Announcing our new Executive Director: Lila Tretikov

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On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees I am delighted to announce that the new Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation will be Lila Tretikov. Lila is a widely respected Bay Area technology leader, most recently with SugarCRM.

Photo of incoming WMF Executive Director Lila Tretikov

Lila was born in the Soviet Union and moved to the United States as a teenager. She’s been working for technology companies, primarily in open source, in the Bay Area for the past 15 years. In 1999 she started her career at Sun Microsystems. Shortly afterwards she founded GrokDigital, a technology marketing company. She spent three years as senior director of development at Telespree, a company that provides cloud-based wireless data services for mobile carriers. For the past eight years, she was at SugarCRM, where she held positions of increasing responsibility as the organization grew, including being in charge of internal IT, marketing, customer support and professional services, engineering, and product development. She has a stellar reputation as a leader who is highly skilled, collaborative, open, passionate and curious.
The Executive Director Transition Team, chaired by me, has unanimously recommended Lila to the Board to be our next ED, and the Board has unanimously approved the recommendation. We believe she will be an excellent leader in the Wikimedia movement. She strikes us all as smart, brave and unpretentious, and we believe she has the skills the Foundation needs.
Lila is going to spend the next few weeks in learning-and-listening mode, and will take over the ED position on June 1, 2014. Her first priority will be to immerse herself in deepening her understanding of the Wikimedia projects.
I want to close this post with a heartfelt and deeply appreciative thanks to Sue Gardner, who has been the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation for the past seven years. Sue’s leadership has built the Foundation into an effective, well-funded and well-managed organisation with integrity and a clear sense of purpose, and her steady and committed presence throughout the search process was integral in helping us come to this excellent result. We will be forever grateful for her leadership and vision, and I hope we can continue to rely on her support in the months and years ahead.
In June Sue will move into a new role as a special advisor to me and Lila. She’ll also take a well-earned holiday, and maybe even a bit of a wiki-break, before beginning to think about what she’s going to do next. Many of us will get a chance to see her in London, at Wikimania, in August.
The Wikimedia Foundation is delighted to have reached such a successful outcome to the search. My thanks to Lisa Grossman of m/Oppenheim for helping us with it, and I ask you to please join me in extending a warm welcome to Lila Tretikov, our new ED.
Jan-Bart de Vreede, Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

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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[…] Foundation has appointed Lila Tretikov as  its new executive director.  Sue Gardner, who has been the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation for the past seven […]

Let me be the first to congratulate Lila on her new job and to congratulate Sue on a job well done. Despite the dramas and the soothsayers of the past seven years, the Wikimedia projects are still thriving and Sue played no small part in that. I hope Lila has an equally successful time over the next few years. Welcome aboard the pirate ship that is Wikimedia. 🙂

Congratulations !
Wikipedia is an international treasure. I hope its value increases and it merely maintains its position as the most reliable source of information and knowledge in the world.
Good Luck 🙂 !

Welcome!

Congratulation Lila & good luck..

Congrats Lila for being part of this larger family. We all loved Sue and she will always be this hyperactive influential speaker and a working bee. The community in the Indian subcontinent would love to meet you in person. 🙂

I have personally relied upon much of your research, data and support that you provide freely. I recently published a book called “the golden thread” (http:www.fuadudemans.com). This was a personal milestone and written with great resentment toward a socio-economic system that enslaves global citizens. I tried hiding most of my anger in the book, and it is a difficult read. It does however contain extremely important information on how to improve our global socio-economic trajectory. I would like to contact you and donate the book and its proceeds to your organisation.

[…] Stiftung eine neue Geschäftsführerin (Executive Director) gefunden. Wie die Wikimedia Foundation bekannt gab, wird die Software-Expertin Lila Tretikov am 1. Juni die Geschäftsführung der Stiftung hinter […]

[…] Gardner, the former Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, announcement from the official Wikimedia Foundation blog confirmed Lila Tretikov as the new Executive Director. She took her position beginning the first of […]

[…] går ble 36-åringen utpekt til ny toppsjef i Wikimedia Foundation, og dermed øverste leder i stiftelsen bak det frie oppslagsverket […]

[…] Nouvelle directrice exécutive ■ Créer des Shérifs ? ■  Wikimag ; Signpost ; RAW ; Wikimedia […]

Welcome to the family! You certainly have a large shoe to fill!

[…] un anno fa la sua uscita di scena, e la scelta della fondazione madre di Wikipedia questa volta è caduta su un manager conosciuto nell'ambiente della Silicon Valley e con una competenza tecnica e […]

Лайла, вы молодец! удачи на новой должности!

congrats lila and good luck for future endeavors..

[…] La Fundación Wikimedia, la organización matriz de Wikipedia y otras wikis (sitios web que pueden ser editados por cualquier voluntario), tiene una nueva directora ejecutiva: Lila Tretikov, quien reemplazará a Sue Gardner el 1 de julio, según comunicó la fundación en su blog. […]

Congratulations!
Wikipedia impacts the world daily. It must thrive and expand.

Congratulations Lila and welcome to the wacky Wikimedia family. Just make sure that Uncle Jimbo doesn’t try to plug his beard trimmer directly into one of the servers! Finally, a BIG THANK YOU to Super Sue who has been a pivotal part of Wikimedia’s success. We wish you success in your future endeavours.

[…] Traducido y adaptado de la entrada original, publicada en el blog de Fundación Wikimedia, por Jan-Bart de Vreede, Presidente del Consejo […]

[…] May 1, the Wikimedia Foundation named a successor to Sue Gardner as executive director: Lila Tretikov, a “Russian-born technologist […]