Wikimedia Foundation welcomes Amanda Keton as General Counsel

The Wikimedia Foundation is excited to announce the appointment of Amanda Keton as General Counsel. Amanda brings more than a decade of legal, nonprofit management, and compliance experience to the role. She will join the organization on 7 October.

The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia and other free knowledge projects. Together, Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects are visited by around 1.5 billion unique devices every month. The Wikimedia Foundation is driven by its vision of building a world in which every single person can freely share in the sum of all knowledge.

“Advocacy is a crucial part of our work in advancing free knowledge,” said Katherine Maher, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. “Now more than ever, we must recognize the urgency in fighting for policies and protections to make knowledge more open. Amanda’s extensive experience in advocacy and public policy, and her passion for fighting for equity and social change, make her an excellent fit to lead the advocacy work for our movement.”

As General Counsel, Amanda will work closely with the executive team to develop and build the organization in service of the future of our projects. She will advise the Executive Director on legal and policy matters and serve as Secretary to the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation. Amanda will direct the Foundation’s defensive litigation and public policy agenda around the world, while supporting and cultivating a diverse team of experts and leaders across the Legal department.

“I’m thrilled to join the Wikimedia movement and help bolster the work of its dedicated community,” Amanda said. “Increasing access to knowledge, defending our community and users, curbing surveillance and censorship, facilitating open policy discussions, and advocating for privacy are among the defining issues of our time. Wikimedia is poised to play a leading role in shaping them in collaboration with people everywhere who are driving forward our goal of free knowledge for all.”

Prior to joining Wikimedia, Amanda was General Counsel of Tides Network, a national public foundation deploying donor-advised grants and investments to build a world of shared prosperity and social justice. While in that role, she worked with the Wikimedia Foundation to establish the Wikimedia Endowment, a source of funding to support the Wikimedia projects and mission in perpetuity. She also served as Head of Tides Foundation and People Operations as well as CEO of Tides Advocacy, the policy affiliate in the Tides family of organizations.

Before her work at Tides, Amanda worked for Ernst & Young providing nonprofit organizations with consulting, advisory, and compliance services.

Amanda serves on the Network for Good Board, which supports companies and organizations to target, retain, and engage donors through a variety of services. She previously co-chaired the Board of Directors for the San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Community Center during a period when they tripled their affordable nonprofit rental space and co-located service providers to help the Center’s program participants thrive in San Francisco. She also formerly served on the Board of Directors for the ACLU of Northern California and Equal Rights Advocates.

Amanda completed a Master of Arts in Education while teaching middle school and wrote her thesis on why culturally and linguistically diverse students opt out of gifted and talented programs. Amanda is a member of the California State Bar and graduated with a Master of Laws in Taxation cum laude and Juris Doctor from the University of San Diego School of Law. She is based in San Diego.

Originally published by Wikimedia Foundation at wikimediafoundation.org/news on 3 October 2019.