I JethroBT (WMF)

Chris "Jethro" Schilling

Senior Program Officer, Wikimedia Foundation

Well, well, well— if it isn't the consequences of my own actions...

About me

Hey folks. Since 2006, my curiosity has kept me engaged with the English Wikipedia under the username I JethroBT. I've contributed and worked together with editors in a variety of areas such as building high quality articles, community building, and developing help spaces. Before working with the WMF, I taught and studied cognitive science and psychology. Since graduating, I've coordinated a number of edit-a-thons and relationships with institutions in the Chicago metropolitan area.

I've been living in Chicago since 2009 and I love it here. When I'm not editing, you are likely to find me contra dancing or practicing taiko here in the city, two vibrant folk traditions supported by fantastic communities. (Stay curious!)

I enjoy getting to know the people involved in our projects, the challenges we've faced, and why we are motivated to contribute. Feel free to reach out to me anytime you like.

My work

Currently, I am managing funding programs for the US/Canada region and the CEE/Central Asia region.

I joined the Wikimedia Foundation's Community Resources team in 2015. With the Community Resources team, my role is to lead and maintain our grant programs, where folks can apply for funding to support ideas, events, and programs that improve Wikimedia projects and benefit the communities who want to use or contribute to them.

In my past work, I supported volunteers to develop initial thinking for events and projects with IdeaLab and the related Inspire Campaigns, which invited editors to develop ideas to solve important and pervasive needs in our movement along a certain theme.

Here are most projects and programs I've been closely involved with. (It gets hard to keep track of everything after awhile.) My involvement has been in my capacity as staff unless otherwise noted:

• Wikidata 10th Anniversary
• Grants:Regions/US and Canada
• Grants:Regions/CEE and Central Asia
• Universal Code of Conduct enforcement guidelines
• Wikimania 2021 scholarships
• #WikiForHumanRights campaign
• Wikipedia20
• Movement Strategy community and global events
• Grants Strategy Relaunch 2020-2021
• Simple Annual Plan Grants
• Annual Plan Grants
• Project Grants
• Conference & Event Grants
• Dataset Imports on Wikidata
• Wikimedians of Chicago User Group (volunteer)
• FormWizard
• Grant metrics tool
• Rapid Grants
• Inspire Campaigns
• Towards a New Wikimania
• Future IdeaLab Campaigns
• Reimagining WMF grants
• The Co-op (volunteer)
• WikiProject GLAM/Pritzker Military Museum & Library (volunteer)
• The Teahouse (volunteer)
• Moodbar Feedback (volunteer)

Disclaimer: I work for or provide services to the Wikimedia Foundation, and this is the account I try to use for edits or statements I make in that role. However, the Foundation does not vet all my activity, so edits, statements, or other contributions made by this account may not reflect the views of the Foundation.

Contact me

• E-mail: cschillingwikimedia.org
• Talk page: Meta wiki as
  I JethroBT (WMF)
• I JethroBT is my volunteer account on English Wikipedia