Job openings/Chief Program Officer

''The Wikimedia Foundation is hiring a Chief Program Officer. This is a unique leadership position at a highly creative volunteer-driven organization. This job will be posted for several months, to allow a rich and diverse candidate pool to develop. Please feel free to share this posting widely.''

The successful candidate for this role could come from a variety of different backgrounds, such as educational non-profit work, the free culture movement, digital media, product development, etc. Please read below for the detailed job description and instructions for applying.

Chief Program Officer [CLOSED]
 * Job Title

The purpose of this role is to provide leadership to the Wikimedia Foundation program staff, and to support and facilitate the work of the international Wikimedia volunteer community, in collecting, developing and making available free educational resources for people all around the world.
 * Job Purpose

Executive Director
 * Reports to

You will have responsibility for all mission-furthering program work of the Wikimedia Foundation. This is a broad scope, covering all areas of organizational activity except finance and administration, and technology.
 * Job Summary

The Wikimedia Foundation aims to increase the overall reach of its projects, to broaden participation, and to increase quality. As Chief Program Officer, you will be the person primarily responsible for moving these goals forward. You will also be responsible for media relations and other communications activities, both externally and internally.

The Wikimedia Foundation is an unusual organization, with an extremely small staff supporting and facilitating the work of a global community of tens of thousands of active volunteers. This role requires a high degree of flexibility and creativity, and a collaborative and inventive orientation. The successful candidate will be mission-driven and passionate about the idea of creating free, multilingual educational material for people everywhere in the world. A desire for real-world impact is critical to success.


 * Responsibilities
 * Develop and implement a strategic plan for the program area, with the goals of increasing reach, broadening participation and increasing quality in Wikipedia and its sister projects;
 * Lead the program team, including goals development, coaching, performance assessment, and the identification and filling of skills and capacity gaps;
 * Develop and implement scalable mechanisms for encouraging, facilitating and rewarding the work of the Wikimedia volunteers. This will include the development and administration of an experimental small-grant-making process;
 * Identify and recruit key institutional partners who can help us reach our goals;
 * Work closely with the fundraising team to develop project concepts;
 * Oversee the execution of projects including those funded by grants, working closely as required with the program staff, volunteers, technical team and others;
 * Participate in the Wikimedia Foundation's strategic planning processes, including program budget development and management.


 * Required Qualifications
 * A history of leadership experience in increasingly responsible positions, ideally including management of teams of 10+ people;
 * Experience developing and implementing strategies and plans, and ideally also overseeing large initiatives;
 * Experience hiring and developing staff, coaching, evaluating performance, setting goals and measuring success;
 * Experience in the non-profit sector, ideally including experience developing grant proposals;
 * Basic technical understanding is a requirement, ideally including experience with online production principles and practices;
 * Exceptional verbal and written communication skills and interpersonal skills are a must;
 * Experience working with or as part of large volunteer communities is a major plus;
 * Understanding of the open source and free culture communities is a major plus;
 * Experience with any of the following is a plus: user testing, audience research, events management, marketing, product development;
 * International work experience is a major plus, as is the ability to speak languages in addition to English;
 * Must be able to work well with people with a very wide diversity of demographic and cultural characteristics;
 * Must be capable of achieving results while maintaining an inclusive, collaborative leadership style.