[Wikimedia-l] Announcement *please read*

[Steven Walling]

On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 3:08 PM, Jan-Bart de Vreede <jdevreede at wikimedia.org
> wrote:

> The Board has appointed a Transition Team which consists of the Chair of
> the Board of Trustees Kat Walsh,  and HR Committee member Alice Wiegand,
> Sue, Sue’s deputy and the Wikimedia Foundation’s Vice-President of Product
> and Engineering Erik Moeller, Geoff Brigham our General Counsel, and Gayle
> Karen Young, our Chief Talent and Culture Officer. I am the final member
> and am the Chair of the Transition Team, and Sue will be facilitating its
> work on my behalf.
>
> (In case you don’t know, non-profit organizations often have outgoing EDs
> support the recruitment of their successors. The Board is of course
> ultimately responsible for appointing the Executive Director, but we want
> our search to be supported by our staff members, including Sue. Sue , Erik,
> Geoff and Gayle have done a lot of hiring for the Wikimedia Foundation over
> the past number of years, and we know they will bring experience and wisdom
> to the process.)
>
> I will also be responsible for making this a transparent (where possible)
> and confidential (where needed) process and will set up the corresponding
> pages on Meta in the coming days (please give me some time to do so :).
> First step will be the office hours with Sue and myself this Saturday.
>

Thanks Jan-Bart.

I suggested to Gayle earlier this afternoon that it would be ideal for
staff and community members to have some place where we can write out
recommendations to the transition team about what kind of attributes and
experiences we'd like from a new ED. A simple Request for Comment, where
people can post thoughts, is likely to grow very large, but is one idea. In
any case, the huge advantage of having this public announcement far in
advance is clearly the opportunity for this kind of transparent feedback
for the Board on selecting a new ED, and in that light I just want to say
thanks to the Board and to Sue for doing this the right way.

Steven