Affiliate-selected Board seats/2019/Nominations/Christophe Henner

Name:

Christophe Henner

Wikimedia username:

Questions for all candidates - Questions for this individual candidate that do not apply to other candidates

Statement

When I first ran 3 years ago, it was with the goal to help move our movement to a better place. I then said I believe our movement could achieve its best if we're all pushing in the same direction.

I am thrilled to have been part of the hard collective work that went to defining our shared 2030 strategic direction and happy to see that we are making clearer our will to go beyond Wikipedia and aiming to be more open, more inclusive, and ambitious.

In staying on the board for another mandate I want to make sure we don’t just say we are going to go into that direction, but we really are doing it. I also want to use and share the knowledge and experience I have gained from my professional life in a fast growing tech company. It has given me a deep understanding of technology and product but also of growth needed to achieve real impact.

Our movement needs to change to reflect the world better. The Foundation needs to make even more efforts to adapt, listen and learn, from affiliates, from partners around the globe, from all of our communities and the communities we don’t know yet. This is my engagement: I will continue making sure that the Foundation listens and learns, and that we grow together, as a movement.

Résumé

I have been involved in our movement for the last 15 years (Not quite yet half of my life as a wikimedian, but almost!) in different capacities: as an editor, as an organizer, with various responsibilities, being on the board of Wikimédia France and now, trustee of Wikimedia Foundation.

3 years ago I changed jobs. I moved from Chief Marketing Officer to Deputy General Manager of a very large video game digital media company. A year later, I left the safety of a large company to join in a fast-paced, then small, tech start-up.

As COO of that company, I am leading our very quick growth. We have grown from 14 employees in Paris to over 200 employees on two continents in 18 months. We managed that steady multi-cultural growth by being very intentional on how we onboard and keep people feeling to be part of a collective endeavor. We didn’t do everything flawlessly, I wish!, but doing it expanded my views on organisational health, and on how an organisation must interact and work with its environment.

In my daily job, I work on how we define, design and make our product better, both from a user and a technological/infrastructure (we operate our own datacenters) point of view. As Wikimedia embarks on a journey to become the infrastructure of free knowledge, I believe that expertise is useful to have on the board.

What I bring to the board is a mix of a strong organization leadership experience and a technical expertise that is key to the development of our movement. I would be grateful to be given the opportunity to continue serving on the board.

Eligibility

I am eligible to serve as a trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Endorsements

Wikimedia Austria

Christophe's work as a member of the Board of Trustees in the last three years has proven to be effective in changing the WMF's understanding and approach to working with us as affiliates. Thanks to his leadership, the movement is currently discussing important questions, that have been concerning us all, for many years in a systematic manner.
In our view, the current situation in the middle of the strategy process for 2030 makes it important to have stability at the highest level and let Christophe continue his work as a member of this body. WMAT is therefore happy to endorse Christophe's nomination and wishes him all the best for the election. On behalf of Wikimedia Austria, Philip Kopetzky (talk) 20:13, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Wikimedia France

As Nataliia and Christophe decided to candidate for a second term, and that some wikimedians think that stability would be a good thing for WMF and the Wikimedia movement, WMFR would like to endorse this candidacy to give a chance to every affiliates to think about this idea. On behalf of Wikimedia France,Pierre-Yves Beaudouin (talk) 18:27, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]