Anasuya, it was a pleasure to take profit from your wisdom and joy. I hope to see you recovered as soon as possible. I'm very grateful for your kindness with Brazil!
Congratulations for Luis and the team. I wish you do a good job!
Vinicius Siqueira WUG Brasil
On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 9:22 PM, Katie Chan katie.chan@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:
Anasuya, thank you for the time and wisdom you have shared with us. We will miss you dearly.
Luis & Siko, congratulations. Looking forward to working with you in your new role.
Katie
On 19 February 2015 at 23:02, Gregory Varnum gregory.varnum@gmail.com wrote:
Anasuya - I think you know that I adore you - and I am truly sad to see you go.
I look forward to seeing you around online - and hope to see you at Wikimanias - but your impact has been immense and you will be missed. :(
-greg aka varnent
On 19 Feb, 2015, at 5:20 PM, Anasuya Sengupta <asengupta@wikimedia.org
wrote:
Dear friends and colleagues, fellow adventurers on the Wikimedia
journey
Goodbyes are overrated.[1] But since I’m sure this will be au revoir,
I’ll
continue: I am leaving the Foundation as head of the Grantmaking department, at the end of March. This was not an easy decision to make; this is not an easy email to write.
As some of you know, I have been battling health issues over the past
few
months. I’ve learnt sharp and intimate truths about myself as I’ve
worked
to get better, and what I’ve kept coming back to is the compassionate
but
fierce feminist slogan around self-care and sustainability: ‘what’s the point of the revolution if we can’t dance?’[2] To reassure you all, I
will
be well,[3] but I need a little time and space to focus on getting my dancing legs strong again.
That said, I am pleased that we have a really solid plan in place as I leave. As Lila’s email announced, Luis Villa (our current Deputy
General
Counsel) will be taking over the team effective immediately, and
leading
the organisation further in our support of Wikimedia communities
worldwide.
Luis brings with him a range of skills and qualities that I know will
stand
him, the team, and the movement in wonderful stead through it all. As a friend and colleague, I am so delighted to be supporting Luis through
the
next few weeks of transition.
I joined the Foundation in July 2012 to oversee and implement the FDC process. Since then, I’ve had the privilege of creating and leading a department of more than twenty remarkable and passionate people who
care
about our mission, our communities, and the resources needed to match
the
two.
We went from Asaf managing a small grants portfolio on his own, ably supported on occasion by Winifred, to a fully fledged grantmaking department with a spectrum of monetary and non-monetary resources. We
have
been able to offer these in different ways to different parts of our movement: to individual volunteers with great ideas in need of project management, to small groups experimenting with new initiatives, and to established organisations who form critical content and policy
partnerships
in their local contexts. We built an infrastructure for understanding
our
collective impact. We learned together about what our different
communities
are doing globally, about the successes and challenges we have, and
above
all: about how we can, together, create a more powerful set of outcomes
for
free knowledge.
In doing so, I’ve had the joy of discovery,[4] of learning from and
with
some of the most dedicated volunteers in the world, who believe that knowledge matters. Most importantly, that it’s not only free knowledge _for_ all that we seek, but even more critically, that we believe in knowledge _from_ and _with_ all.
And I’ve discovered that the nerdy, geeky, obsessed-with-data part of
me
found a home in this extraordinary universe, where everybody’s
“unimaginable,
magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds” can find
expression.[5] I
look forward to the day when my worlds find more space on Wikipedia,
when
80% of the globe is represented by far more than 20% of the edits, when much more than 15% of our contributors can self-identify as women. Till then, I’ll keep fighting notability one article at a time...[6]
So thank you for sharing your worlds with me, and no thanks for turning
me
into an obsessive Wikimedian. :-) As I have learnt with you, I know I
have
done so with trust, and as I have challenged you, I hope I have done so with respect. I look forward to continuing our friendships and
obsessions
on a wiki near you.
With appreciation and gratitude,
Anasuya
p.s. You can find me in the future at my enWP user page (User:Anasuyas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Anasuyas) or (dare I say it) on Facebook. Longer diatribes on liff, the universe and everything can be
sent
to anasuyaATsanmathi.org
[1] Neil Gaiman, American Gods (Chapter 8)
[2] Urgent Action Fund, a funder of women’s human rights defenders, has this book on sustainability:
http://urgentactionfund.org/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2012/06/WTPR-Final-...
[3] And look forward to dancing together on the beaches of a future Wikimania…
[4] Sometimes frustrating, sometimes unbelievable, sometimes somewhat insane; but yes mostly, generous beyond belief, and always, joyous. :-)
[5] More Neil Gaiman, from The Sandman: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Sandman#A_Game_of_You
[6]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Key_theme_-_Global_South,_...
Ask Florence (User:Anthere) for _that_ story!
On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 2:15 PM, Lila Tretikov lila@wikimedia.org
wrote:
Dear Wikimedians,
Among the WMF’s top priorities for 2015 is strengthening our
engagement
with Wikimedia editors and volunteers. Today we are taking the first
step
by bringing together the people who know our communities best and
asking
them to break barriers and improve engagement. Everyone at the WMF who carries responsibilities directly related to the communities will
join a
new Community Engagement department.
I have asked Luis Villa to lead the Community Engagement organization
as
the Senior Director of Community Engagement, reporting to me.
Promoting
from within the WMF for this critical role will allow us to leverage
the
knowledge and experience with our communities and reinforce the
strengths
of our people.
Luis’s experience with communities is lengthy and deep. He has been involved in open communities since the late 1990s, from communities as small as the Lego Mindstorms hackers to those as large as Mozilla. He worked in open communities as a lawyer, a programmer, a bugmaster, an engineering lead, a community leader, and a board member. Luis has performed exceptionally within the Foundation and supported some of
our
most fruitful community engagements. The Grantmaking, L&E, Education, Community Advocacy and Community Liaisons teams will join the new
Community
Engagement department [2] under his leadership.
Unfortunately, Anasuya Sengupta -- our beloved leader of grantmaking
--
will be leaving us due to personal health concerns at the end of
March.
We
will invite you soon to celebrate her time with us, her work at the
WMF
and
the deep insight she brought to the Foundation. We are saddened to see
her
go. The team she has nurtured will provide an important foundation for
our
upcoming work.
Siko Bouterse will move up to lead the day-to-day work of the
Grantmaking
team as Director of Community Resources, supervising all department
Grant
programs and the Global South strategy. Siko has been instrumental in innovating programs at the WMF, including initiatives like the
Teahouse[1]
and the IdeaLab[2] combining vision with strong support for volunteer community, tough decision making, and great project management skills.
These changes are an opportunity to improve the coordination of our
work
supporting the communities. To accelerate this, I have asked Luis to
lead
an internal “tiger” team to better understand the needs, concerns and priorities of our volunteers, and to develop recommendations for
future
programs. This work will be shared with all of you as it becomes
available.
Please join me in congratulating Luis and Siko and in supporting our teams. The Wikimedia communities are what makes the projects strong, unique, and irreplaceable. This is the next step forward in our
support
to
them, and in service of our mission.
[1] As Director of Community Resources, Siko will oversee the IdeaLab, Annual Plan Grants, Project and Event Grants, and Travel andParticipation
Support. Her team will include Katy Love, Winifred Olliff, Alex Wang, Janice Tud, Jonathan Morgan, and Asaf Bartov. Asaf will also take on a
new
title as Senior Program Officer, Emerging Wikimedia Communities.
[2] Rachel DiCerbo, Philippe Beaudette, Siko, and Anasuya’s other
direct
reports, and their respective teams (CL, CA, and Grantmaking/GLEE)
will
report to Luis. The Engineering Community team will be part of the
tiger
team but will continue to report to Engineering.
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse
[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
--
*Anasuya SenguptaSenior Director of GrantmakingWikimedia Foundation*
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! Support Wikimedia https://donate.wikimedia.org/ _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
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