[Foundation-l] Fwd: Announcing new Chief Global DevelopmentOfficer and new Chief Community Officer

[susanpgardner at gmail.com]

Hi Phoebe,

You're right about the overlap -- there isn't a sharp clear line between the two roles, which I may live to regret :-)

But basically, blur is unavoidable in our context. When I worked in an organization that was very large and very stable, the right way to approach hiring was (frankly) to be quite rigid about roles-and-responsibilities. You needed to be, because the organization was so complex, and needed to operate at scale -- so clarity mattered, a lot.

The Wikimedia Foundation, by contrast, is young and growing, and what we require most strongly is intellectual curiosity and flexibility. We know that roles-and-responsibilities will change over time -- they'll have to, we are evolving. And so in that context you want to hire people who are smart and adaptable and comfortable with ambiguity.

So yes, there's quite a bit of blur. But I think both Zack and Barry are game for that, and I think they will each bring real value in quite different ways. And we'll evolve the roles as we go :-)

Thanks,
Sue

------Original Message------
From: phoebe ayers
Sender: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
To: foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
ReplyTo: foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Announcing new Chief Global DevelopmentOfficer and new Chief Community Officer
Sent: 2 Jun 2010 10:40 PM

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Sue Gardner <sgardner at wikimedia.org>
> Date: 2 June 2010 19:08
> Subject: Announcing new Chief Global Development Officer and new Chief
> Community Officer
> To: WikimediaAnnounce-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>
>
> Hi folks,
>
> I am really happy to announce two important new Wikimedia Foundation
> hires.  Zack Exley will be Wikimedia's new Chief Community Officer,
> and Barry Newstead will be our Chief Global Development Officer.  Both
> will start just before Wikimania, and will join us in Gdansk.

Congratulations to both Zack and Barry! Exciting indeed. I realize
these roles will be formed as they are taken on, but it seems that
there is quite a bit of (intentional?) overlap. I am curious how you
see that working... both roles seem to involve supporting & growing
the communit(ies), perhaps in new ways. There are lots of questions
that I have regarding these job descriptions too --  what does
supporting the chapters mean? What does supporting the reader
community mean? And so on :)

Also as I'm sure you're aware it's definitely time to update
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:Org_Chart_Without_Names.png !
(from [[wmf:staff]]

-- Phoebe

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