Hi everyone, I am excited to share with you all the results of our search for permanent leadership of the Wikimedia Foundation's Communications department.
Our own Heather Walls will transition from interim Chief of Communications to leading the department full-time, in the newly created role of Chief Creative Officer. She will be joined by a new Vice President of Communications, Kui Kinyanjui, who will join us from her home in Nairobi, Kenya in early March. Please join me in congratulating Heather and welcoming Kui! *The new roles* As Chief Creative Officer, Heather will remain at the Leadership team, with responsibility for the Communications department operations, and a mandate that focuses on helping people better understand our values and mission through our brand. She will oversee the organization and movement’s voice, tone, and visual assets, and how they are incorporated into everything from our recent awareness videos to our press statements. What do we sound and look like? How do you feel when you interact with us, as an editor, a reader, a donor? How do we spread and share our values? She will be responsible for new and creative initiatives that seek to expand the way people think about Wikipedia and Wikimedia, not only as an encyclopedia but an essential part of the way we understand the world. As Vice President of Communications, Kui will report directly to Heather and oversee our traditional and digital communications efforts. She will be responsible for our overall media positioning and coverage, critical issue management (also known as crisis communications), extending our digital media strategy, products, and presence, and supporting organizational leadership, such as myself, the Leadership team, and the Board, with effective and clear public communications. Kui also brings new and valuable skills that we’re sure to appreciate: first, a background in internal communications, which should help with improved information flows in our ever-more distributed organization, as well as a deep background in communications, campaigns, and marketing for emerging markets -- sure to be a critical skill for our efforts around improving awareness about Wikimedia in places where we want to reach more people. *About Heather Walls* Since joining the Foundation in 2011, Heather has been a driving force in our creative and brand efforts at the Foundation. Under her stewardship, the Foundation has dramatically reduced barriers to community usage of the trademarks under our care while also helping increase consistency in their usage. A member of the team before Communications was its own department, Heather was one of the first people I met and worked with when I joined as Chief Communications Officer. She graciously stepped in as leader of the department when I transitioned to Executive Director and has since grown into the role while making it her own. During that time, she has helped find the organization's place in the growing social media channels, modernized the Foundation’s brand, bringing it into greater alignment with our movement's values and workflows, and overseen pioneering community-supported awareness campaigns. Prior to joining the Foundation, Heather worked in design roles at organizations across California, Massachusetts, and the Midwest. She developed a special collections room and exhibit for California Academy of Sciences, and her work has been included in Architectural Record and exhibited at Harvard as well as Detroit and New York. *About Kui Kinyanjui* Kui will join the Foundation in March after concluding her current position as Head of Corporate Communications for Safaricom Limited in Kenya. Safaricom is one of the leading mobile network operators in Africa, and one of Kenya’s leading companies, providing mobile and banking services to more than 28 million Kenyans. She brings deep communications skills, an incredible wealth of knowledge around emerging markets, and a passion for our efforts to reach beyond English-speaking audiences in our organization and movement communications. Kui is from Nairobi, Kenya. Her background is as a journalist and has worked for Business Daily and other platforms within Nation Media Group (the largest independent media organization in Eastern and Central Africa), PC World, EA Magazine, Executive Magazine in Kenya, and 360 Magazine in Washington, DC. She has also worked in communications for IBM, Ogilvy PR Worldwide, and Media Moguls. Kui will be relocating from Nairobi to the San Francisco Bay Area in the summer of 2018. *How this came about* This outcome may come as a surprise after we began an external search for a Chief Marketing and Communications Officer (CMCO), but like many surprises, this outcome feels entirely obvious in retrospect. Heather and Kui have essential skills and experiences that are highly complementary and will serve to elevate and push the work of both the Communications department and the Foundation overall. We will retain an accomplished and intuitive advocate for our mission, community, and identity in Heather while welcoming Kui’s fresh perspective and powerful communications skill set. The evolution of my thinking, and this decision, was not hasty. Over the process of looking for a CMCO, we conducted a long and thorough search with an external firm Chaloner Associates. We reviewed applications from more than 1200 applicants, from all sorts of backgrounds and experiences, and brought three people through to the final rounds. While all of this was going on, the Communications department was also undergoing a deep consultation on its immediate and future needs, led by Heather, and with the support of an external expert, Sabrina Hersi Issa. Over six months of the search and consultation, a few things became clear. The first was that Heather was doing a great job as interim chief. The department was producing excellent results, and the team was small but strong, united under Heather’s leadership. Her contributions to movement strategy and the Leadership team were pragmatic and valuable. She has an astute but understated understanding of how Wikimedia should speak, sound, and appear to many different audiences. Her knowledge of the community was borne out of hard-won experience over many years, with the ability to push when we need pushing, while never losing sight of who we are. The second was that we absolutely needed and wanted new skills and experiences in service of our mission. We needed someone with deep experience in traditional communications areas, from public relations to internal communications. We wanted someone with experience in traditional marketing and product marketing. The Communications team members who worked in these areas were looking for someone to learn from, a strong manager and mentor with a breadth and depth of experience. We were also committed to finding someone who had worked serving audiences we still struggle to reach. We wanted someone who would bring a fresh voice, an understanding of emerging markets, and practical experience outside our current competencies. Kui and Heather together bring the best of both worlds. Creative and communications, deep experience, fresh perspective, and a strong sense of our mission and community. Together, they will work in the year to come to develop a plan for staffing our growing marketing efforts. *Next steps* We will be sharing this information publicly on the blog closer to Kui's start in March, but I wanted to share this news with you all as soon as possible. I want to offer my appreciation to hiring committee for their dedication through the process, and insights that led to this surprising and exciting outcome. Thank you Anna Stillwell, Joady Lohr, Zack McCune, Juliet Barbara, and Mel Kramer, Amy Segelin of Chaloner Associates, the travel team for getting Kui to San Francisco, and of course, Liz Verlade for ensuring it all come together. Again, please join me in congratulating Heather and welcoming Kui! Cheers, Katherine -- Katherine Maher Executive Director Wikimedia Foundation 1 Montgomery Street, Suite 1600 San Francisco, CA 94104 +1 (415) 839-6885 ext. 6635 <(415)%20839-6885> +1 (415) 712 4873 <(415)%20712-4873> kma...@wikimedia.org https://annual.wikimedia.org -- Katherine Maher Executive Director Wikimedia Foundation 1 Montgomery Street, Suite 1600 San Francisco, CA 94104 +1 (415) 839-6885 ext. 6635 +1 (415) 712 4873 kma...@wikimedia.org https://annual.wikimedia.org _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
