On Tue, Jan 5, 2016 at 8:01 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak <darekj(a)alk.edu.pl> wrote:
Dear all,
As Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board Governance Committee, I am happy
to introduce the two newest members of our Board of Trustees: Kelly Battles
and Arnnon Geshuri.
Welcome to Kelly and Arnnon, and I wish you every success in this
complex organization at this complex moment! I am excited to have your
expertise in our movement.
I'm also pleased because financial expertise is one of the crucial
qualities that the prior board recruitment committee (which I was on)
identified as being needed for these seats, especially with the
departure of Stu. We also identified large organization management
experience and experience with technology organizations as two
potential qualities we wanted in trustees, and both seem to bring
this. It is also useful to have a few people experienced in Silicon
Valley on the board, as that is the environment, for better or for
worse, in which the foundation and its technology development
operates.
I do agree with those who have raised the question of diversity in
these candidates. The great strength of our board is its diversity in
the backgrounds of board members. In general, I would like to see
trustees from other places besides the US and western Europe, bringing
a new set of experiences to the table, and -- though I am well aware
of the challenges in recruiting trustees, having done it myself --
would thus love to see our scope widened for future trustee searches.
This is a hard problem because, as I think all of the current trustees
know well, we have many needs for our board: we need people with
backgrounds in education (large and small); with ICT and mobile; with
finance and organizations; with Wikimedia communities specifically and
consensus-driven communities generally; with multilingual communities;
with knowledge generation; with technology strategy. And we need those
people to represent the globe.
That said I would attempt to avoid equating people's strengths as
trustees solely with their backgrounds. (And of course when people
leave we will never get a 1-1 replacement, so even if we thought past
trustees had important experiences this tranche of the board will be
different.) Having seen a number of really excellent people join the
board over the years, what trustees prove to be good at in board work,
or not, is sometimes surprising. At any rate, I look forward to
meeting Kelly and Arnnon, and congratulations to the committee in a
successful recruitment.
best,
Phoebe