Board of Trustees

The Wikimedia Foundation is composed of a Board of five directors. Two of these seats were filled via a project-wide vote in June 2004. This election was open to all active users who had made their first edit on any Wikimedia project at least 90 days before they voted.

The current Board members are:

• Jimbo Wales, Chair and founder, life member
• Florence Nibart-Devouard, Vice-Chair, Contributing User Representative
• Angela Beesley, Executive Secretary, Volunteer User Representative
• Michael Davis, Treasurer
• Tim Shell

Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

Jimmy Wales in Paris.

Jimmy "Jimbo" Donal Wales (born August 7, 1966), is an Internet entrepreneur and a wiki enthusiast.

Wales was born in Huntsville, and is a graduate of Auburn University and the University of Alabama. He worked as Research Director at Chicago Options Associates, a futures and options trading firm then located in Chicago. He also admires the Objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand. In the mid-1990s Wales started Bomis, a search portal focusing on aspects of pop culture, one of the first users of the freely licensed data of the Open Directory Project, and in 2004 founded Wikia, a wiki-style search engine.

In 1999, Wales had the concept of a freely distributable encyclopedia and founded Nupedia, by hiring philosopher Larry Sanger as editor-in-chief and assigning 2 programmers to write software for it. Nupedia failed primarily due to being a top-down cathedral model, as opposed to Wikipedia, which is the ultimate bazaar. After more than 2 years of struggle with the Nupedia concept, Wikipedia was opened to become an instant success.

Wales is currently the president of the Wikimedia Foundation, a Tampa-based non-profit organization that encompasses Wikipedia and its younger sister projects. According to the Herald Sun, an Australian newspaper, Wales has spent over AU$400,000 on Wikipedia and Nupedia; later, Time Magazine reported that Wales spent around US$500,000 on his Wiki projects.

Wales is married, and lives in St. Petersburg, Florida with his wife Christine and his daughter Kira.

Florence Nibart-Devouard

Florence

Florence Nibart-Devouard serves as the Contributing User Representive to the Board and is the vice-chair of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Florence was born in Versailles (France). She grew up in Grenoble, and has been living since then in several French cities, as well as Antwerpen in Belgium and Tempe in Arizona.
She is a engineer in Agronomy (ENSAIA and also holds a DEA in Genetics and biotechnologies (INPL). She is currently employed in a french firm, to conceive decision-making tools in sustainable agriculture. She joined the Wikipedia adventure in February 2002 and is known as a contributor under the pseudonym Anthere.

Florence is 36, and live in Clermont Ferrand with her husband Bertrand and her two children, Anne-Gaëlle aged six and William eight.

Angela Beesley

Angela in London

Angela Beesley is the Executive Secretary of the Wikimedia Foundation, a post to which she was elected in June 2004. She serves as the Volunteer User Representative to the Board

Angela was born in Norwich, England in 1977 and grew up in Maidstone and Colchester. She holds an honours degree in psychology. During a year out from Aston University, and for a period after graduating, Angela worked as a research assistant in the Aston Dyslexia and Developmental Assessment Centre. She then worked for the National Foundation for Educational Research, based in Berkshire, as a developer of the national statutory assessments for England and Wales.

Angela recently moved to Essex, and currently divides her time between Wikimedia Foundation projects and part-time employment as Community Director for Wikia.

Michael Davis

Michael Davis is a graduate of Williams College and the University of Chicago. Formerly the CEO of Chicago Options Associates, a futures and options trading firm in Chicago, Davis is now retired and lives in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Tim Shell

Tim Shell, La Jolla California, 2003

Timothy Shell is an internet entrepreneur with an interest in self-organization, and decentralized order, as exemplified by Wikipedia. In 1996 he was pursuing his degree in computer science when he decided to chuck it and go into business, joining up with Jimmy Wales to start Bomis.

Shell has lived in Chicago, Florida, and San Diego, and currently resides in Las Vegas.