Hisham Mundol was recently hired [1] as an
consultant to the Wikimedia Foundation to support the program
initiatives in India.
Hisham Mundol will be primarily based in India and will be
working closely with the Wikimedian community in India.
Hisham Mundol is coming to Bangalore to connect with the
Wikimedian community in Bangalore.
Hisham Mundol's role will be to design and implement
specific pilot programs that encourage many more Indians to
become contributors to our projects in Indic languages as
well as English. The National Programs initiative will focus
on the following areas in the first year:
Design and implement an India-wide program to increase
Wikimedia’s footprint on university and college campuses
with students and faculty with the aim of encouraging
contributions to Wikimedia projects
Support the launch and implementation of
community-initiated programs that seek to increase the
editor base for Wikimedia projects
Engage with the community and chapter to build a strong
relationship among these stakeholder groups and create
communications forums that allow for effective partnerships
As a newcomer to the Wikimedia movement, Hisham’s first
task will be to deepen his understanding of us: our history,
goals, values, culture and mission.
Hisham was most recently a consultant with the Public
Health Foundation of India (in a partnership with the Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation). He designed and implemented
large-scale national programs on HIV/AIDS prevention. He
worked to understand the dynamics of hard-to-reach
communities by conducting in-depth, on-the-ground analysis
(ask him to tell you about his experience talking to drivers
while sitting under their trucks). The programs he designed
and implemented sought to convince people in large numbers -
400 million young people across the nation - to change very
personal behaviours. While we are not tackling issues of
such an intimate nature, we do aim to convince large numbers
of people across the country to contribute their personal
time to Wikimedia projects. During this assignment, Hisham
worked closely with public, private and community groups
(local and international) to work through the details of the
programs and build partnerships for implementing them at
scale. He did so in a manner that used persuasion rather
than power to build support to move things forward. We
think his experience navigating these varied groups position
him well to work in the Wikimedia community. His earlier
career was in marketing and business development with a
number of well-known businesses: Infosys, Accenture, Cadbury
and Unilever. This experience positions him well to engage
with a movement and organization that is global in nature,
in particular to work with a team that is based halfway
around the world.