Minutes:2025-10-01

Location: Virtual

Board of Trustees present: Nataliia Tymkiv (Chair), Kathy Collins (Vice Chair), Lorenzo Losa (Vice Chair, Chair-Elect), Shani Evenstein Sigalov, Luis Bitencourt-Emilio, Victoria Doronina,  Mike Peel, Maciej Nadzikiewicz, Raju Narisetti, Christel Steigenberger, Jimmy Wales            

Non-Board members present: Maryana Iskander (Chief Executive Officer), Nadee Gunasena (Chief of Staff), Stephen LaPorte (General Counsel), Margo Lee (Deputy Chief of Staff), Chuck Roslof (Principal Legal Counsel)

Invited guests: Jon Huggett

This was a special meeting of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees.  

Welcome

Lorenzo Losa, Chair-Elect, called the meeting to order and reviewed the agenda.

Board of Trustees Candidate Review Process

Raju Narisetti, Chair, Governance Committee, presented a policy developed by the Governance Committee with staff to address Board candidate vetting. Under the policy, the Governance Committee is responsible for reviewing the assessments of the candidate in the Board election, as is already done for candidates for Board-selected seats. This policy is bringing the two processes into further alignment.

The committee then makes a recommendation to the full Board on a slate of candidates based on their assessment of:

• The results of the background check, media check, and legal assessments.
• The results of the Governance Committee interviews and reference checks.

The full Board reviews the Governance Committee’s recommendation, discusses the recommendation at a meeting, and then votes on the final ballot. After a motion made by Jimmy Wales and seconded by Kathy Collins, the motion to adopt a policy for Board candidate review was unanimously approved.

2025 Board Candidate Vetting

The Board had a confidential discussion reviewing the results of the vetting process for all six candidates that were brought forward from the 2025 Board selection process. Prior to the meeting, the Board was provided with a summary document and recommendation, which included a legal assessment of the candidates. The Foundation, using third-party vendors, conducted background and media checks on each of the six candidates. The candidates also participated in an interview with board officers, a summary and recording of which were provided to the Board. After a motion made by Kathy Collins and seconded by Raju Narisetti, the Board unanimously agreed to approve four of the six candidates to be included on the ballot for the 2025 nomination of community-and-affiliate-selected Trustees.