Hello all,
It’s with great pleasure that I’m announcing that Terrence (Terry)
Chay is joining the Wikimedia Foundation as Director of Features
Engineering.
Terry comes to us from Automattic, where he helped improve the
WordPress.com user experience by implementing an A/B testing
framework, improving the blog domain name registration process (which
contributed to doubling the revenue for
WordPress.com), creating
better support mechanisms for fist-time users, and making many other
changes. In that role, he was an individual contributor to the
WordPress codebase.
Before Automattic, Terry worked as an engineering manager and software
architect for multiple start-ups and tech companies between 1999 and
2009, most recently at Tagged and Plaxo. He has a B.S. in Physics from
the California Institute of Technology and an M.S. in Physics from the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).
If you’ve ever been to OSCON, you may have seen Terry present one of
his infamous PHP talks there (he’s been invited back repeatedly for
some reason). All in, he’s given more than 25 public talks about web
development. He’s also a prolific blogger and photographer (
http://terrychay.com/ ), joining the nascent photography cabal at
Wikimedia.
As Director of Features Engineering, Terry will be responsible for
helping ensure the success of some of our key feature teams: the
visual editor team, the editor engagement team (including the article
feedback project), and the fundraising engineering team.
This announcement also means that Alolita Sharma will be transitioning
into a new director-level role at the Wikimedia Foundation. While
we’ve not finalized all details, the role will include responsibility
for the internationalization team, for experimental features projects
and technology evaluation. We’ll announce details about that shortly.
I want to thank Alolita for her track record of excellent leadership
at Wikimedia to-date.
Note that Terry's not on wmfall yet, so CC him if you'd like to
welcome him. Terry's first day will be February 27.
Please join me in welcoming Terry to the Wikimedia movement. :-)
All best,
Erik
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
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