Board of Trustees

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The Wikimedia Board of Trustees manages the foundation and supervises the disposition and solicitation of donations. The Board of Trustees are the ultimate corporate authority in the Wikimedia Foundation Inc. (article IV, sec. 1 of the Wikimedia Foundation bylaws).

The Board has the power to direct the activities of the foundation and takes resolutions. It also has the authority to set membership dues, discipline and suspend members (article III), and to amend the corporate bylaws (article VI).

The Board consists of five directors. Since June 2004, two of these seats have been elected. In each case, voting was open to all active users who were eligible for suffrage.

The current Board members are:

Jimmy Wales

Jimmy Wales in Paris.

Jimmy Wales is an Internet entrepreneur and wiki enthusiast, and founder of the Wikipedia project.

Jimmy was born in Huntsville, Alabama in 1966, 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. In the mid-1990s he 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.

In 1999, Jimmy 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, perhaps due to being a top-down cathedral model, as opposed to Wikipedia, which is the ultimate bazaar. After 2 years of working with the Nupedia concept, that team opened Wikipedia to help channel content into Nupedia; Wikipedia became an instant success, but not in the envisioned way, and Nupedia was shut down. In 2003, Jimmy set up the Wikimedia Foundation, a Tampa-based non-profit organization, to support Wikipedia and its sister projects.

In 2004, Jimmy founded Wikia. He was appointed a fellow of Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society in mid-2005, and in October of 2005 joined the Board of Directors of Socialtext, a provider of wiki technology to businesses. He lives in St. Petersburg, Florida with his wife Christine and his daughter Kira.

Florence Nibart-Devouard

Florence

Florence Nibart-Devouard serves as one of two User Representives to the Board.

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 has been working in public research, first in flower plant genetic improvement, and second in microbiology to study the feasability of polluted soil bioremediation. She was employed until recently 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 38, and lives in Clermont Ferrand with her husband Bertrand and her three children, Anne-Gaëlle aged eight, William ten and Thomas newborn.

Erik Möller

Erik at Wikimania

Erik Möller is 27 years old and lives in Berlin, Germany. He has been an active editor of Wikipedia since 2001 and has also contributed to the underlying software, MediaWiki. Erik is a freelance journalist and author (Die heimliche Medienrevolution: Wie Weblogs, Wikis und freie Software die Welt verändern) and also manages wiki-related software development projects. He holds a degree in computer science. Beyond Wikimedia, he seeks to promote Free Content, Free Software, and balanced intellectual monopoly rights legislation.

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, Michael is Chief Operating Officer of community-focused wiki hosting service Wikia, Inc., and lives in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Tim Shell

Tim Shell, La Jolla California, 2003

Tim 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.

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

Former Board members

Angela Beesley

Angela in Germany

Angela Beesley served as a member of the Board of Trustees from June 2004. She announced her resignation from this post in July 2006, which took effect on the election of her successor on September 26, 2006.

Angela is the co-founder of the community-focused wiki hosting service, Wikia and is the Vice President of Community Relations at Wikia, Inc.

Angela Beesley is one of the authors of the book Wikis: Tools for information Work and Collaboration published by Chandos, Oxford, in 2006.

Prior to her involvement with Wikipedia, Angela was an educational researcher and developer of student assessments.

Angela was born in England and has lived in Germany and Australia.