Namaste to Fellow-Wikimedians of India,

Greetings. I hope everything is well with you.

Elections to fill 4 community seats in Wikimedia Foundation's board of Trustees is going to happen during 4-17 of August 2021. I am happy to announce my candidature for the Wikimedia Foundation's Board Elections. Here is my candidacy page for the same: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2021/Candidates/Pavan_Santhosh_Surampudi.

In my Wikimedia experience, I am involved in improving content, working towards community growth, planning and executing projects, and movement governance. I have played several roles and contributed to several activities within Indian Wikimedia movement. Contributing to Telugu Wikipedia as one of the admins and active user, Working as Community Advocate for CIS-A2K (Until August 2019), Taking part in Movement strategy process as member of Community Health working group, Co-organising conferences, Planning and rolling out projects are some of them. I am currently working as Community Manager at Quora where I work involves building and managing Quora’s Telugu community across the world as my day job. My activities, associations, & contributions in movement allowed me to interact and collaborate with many of you earlier.

My work in community building, governance, and partnerships in a country like India with diverse opportunities entangled with complex issues helped me to have a unique experience and insights that will be helpful for me in my work as a Board member. Working with several Wikimedia Community members from India, helped me to understand South Asian communities, along with the larger global south, lacking in terms of resources, support and awareness which is hindering global diversity and growth. 

As our communities have great opportunities to work with, this is infact resulting in a great opportunity cost. The Wikimedia movement has a great potential to make a lasting impact on even more people where current government and societal structures are neglecting and keeping them away from the availability of knowledge. Current issues like less diversity, centralized power, harassment and lack of adoption to rapidly growing technological aspects are hindering the Wikimedia movement's progress in this direction. 

We, as a movement, can change this by empowering stakeholders (like Affiliates, Wikimedians, etc.,), investing in leadership and skill development, making boards more accessible to community members and other such steps. I am strongly motivated to contribute to these important aspects by serving as a board member to Wikimedia Foundation.

I request you to support my candidature. I am happy to answer any questions you have. Please connect me through my email id or meta-wiki user talk page.

Thank you,

Pavan Santhosh Surampudi.

User:Pavan santhosh.s