Wikimedia Foundation's Sue Gardner named to World's Most Powerful Women list by Forbes

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Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Garner in San Francisco.
Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Garner in San Francisco.

We are very excited to share the news that Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner was named to the Worlds 100 Most Powerful Women list by Forbes Magazine yesterday. Citing her role in transforming the Wikimedia Foundation from a small non-profit into a thriving organization with over 120 employees, a complex technical product roadmap and a consistently rising pool of revenue from a global donor-base, Forbes lists Sue in the company of her technology peers, as well as significant political figures, philanthropists, media magnates, leaders of aid organizations and celebrities.
As Forbes writes, the Wikimedia Foundation “pre- and post-Sue Gardner are two completely different organizations. When she arrived at Wikimedia [Foundation], the nonprofit behind Wikipedia, in 2007, the organization had under 10 employees and was raising less than $3 million dollars annually. In 2011, Wikimedia’s number of donors had increased ten times over, raising $23 million.”
Everyone who works at the Wikimedia Foundation is proud that Sue’s leadership and dedication to the Wikimedia movement over the past five years has been recognized so publicly, but as she would remind us, power in the Wikimedia community doesn’t rest in one person. The success of the Wikimedia projects is shared by the hundreds of thousands of contributors from all over the world who have made Wikipedia the 5th largest web property and a household name.
Jay Walsh, Head of Communications

Archive notice: This is an archived post from blog.wikimedia.org, which operated under different editorial and content guidelines than Diff.

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Congratulations to Sue. Her work, and the work of thousands of Wikimedians around the globe, has made the public view Wikipedia a basic necessity, like water and electricity. This is a testament to everybody’s dedication and hard work. For the upcoming years, Sue, and the staff at the Wikimedia Foundation, have identified specific areas for improvement and have been focusing resources on those areas in an effort to make the Wikimedia projects an even more valuable resource for humanity. It has been encouraging to watch Sue and the foundation staff at work and they have been an inspiration to many… Read more »

Congratulations Sue. And although I haven’t seen the article/list I hope this will encourage some new editors (especially female) to get involved.

You know that Forbes just releases these lists in order to promote itself, right? When you post something like this, you are endorsing Forbes and what it stands for. Was that your intent?

“in 2007, the organization had under 10 employees and was raising less than $3 million dollars annually. In 2011, Wikimedia’s number of donors had increased ten times over, raising $23 million.” Are we expected to believe that this 700%+ increase is something good or bad? I would rather have the foundation raise the same as it did back in 2007 but maintain some of the user base that has been lost in these five years. Sometimes it seems like the foundation is just raising money for the sake of spending it. The foundation should be kept as small as possible… Read more »