Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., abbreviated WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, and registered there as a charitable foundation.[5] It is the host of Wikipedia, the seventh most visited website in the world. In addition, the foundation hosts 14 other related content projects. It supports the development of MediaWiki, the wiki software that underpins them all.[6][7][8]

The Wikimedia Foundation was established in 2003 in St. Petersburg, Florida by Jimmy Wales, as a nonprofit way to fund Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and other crowdsourced wiki projects.[1] (Until then, they had been hosted by Bomis, Wales's for-profit company.)[1] The Foundation finances itself mainly through millions of small donations from Wikipedia readers, collected through email campaigns and annual fundraising banners placed on Wikipedia and its sister projects.[9] These are complemented by grants from philanthropic organizations and tech companies, and starting in 2022, by services income from Wikimedia Enterprise.

The Foundation has grown rapidly throughout its existence. As of December 31, 2023, it has employed over 700 staff and contractors, with annual revenues of $180.2 million, annual expenses of $169 million, net assets of $255 million and a growing endowment, which surpassed $100 million in June 2021.

Mission

The Wikimedia Foundation's mission is "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally."[10]

To serve this mission, the Wikimedia Foundation provides the technical and organizational infrastructure to enable members of the public to develop wiki-based content in languages across the world.[10] The foundation does not write or curate any of the content on the wikis itself.[11] Instead, this is done by volunteers who work as editors, such as the Wikipedians who create and maintain Wikipedia. However, the foundation does collaborate with a network of individual volunteers and affiliated organizations, such as Wikimedia chapters, thematic organizations, user groups and other partners.

The Wikimedia Foundation promises in its mission statement to make useful information from its projects available on the internet free of charge in perpetuity.[10] It engages in political advocacy.[12] The Foundation's strategic direction, formulated in 2017, envisages that it "will become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge" by 2030.[13]

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Maryana Iskander

Maryana Iskander (/ˌmæriˈænə ɪˈskændər/ MARR-ee-AN-ə isk-AN-dər;[1] Arabic: ; born September 1, 1975)[2] is an Egyptian-born American social entrepreneur and lawyer. In 2022, she became the chief executive officer (CEO) of the Wikimedia Foundation, succeeding Katherine Maher. Prior to her position, Iskander was the CEO of the Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator and a former chief operating officer of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in New York.

Early life and education

Maryana Iskander was born in Cairo, Egypt, where she lived before emigrating to the United States with her family at the age of four. Her family settled in Round Rock, Texas.[3] Iskander matriculated at Rice University on a Harry S. Truman Scholarship, graduating with a B.A., magna cum laude, in sociology in 1997.[3][4]

In 1999, Iskander obtained her M.Sc. from Trinity College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar,[3] where she founded the Rhodes Association of Women. Afterward, she enrolled at Yale Law School, graduating with a J.D. in 2003.[3]

Career

After graduating from Oxford, Iskander began her career as an associate at McKinsey and Co. Following her graduation from Yale Law School, Iskander clerked for Diane P. Wood on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, Illinois. She then served as the adviser to the president of Rice University, David Leebron. After two years, Iskander left her job at Rice to take the role of chief operating officer for Planned Parenthood Federation of America in New York.[3] She has also worked as a strategy consultant for W. L. Gore & Associates, and a law clerk at Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York, and Vinson & Elkins in Houston.[5]

After her time at Planned Parenthood, Iskander in 2012 became the chief operating officer of Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator in South Africa before becoming its chief executive officer (CEO) in 2013. Harambee is focused on connecting employers to first-time workers to reduce youth unemployment and increase retention. In 2015, Iskander made a commitment in New York City to the Clinton Global Initiative that Harambee would provide South African youth with 50,000 jobs and work experiences; by 2018, she was able to share with former U.S. President Bill Clinton, in Johannesburg for a visit, that Harambee had exceeded her commitment, delivering over 85,000 such opportunities.[6]

Speaking at the 2019 Conscious Companies Awards in Johannesburg, Iskander explained that she wanted "business to understand that the hiring of young people in their first jobs is not a charitable exercise but talent […] We treat young people like customers and not like beneficiaries."[7] By building a large pool of workers that is easily navigable and proving that youth can be employed successfully using this method, Harambee was able to scale their efforts and effectiveness.[8] During her time as CEO, the non-profit connected 100,000 young workers with work opportunities in partnership with 500 businesses as of June 2019.[9]

On September 14, 2021, Iskander was named as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, assuming her post on January 5, 2022.[10] She has stated in interviews that her priorities after taking her role were to diversify Wikipedia's volunteer writers and editors and to promote the Wikimedia Foundation's mission of advocating for access to information.[11] In 2023, Iskander was elected to the Yale Board of Trustees.[12]

Diane Wood

Diane Pamela Wood (born July 4, 1950) is an American attorney who serves as the director of the American Law Institute and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. She previously served as a circuit judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

After working in private practice and the executive branch, Wood became the third woman ever hired as a law professor at the University of Chicago Law School. President Bill Clinton nominated her to the Seventh Circuit on March 31, 1995. As a judge, she was considered a liberal intellectual counter to Richard Posner and Frank H. Easterbrook.

Early life and education

Diane Pamela Wood was born on July 4, 1950, in Plainfield, New Jersey, to Lucille Padmore Wood and Kenneth Reed Wood.[2] She lived in nearby Westfield, New Jersey, where her father was an accountant at Exxon, and her mother worked for the Washington Rock Girl Scout Council. She is the second of three children, with an older sister and a younger brother. When Wood was 16, her family moved to Houston, Texas. In 1968, she graduated as valedictorian of Westchester High School in Houston.

Wood graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1972 with a bachelor's degree in English with high honors. She was then accepted to University of Texas School of Law.[3] There, Wood was an editor of the Texas Law Review and a member of the Women's Legal Caucus. Wood earned her Juris Doctor from the University of Texas School of Law in 1975, graduating with high honors and Order of the Coif. She was among the first women at the University of Texas admitted as a member of the Friar Society.[citation needed]

Career

Wood clerked for Judge Irving Goldberg of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit from 1975 to 1976 and for Justice Harry Blackmun of the United States Supreme Court from 1976 to 1977. She was one of the first women to serve as a law clerk for a Supreme Court justice. After clerking at the Supreme Court, Wood was an attorney-advisor for the Office of the Legal Adviser of the United States Department of State from 1977 to 1978. From 1978 to 1980, she practiced at the law firm Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C.[4][5]

Wood began her teaching career as an assistant professor of law at Georgetown University from 1980 to 1981. In 1981, she settled in Chicago and joined the faculty of the University of Chicago Law School. She was the third woman ever hired as a law professor at the University of Chicago and the only woman on the faculty when she began in 1981. Wood served as Professor of Law from 1989 to 1992, Associate Dean from 1990 to 1995, and (as the first woman to be honored with a named chair) the Harold J. and Marion F. Green Professor of International Legal Studies from 1992 to 1995. Since her appointment to the Seventh Circuit, she has continued to teach at the University of Chicago Law School as a Senior Lecturer in Law, along with fellow Seventh Circuit judges Frank Easterbrook and Richard Posner.[6]

Wood was a special assistant to the Assistant Attorney General at the United States Department of Justice from 1985 to 1987. From 1993 to 1995, she served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General for international, appellate, and policy in the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice.[citation needed]

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