I
am very pleased to welcome Neil P. Quinn as the latest member of the Editing
team <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Editing>, as our product analyst
working alongside me.
I
n his own words:
I was born and raised in North Carolina—specifically the lovely, humid,
famous-for-NASCAR city of Concord
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concord,_North_Carolina> (pronounced
*kon-KORD*, not *KON-kerd* like the place in New Hampshire, thank you very
much)—although my dad is originally from Cleveland and my mom from Gujarat
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gujarat> by way of Chicago. I have one older
brother <http://davenquinn.com/>, who's putting me to shame by doing a PhD
in geology at Caltech, and two younger sisters who were adopted from India.
I went to college at Georgetown University
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgetown_University> in Washington, DC. I
originally studied Middle Eastern history, which took me to Jordan for an
eight-month study abroad program, but about halfway through, after I
decided that life in a think tank wasn't for me, I switched my major to
international economics. I spent some internships trying out marketing,
including one in a "boutique thought leadership consultancy" located half a
block from K Street
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Street_%28Washington,_D.C.%29>, where I
did things like help the United States Travel Association
<https://www.ustravel.org/> scheme to get people to travel more. I
eventually found my way to software product stuff, including an internship
at Appcelerator <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appcelerator>, which I have
to say I liked a lot better.
I graduated this past December. I'm a longtime Wikipedian
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Neil_P._Quinn>, so when I happened to
notice that the foundation was hiring, I made that the very first
application I sent out. The process did take 9 interviews and 70 days, but
it was worth the wait! I'm very excited to meet you all, and to hang out in
a place where I can talk about Wikimedia arcana without sounding like a
dork.
Obligatory listing of hobbies: biking, cooking, tennis, social science, and
foreign languages (I speak Spanish and Arabic; Gujarati
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gujarati_language> is next up).
Please join me in welcoming Neil, who started on Monday.
Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
Product Manager, Editing
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
jforrester(a)wikimedia.org | @jdforrester