Trustee Evaluation Form
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Years of Experience
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<1
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1–2
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2–5
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5–10
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10+
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Wikimedia experience.
The candidate is a dedicated contributor to the Wikimedia movement. Eligible contributions include: contributions to the Wikimedia projects, membership in a Wikimedia organization or affiliate, activities as a Wikimedia movement organizer, or participation with a Wikimedia movement ally organization.
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15 years (2006–2021).
I am an editor from the Wikimedian community in Pune, Maharashtra, India since 2006, with over 30,000 global edits. I am active in the online English Wikipedia community of Indians and the local Marathi community. I have been an active volunteer, participant, and a resource person in the Indian community from 2006 to date but eschewed formal/paid positions and the like. Have advised India Education Program, Wikimedia India Chapter (2011–2013), to the CIS-A2K program on movement matters in an informal and unpaid capacity. I was an organiser of WikiConference India 2011 and headed the host city selection committee for WikiConference India 2016. I was part of the panel that was constituted by CIS to appoint the Program Director for CIS-A2K program in 2015. My contributions have been recognised by the Indian Community, which publicly felicitated me in Chennai in 2019.
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Board experience.
The candidate has served on the board of trustees/directors or other similar governing body of a nationally- or globally-focused organization (non-profit, for-profit, or governmental).
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10 years (2012–2021).
I am on the Board of the The Army Philatelic Society. Though this is a national non-profit of renowned philatelists who hail from the Indian Defence Services background, it is miniscule and very low-profile. I am a member of the Managing Committee and the job involves keeping an open mind, ability to see all points of view, derive a consensus amongst strong-willed people who felt passionately about issues, and working for win-win solutions. In my opinion, while the scale has absolutely no comparison to that of the WMF, it is still an exposure in the concerned field.
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Executive experience.
The candidate has worked at an executive level for an organization, department, or project of comparable (or greater) size, complexity, and scope to the Wikimedia Foundation.
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32 years (1984–2016).
I have been a commissioned officer in the Corps of Engineers (combat and infrastructure engineer department) of the Indian Army for 32 years (1984–2016). My entire career has been upholding the military values of integrity, courage, and upholding the Chetwode credo of the Indian Army. I reached the rank of Colonel, which I held for 10 years. Medical issues prevented further promotion.
During my service, I commanded a field company during the Kargil War (1999) for which I received a commendation, and later commanded an engineer regiment in a border area. I consider these the epitome of my executive experience.
I was the scientific team leader for the 1993 Corps of Engineers Expedition to Nanda Devi (7816 m), (where I also conducted a scientific survey of the butterflies of the National Park). Leading, organizing and working with a team of multi-disciplinary scientists from culturally-widely-disparate institutions successfully is an achievement that I am proud of.
I was the Chief Administrator for the Army Pre-Primary School, Fort William, Kolkata for three years (2012–2015). It involved looking after all aspects of the school, including recruitment of Principal and 15 teachers, 20 other Staff, and over 300 children.
I have been the AA&QMG (chief administrator) of the National Defence College, New Delhi (July 2001–July 2004), a prestigious defence institution for senior defence and civil government officers from India and nations around the world. I was responsible for all functions including human resources (120 very senior defence and government officials of India and foreign countries, about 100 staff from all three armed forces and variety of government agencies), management of infrastructure, transport, liaison with foreign embassies and other government departments, international travel, financial management, and legal issues, and had an annual budget equivalent to around USD 115,000 today. I had to conduct about a hundred events each year, including two foreign tours for six delegations to one/two countries each, twice a year, and six other tours within the nation.
In my last appointment, I was the coordinator for the military Married Accommodation Project (MAP) scheme in HQ Eastern Command of the Indian Army (2012–2015). I was responsible for coordination of all MAP projects in West Bengal and all states east of it in Eastern and Northeast India, of a total value of 982 crores INR (132 million USD in 2015).
I am also an avid amateur naturalist who founded and mentors an award-winning children’s nature club, an activity which requires different skills and experience.
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Subject matter expertise.
The candidate has worked or significantly volunteered in an area relevant to the work of the Foundation and the Board. Such areas will be determined on an annual basis and may include areas such as Global movement building and community organization, enterprise-level platform technology and/or product development, public policy and the law, knowledge sector (e.g., academia/GLAM/education), human rights and social justice, open Internet/free and open source software, organizational strategy and management, finance and financial oversight, non-profit fundraising, human resources, board governance.
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14 years (2008–present). Besides my experience in operations, administration, human resources and management (outlined in previous sections of the Trustee form), I have hands-on domain experience in GLAM.
- I have been the Director of the Corps of Engineers Museum & Archive, CME, Pune, for eight years, which involved all four aspects of GLAM, an organisation that I revived and for which I received a commendation.
- I was Library Officer of the Officer’s Mess Library in College of Military Engineering, Pune (1987–1990). I personally categorized the Library using dBASE III on a PC with two floppy drives and no hard disk, in which process I was the first person in my institution to discover the first virus ever – Brain.
- I am an honorary GLAM consultant for the Bombay Sappers Museum & Archive, in Pune.
- I am presently involved in a military oral history project concerning the documentation of personal reminiscences of all ranks of 20 Field Company (1812–present) and 110 Engineer Regt (1965–present).
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Diversity: Background
The candidate belongs or belonged to a group that has faced historical discrimination and underrepresentation in structures of power (related to, for example, gender, race, ethnicity, disability, LGBTQ+ identity, social class, economic status, or caste).
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Yes. I am a 59-year old, medically challenged person, being a Chronic Myeloid Leukemia survivor (2007–present). I mentor two children/young adults with Duchenne’s Muscular Dystrophy in my children’s nature club. I am acutely aware and concerned about accessibility especially for physically, developmentally and medically challenged people.
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Diversity: Geography
The candidate would contribute to the overall geographic diversity of the Board of Trustees, based on the geographic regions where they have lived.
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Yes. I hail from Pune, Maharashtra, in India, a Global South nation that has not been represented in the Community volunteers of the Board of Trustees so far. India has 27 language communities and total of 96 Wikimedia projects (to the best of my knowledge) and is the single-most linguistically-diverse, and complex nation having Wikimedians. It is also one of the nations that have the largest number of consumers of knowledge from Wikimedian projects.
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Diversity: Language
The candidate is a native speaker of a language other than English.
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Yes. My first language (mother tongue) is Konkani. My other daily use languages are Hindi and Marathi, I have near-native proficiency in both languages. As an Indian armed forces officer, I have had to interact with people from all parts of India (22 scheduled languages) who have little ability to speak either English or Hindi. I speak English with near native fluency. I have elementary German because I studied it in school and college.
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Diversity: Political system experience
The candidate has substantial experience living in and/or working to share knowledge in a non-democratic, state-censoring, or repressive context.
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No. However, while India is one of the largest democratic countries in the world, its democratic institutions have been at risk in recent years and in the prevailing environment, including some recent legislation, censorship is a current issue of serious concern and threatens aspects of free speech and legitimate dissent.
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Verified
