User:Kul~foundationwiki

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Revision as of 00:23, 30 October 2011 by MZMcBride (talk | contribs) (updated page)
Kul Wadhwa, Head of Mobile and Business Development

Kul Takanao Wadhwa (pronounced "cool") is the Wikimedia Foundation's Head of Mobile and Business Development. He has been with Wikimedia since January 2008.

Kul joins the Wikimedia Foundation from Stanford University, where he was the business and partnerships manager. He has more than a decade of management and business development experience, including senior roles at a variety of high-tech start-ups such as CyberTrust Japan, B.U.G., and Pangea2, where he worked on deals throughout Asia, Europe and the Americas. Kul has also done economic research at the nonprofit global policy think tank the RAND Corporation, and has worked in TV (NBC) and in the videogame and digital animation industry (Satelight, Japan).

Kul has an M.A. in international policy studies and a B.A. in political science, both from Stanford. He speaks Japanese, as well as some Portuguese and Spanish. He's been a volunteer with nonprofits aimed at helping at-risk youth and homeless people, and is a frequent user of the Wikimedia projects, particularly Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wikiversity.

Kul's job includes developing and executing the Wikimedia Foundation's business development strategy. He identifies and develops deals with for-profit companies, particularly where those deals help Wikimedia make the projects' materials available to more people, in more ways, around the world.