Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2017/People/Core team

Information on the movement strategy team.

The core team is composed of individuals from the Wikimedia Foundation and williamsworks:

Whitney Williams, williamsworks
Ed Bland, williamsworks
Shannon Keith, williamsworks
Guillaume Paumier, Senior Analyst, Wikimedia Foundation
Suzie Nussel, organizational strategy consultant, Wikimedia Foundation

This team will shepherd the overall process and keep all groups involved and engaged. The architects (Whitney, Ed, Guillaume) will frame and co-design the conversations within our communities and beyond, and transform outputs into a meaningful, knowledge-driven strategic direction for the movement. They will work in close collaboration with, and seek counsel from, track leads, working groups, and volunteer advisors. The project/stakeholder managers (Suzie and Shannon) will work with track leads to drive engagement, coordinate the tracks and support them as needed, and manage tasks, deadlines, and budgets for the overall process.

Architecture: Whitney Williams, Ed Bland, and Guillaume Paumier
Project/stakeholder management: Shannon Keith and Suzie Nussel

Whitney Williams

Whitney is a native of Montana and Founder and CEO of williamsworks.

As First Lady Hillary Clinton’s Trips Director, Whitney honed her innate expertise in drawing together smart people with powerful ideas, partners and initiatives to create positive change. During her time in the White House, she designed and managed more than 200 trips to dozens of countries for the First Lady of the United States, witnessing firsthand some of the greatest challenges facing this generation, and cultivating a network of exceptional people working tirelessly to solve them. It was from these experiences that Whitney created williamsworks, an action oriented consultancy driven to help people achieve groundbreaking results.

For the last decade, Whitney has worked with some of the world’s leading NGOs, most influential philanthropists, and successful corporations to tackle problems on both a global and local scale. Whitney’s extensive network, coupled with more than a decade of global development experience—both on the ground and at the highest levels—form the foundation for williamsworks’ ability to make big things happen in a smart, sustainable and humble way.

In addition to her leadership of williamsworks, Whitney serves as co-founder and Vice Chair of the Board for Eastern Congo Initiative, the first U.S.-based advocacy and grant making organization focused solely on working with and for the people of eastern Congo. In this role Whitney oversees millions of dollars in grants to local Congolese organizations, as well as a broad U.S. and international advocacy agenda to drive the policies needed for lasting change in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Whitney also served on the Board of Trustees for the Glacier National Park Fund, and on the Boards of Directors for City Year/Seattle and New Futures. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Accountabilities:

Oversees project. Offers roving advice and ideas to the key players.
Thought partner to Lead Architects.
Reports to Katherine / Board

Ed Bland

After Guillaume spent the day with Ed, he said: “Ed is a Wikipedian. He just doesn’t know it yet.” After working in the for-profit world for nearly 20 years, in finance, magazine publishing and then consumer technology, culminating in video gaming, Ed stepped out to better assess how he could use his talents to give back. He has been doing that – mostly in the non-profit and social impact investing arena, for the last 10 years. In the world of microfinance, he helped set up and operate a 100M USD social investment fund, called “Microbuild”, a partnership between Habitat for Humanity and microfinance institutions in 24 developing countries. He’s done a lot of interesting social sector projects, but when you talk to Ed, what you’ll notice is that he often listens and asks many different kinds of questions.

Accountabilities:

define open-ended questions about the thematic direction our movement should head in,
define how inputs should be organized
in collaboration, frame and design the overarching process with stakeholders
in collaboration, curate inputs for the process (What shall we read? What shall we watch and listen to? Why?)
transform inputs into coherent meaning
forge a thematic direction by Wikimania / facilitate roles and resource configuration after Wikimania
facilitate and support stakeholder track teams.
Reports to Whitney Williams.

Guillaume Paumier

Guillaume Paumier [Username: guillom] is a familiar figure around the Wikimedia movement. He first joined as a volunteer in 2005 and worked across wikis in different roles, including, among others, co-leading the volunteer email response team, serving as a cross-project steward, and administering Wikimedia France. He joined the Wikimedia Foundation in 2009, focusing over the years on UploadWizard, engineering reports, Tech News, and research to understand Wikimedia communities. Guillaume has a passion for the movement that has inspired over a decade of deep reflection. Given the opportunity to help move the movement towards broader alignment, he was delighted to take part. A native of France, Guillaume completed his Ph.D. in microelectronics in 2008. He currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and he tends not to like surprises.

Accountabilities:

define open-ended questions about the thematic direction our movement should head in,
define how input should be organized,
in collaboration, frame and design the process with stakeholders
in collaboration, curate inputs for the process (What shall we read? What shall we watch and listen to? Why?)
Transform inputs into coherent meaning
Forge a thematic direction by Wikimania / forge roles and resource configuration after Wikimania.
Lead the stakeholder track teams.

Shannon Keith

Shannon came to williamworks as an intern researcher after college. Now she says “these guys couldn’t get rid of me if they tried.” As project manager, Shannon has worked with a variety of individuals, companies, and organizations seeking to create positive change. Previously, Shannon conducted field research in Northern India for the Central Himalayan Rural Action Group (CHIRAG), interviewing local farmers and business owners to evaluate the impact of their micro-enterprise program. Shannon has also spent time in rural Sierra Leone, conducting interviews with teachers, students and parents to assess opportunities to increase access to education. Shannon graduated with honors from the University of Washington with a bachelor’s degree in international studies. Her honors thesis examined land rights issues affecting Rwandan women after the state’s internationally-acclaimed land reform efforts.

Accountabilities:

project and stakeholder facilitation
managing work flow
Ensuring communication and coordination.
Reports to: Ed

Suzie Nussel

Many know Suzie from her six-month engagement here to develop a two-year organizational strategy and drive annual planning for (FY2016-17). She facilitated staff and key volunteers to uncover priority challenges, generate potential solutions, and vet strategic approaches with Wikimedia's network of volunteers through two separate month-long community engagements. She cares about making sure the work gets done.

Suzie has 20 years’ experience helping organizations build and launch new programs, services, and products. For the past 5 years she has been leveraging her for-profit experience to help non-profits drive their missions forward. Her work has been mainly in the K-12 educational technology and media sectors. She gained her expertise of running complex projects during 7 years at AOL, where she worked in partner marketing and brand director roles, launching new digital services. Suzie is passionate about giving back, which runs the gamut from organizing a 500-person conference to teaching creative problem solving skills to teens outside of Cape Town. She is a Board Trustee at the Creative Education Foundation and a Program Coordinator and instructor for the Creative Problem Solving Institute.

Accountabilities:

project and stakeholder facilitation
managing work flow
Ensuring communication and coordination
Reports to: Katherine

Sara Johnson

Sara's role at williamsworks is to make sense of all incoming information from the community in an effort to support a coherent strategy. Sara's background is in social impact and venture philanthropy with a focus on helping foundations and investors effectively deploy their capital and advising social enterprises on how to maximize their impact. Prior to williamsworks, Sara worked at an agriculture social enterprise in Zambia, a family foundation in San Francisco, and a social enterprise accelerator. Sara graduated from the University of San Diego with an undergraduate degree in political science (2011) and a Masters degree in economic development (2012).