Minutes:2025-03-13
Location: New York City, New York
Board of Trustees present: Nataliia Tymkiv (Chair), Kathy Collins (Vice Chair), Lorenzo Losa (Vice Chair), Shani Evenstein Sigalov, Luis Bitencourt-Emilio, Victoria Doronina, Mike Peel, Jimmy Wales, Christel Steigenberger, Maciej Nadzikiewicz
Board of Trustees absent: Esra’a Al Shafei, Raju Narisetti
Non-Board members present: Maryana Iskander (Chief Executive Officer)*, Jaime Villagomez (Chief Advancement Officer, Treasurer)*, Anusha Alikhan (Chief Communications Officer)*, Courtney Bass-Sherizen (Chief People Officer)*, Selena Deckelmann (Chief Product and Technology Officer)*, Nadee Gunasena (Chief of Staff)*, Margo Lee (Deputy Chief of Staff), Mayur Paul (Senior Director, Movement Communications), Chuck Roslof (Principal Legal Counsel), Lisa Seitz Gruwell (Chief Advancement Officer)*, Stephen LaPorte (General Counsel)*, Kaarel Vaidla (Lead Movement Process Architect), Aeryn Palmer (Deputy General Counsel), Rebecca MacKinnon (Vice President, Global Advocacy), Tajh Taylor (Vice President, Data Science and Engineering), James Baldwin (Senior Director, Finance Strategy and Planning), Jacob Rogers (Associate General Counsel)
* Indicates attendance during Executive Session
Invited guests: Jon Huggett*
At 1009 Eastern, the meeting was called to order. The Secretary confirmed the presence of a quorum.
Welcome, Greetings, and Administrative Actions
Nataliia Tymkiv, Chair, welcomed everyone to the meeting and reviewed the agenda.
After a motion made by Shani Evenstein and seconded by Kathy Collins, the consent agenda was unanimously approved.
Strategic Topics
Jacob Rogers, Associate General Counsel, and Stephen LaPorte, General Counsel provided a confidential legal briefing, which is an annual report out to the Board and invited staff.
Maryana Iskander, Chief Executive Officer, provided an update on progress being made on the three pilots, which were launched last year. The Movement Charter Mapping exercise results were published. It provides an analysis of input provided throughout the charter process, including areas of agreement and divergence.
The Product and Tech Advisory Council (PTAC) is a group of Wikimedia Foundation staff and community members that work together to co-define a more resilient, future-proof technological platform. The goal is to create a repeatable process going forward to make recommendations for the product and technology development over a multi-year horizon and to align to the strategic direction of the Foundation. This is a one year experiment. Upon its completion, members of the Council will make a joint decision on whether to continue the program, its member base, and purpose. PTAC regularly publishes updates on its work.
The Wikimedia Foundation will create the interim Global Resource Distribution Committee (GRDC) in March, as a 2-year experiment, in another step to decentralize the distribution of funds across the Wikimedia Movement. This is intended to pilot a volunteer-driven global body to set strategy for distributing grants and resources across the Wikimedia movement, and to make recommendations to the Wikimedia Foundation for funding regional and thematic activities and initiatives in support of the mission of the Wikimedia movement. Based on the extensive feedback since November from many stakeholders, there is a proposal to sequence this pilot more closely with the ecosystem of movement organizations pilot.
The Board continued in Executive Session.