User:Sbouterse

Siko Bouterse, Head of Individual Engagement Grants

Siko Bouterse

Head of Individual Engagement Grants, Wikimedia Foundation

Even after all this time the Sun never says to the Earth, “You owe me.” - Hafiz

About me

I joined the Wikimedia Foundation in June 2011, first as Head of Community Fellowships, and later moved into grantmaking for individuals. I like to build new projects and help others do the same. I've worked with global online communities for some time now, and am particularly interesting in cross-cultural dialogue and collaboration. Before WMF, I worked with organizations like hi5.com, where I built a crowd-sourced community translation program to localize the site into not nearly as many languages as Wikimedia has, and Meedan.org, where I built online community focused on English-Arabic dialogue. I have a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley and an M.A. in Middle East History from the American University in Cairo. Now, I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and when I'm not online hanging around with people, I like to be outside somewhere beautiful, hanging around with people.

My work

As Head of Individual Engagement Grants, my primary responsibility is to support Wikimedians to complete intensive projects (building, organizing, piloting, creating, improving, researching or facilitating things) that benefit the Wikimedia movement. I also founded the IdeaLab, am WMF's representative for the Participation Support Program, spend time thinking about the Wikimedia gender gap when I can, am a fan of new experiments in online community organizing, and generally take responsibility for dreaming up ways we can support individual community members in partnership with the rest of the Grantmaking team. The best part of my job is learning from community members what we can do together to make this movement even more amazing.

Some current projects I work on, in partnership with other staff and volunteers:

• Individual Engagement Grants
• IdeaLab
• Travel and Participation Support Program
• WikiWomen's Collaborative
• Wikipedia Teahouse

Disclaimer: I work for the Wikimedia Foundation, and this is the account I intend to use for edits or statements I make in that role. However, the Foundation does not vet all my activity, so edits, statements, or other contributions made by this account may not reflect the views of the Foundation.

Contact me

• E-mail: sboutersewikimedia.org
• Talk page: Meta wiki and English Wikipedia as Sbouterse (WMF)
• Seeeko is my volunteer account on English Wikipedia