of La
Plata before embarking on a career in the field of development cooperation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_aid. He oversaw the
implementation, monitoring and evaluation of local development projects to
strengthen local capacity and south-south cooperation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South%E2%80%93South_cooperation,
particularly among different cities and regions of Argentina.
Patricio joined Spanish Wikipedia as an editor in 2005. He is a founding
member of Wikimedia Argentina http://www.wikimedia.org.ar/ and was its
President from 2007 to 2012. He was responsible for the organization of
Wikimanía 2009 in Buenos Aires, and was one of the primary organizers of
the first Ibero-American Wikimedia Summit. Held in Buenos Aires in 2011,
the summit brought together Wikimedians from across the Spanish,
Portuguese, and Italian-speaking world.
Patricio is the author of the teaching resource, "Wikipedia in the
classroom" and was a member of the advisory board of Conectar Igualdad
http://www.conectarigualdad.gob.ar/, a program to deliver netbooks to all
public secondary school students in Argentina. In that capacity, he advised
the Argentinian National Ministry of Education
http://portal.educacion.gov.ar/ on the development of resources on
Wikipedia and education, including “Escuelas de Innovación,” a pilot
program for teachers using Wikimedia projects in the classroom.
Patricio joined the Board of Trustees as a selected representative of the
Wikimedia Chapters in 2012, and was re-selected in 2014. His current term
will continue until August 2016. He was elected Vice Chair of the Board in
August 2014, and Chair of the Board in July 2015.
Alice Wiegand
Alice Wiegand is head of information technology and organizational
development for the municipality of Meerbusch, Germany.
Alice is originally from Düsseldorf, Germany and received her Bachelor’s
degree in Economics at Fachhochschule fuer oeffentliche Verwaltung
https://www.fhoev.nrw.de/. She explored a number of industries early in
her career, including tailoring, software development, and civil service.
More recently, she oversaw the information technology department for the
city of Meerbusch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meerbusch, Alemania, as a
specialist for public sector system administration. Prior to her current
role, Alice served as the personal aide to the Mayor of Meerbusch.
Alice joined German Wikipedia
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Hauptseite as an editor in 2004.
In 2008, she joined the board of Wikimedia Deutschland
https://www.wikimedia.de/wiki/Hauptseite, serving as secretary and vice
president, with a focus on strategy, organizational structure, and
executive accounting and assessment. Alice has also served as administrator
and bureaucrat on German Wikipedia. In recent years, she has organized
workshops and skills trainings for Wikimedia contributors, the volunteer
response team, and Wikipedia administrators.
Alice joined the Wikimedia Foundation Board as a Chapters' selected Trustee
in 2012, and was appointed to serve the remainder of Ana Toni's term until
December 2014. She also served the subsequent full term until December
2016. She was elected Vice Chair of the Board in July 2015.
Dr. James Heilman
Dr. James Heilman is an emergency physician in Cranbrook, British Columbia,
and on the faculty of emergency medicine at the University of British
Columbia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_British_Columbia.
James was born and raised in rural Saskatchewan, Canada. He completed his
medical degree in 2003 in Saskatchewan, followed by his residency in
British Columbia. James began editing Wikipedia in 2008, after he came
across an article needing improvement in the middle of the night. Realizing
that he could fix the Internet, he quickly became hooked, and later went on
to help found both Wikimedia Canada and Wiki Project Med Foundation
https://wikiprojectmed.wordpress.com/.
He has been involved in establishing collaborations to improve Wikipedia’s
medical content, with organizations such as Translators Without Borders
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translators_Without_Borders, the Cochrane
Collaboration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochrane_Collaboration,
the National
Institutes of Health
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Institutes_of_Health, the World
Health Organization
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Health_Organization, and the
University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine. He is a
frequent speaker at medical schools and conferences to encourage his
colleagues to engage with Wikipedia.
James has a background in both distance running and adventure racing,
having completed Morocco’s Marathon Des Sables
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon_des_Sables and the Adventure
Racing World Championships
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_Racing_World_Series.
Dr. Dariusz Jemielniak
Dariusz Jemielniak is a full professor of management, the head of the
Center for Research on Organizations and Workplaces, and a founder of New
Research on Digital Societies (NeRDS) group at Kozminski University
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozminski_University.
Originally from Warsaw, Poland, Dariusz studies open collaboration
communities, the phenomenon of organized sharing (including piracy), and
political memes. He has conducted research projects on related issues
at Cornell
University https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornell_University, Harvard
University https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University, Berkeley
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_California,_Berkeley, and MIT
http://web.mit.edu/. In 2014, he published Common knowledge? An
Ethnography of Wikipedia at Stanford University Press. He has been the
recipient of many academic merit awards, including a 2004 Fulbright
Foundation scholarship and the 2009 Polish Ministry of Science outstanding
young scholar award.
Dariusz has held a variety of different roles on Wikipedia, including
administrator, bureaucrat, checkuser, steward, and ombudsman. He served as
the chair of Wikimedia’s Funds Dissemination Committee
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Funds_Dissemination_Committee
for three terms.
Dariusz has served as chairperson of the "Inkubator" network for rising
literary talent in Poland, chairperson of the Collegium Invisibile
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collegium_Invisibile academic society, and
as a member of the the advisory boards of the Copernicus Science Center and
the English Teaching http://www.englishteaching.org.pl/en/ program
of the Nida
Foundation http://www.nida.pl/en/about-us/. He is also the founder of
Ling.pl http://ling.pl/, the largest Polish online dictionary.
Dr. Denny Vrandečić
Dr. Denny Vrandečić is a computer scientist specializing in semantic web
and structured data. He is currently an ontologist at Google, where he has
helped with the release of several key datasets, including releasing the
collaborative curated database Freebase
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freebase to Wikidata.
Originally from the island of Brač, Croatia, Denny received a degree in
computer science and philosophy from the University of Stuttgart
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Stuttgart and a PhD from
the Karlsruhe
Institute of Technology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karlsruhe_Institute_of_Technology. He has
written more than 70 publications on ontologies and the semantic web, and
has worked at research projects the University of Southern California
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Southern_California and
the Consiglio
Nazionale delle Ricerche
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Research_Council_(Italy), and has
lectured extensively at universities around the world.
Denny has been a Wikipedian since 2003. He is the co-developer of Semantic
MediaWiki https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Semantic_MediaWiki and
was the first administrator of the Croatian Wikipedia
https://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glavna_stranica. In 2010, he worked with
various Wikimedia stakeholders to develop the first proposal
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata/Technical_proposal and secure
funding for the structured data project Wikidata. In 2012,  he became the
founding project director for Wikidata, recruiting and leading the first
Wikidata team out of Wikimedia Deutschland.
Denny now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, a Wikipedian
whom he met at Wikimania, and their baby daughter.
*En Español*
La Fundación Wikimedia anuncia la asunción de nuevos miembros y nueva
conducción de su Junta Directiva
-
Asumen tres nuevos miembros de la Junta Directiva, electos por la
   comunidad; la Junta Directiva elige nuevo Presidente y Vicepresidenta
Hoy la Fundación Wikimedia ha anunciado la selección de un nuevo Presidente
y una nueva Vicepresidenta, además de la elección de tres nuevos miembros
para su Junta Directiva
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees.
Los nuevos miembros fueron elegidos por la comunidad internacional de
voluntarios de Wikimedia que ayudan a crear y mantener Wikipedia y sus
proyectos hermanos. Son el Dr. James Heilman, el Dr. Dariusz Jemielniak, y
el Dr. Denny Vrandečić. Poco después, la Junta, incluyendo a los nuevos
miembros, eligió a Patricio Lorente como el nuevo Presidente y a Alice
Wiegand como la nueva Vicepresidenta. La Fundación anunció estos cambios en
Wikimania, la conferencia anual de Wikimedia, que se celebra este año en la
Ciudad de México.
La Junta Directiva de la Fundación Wikimedia supervisa la Fundación y el
trabajo que realiza, y sirve como la última autoridad corporativa
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Bylaws#Section_1._General_Powers. de
la organización. Este año se realizaron elecciones reservadas a los
miembros de la comunidad Wikimedia seleccionados a través de elecciones
abiertas en la comunidad Wikimedia. Las elecciones se realizaron del 17 al
31 de mayo de 2015 para tres puestos de dos años cada uno. El nuevo
Presidente y la nueva Vicepresidenta servirán en sus cargos durante un año.
La Junta Directiva incluye además un puesto para el fundador de Wikipedia,
Jimmy Wales, dos puestos elegidos por organizaciones Wikimedia
independientes, y cuatro puestos elegidos por la Junta Directiva en función
de sus necesidades.
La Fundación Wikimedia y la Junta Directiva tienen el placer de anunciar al
nuevo Presidente y la nueva Vicepresidenta, que traen muchos años de
servicio y compromiso con la misión y la comunidad de Wikimedia.
Patricio Lorente se unió a la Wikipedia en español como editor en 2005. Es
miembro fundador de Wikimedia Argentina y fue su Presidente desde 2007
hasta 2012. Fue responsable de la organización de Wikimanía 2009 en Buenos
Aires. Actualmente se desempeña como Prosecretario General en la
Universidad Nacional de La Plata, en Argentina. Ha sido miembro de la Junta
Directiva de la Fundación Wikimedia desde el año 2012.
Alice Wiegand se unió a la Wikipedia en alemán en 2004. Formó parte de la
Junta Directiva de Wikimedia Deutschland en 2008, como Secretaria y
Vicepresidente, enfocando su trabajo en estrategia, estructura organizativa
y responsabilidad gerencial. Es la jefa de información tecnológica y
desarrollo organizacional de la municipalidad de Meerbusch, Germany. Ha
sido miembro de la Junta Directiva de la Fundación Wikimedia desde 2012.
La Fundación Wikimedia y los actuales miembros de la Junta Directiva se
complacen en dar la bienvenida a los nuevos integrantes de la misma,
quienes aportarán diversas experiencias y un fuerte compromiso con la
misión del movimiento Wikimedia:
Dr. James Heilman es miembro fundador tanto de Wikimedia Canadá como de la
Fundación Wiki Project Med, que promueve contribuir con contenido de
calidad relacionado con la medicina en los proyectos Wikimedia; actualmente
es el Presidente de la Fundación Wiki Project Med. James se desempeña en la
actualidad en la Facultad de Medicina de Emergencia en la Universidad de
British Columbia y es un activo colaborador de WikiProject Medicine.
Dr. Dariusz Jemielniak se desempeña como jefe del Center for Research on
Organizations and Workplaces y es un colaborador activo de la Wikipedia en
polaco. Ha liderado investigaciones académicas acerca del entorno social y
etnográfico de Wikipedia, además de tener múltiples cargos en
organizaciones educativas de Polonia.
Dr. Denny Vrandečić es un científico informático de Croacia. Es
co-desarrollador de Semantic MediaWiki, administrador de la Wikipedia en
croata y director de proyectos de Wikidata. founding administrator of
Croatian Wikipedia, and founding project director for Wikidata. Denny ha
publicado diversos trabajos sobre la web semántica, habiéndose desempeñado
como presidente de las ponencias sobre investigación de Wikimania 2008 en
Egipto. Actualmente se desempeña como ontologista en Google.
El 16 de julio asumieron sus nuevos cargos y responsabilidades, con una
duración de dos años. Estos nuevos miembros se unen al nuevo Presidente de
la Junta Patricio Lorente, a la Vicepresidenta Alice Wiegand, al fundador
de Wikipedia Jimmy Wales, y a los miembros de la Junta Frieda Brioschi,
 Jan-Bart de Vreede, Guy Kawasaki, y Stu West.
La Junta de la Fundación se formó en 2003. Hoy, la Junta se compone de
hasta diez miembros
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees#Current_members.
Su trabajo se refleja parcialmente en resoluciones
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions y votaciones. Elige
cuatro cargos: Presidencia https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Chair y
Vicepresidencia, Tesorería https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Treasurer
y Secretaría https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Secretary. Parte de su
trabajo se delega a comités tales como el de Governanza, Auditoría y
Recursos Humanos.
Junta Directiva, La Fundación Wikimedia, 2015-2016
Patricio Lorente, Presidente
Alice Wiegand, Vicepresidenta
Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia Founder
Frieda Brioschi
Jan-Bart de Vreede
James Heilman
Dariusz Jemielniak
Guy Kawasaki
Denny Vrandečić
Stu West
Acerca de Wikimedia Foundation (Fundación Wikimedia)
La Fundación Wikimedia es la organización sin fines de lucro que opera
Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre. Wikipedia se compone por más de 34
millones de artículos en 288 idiomas. Cada mes, decenas de miles de
voluntarios activos contribuyen a la Wikipedia y los demás proyectos de
Wikimedia. Con casi la mitad de mil millones de usuarios mensuales, los
proyectos gestionados por la Fundación Wikimedia son una de las propiedades
web más populares en el mundo. Con sede en San Francisco, California, la
Fundación Wikimedia es una organización sin fines de lucro que se financia
principalmente a través de donaciones y subvenciones.
Acerca de Wikimania
Wikimania es la conferencia anual promovida por la Fundación Wikimedia. En
ella se llevan a cabo presentaciones y conferencias en las que se abordan
proyectos de Wikimedia alrededor del mundo, el software de código abierto,
el conocimiento libre y el contenido, así como los aspectos sociales y
técnicos relacionados con estos temas.
Contacto para prensa
Katherine Maher
Wikimedia Foundation  -- San Francisco
+1 415-839-6885 ext 6633
press@wikimedia.org
-- 
*Samantha Lien*
Communications | Wikimedia Foundation
149 New Montgomery Street
San Francisco, CA 94105

slien@wikimedia.org