Board

People

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The Board is responsible for the strategic governance of the charity. It normally consists of 10 members who act as both trustees of the charity and as directors of the company. The majority of board members are elected by the membership, usually an Annual General Meeting, while some are co-opted for specific skills and experience. See below for the legal duties and responsibilities of board members.

The role of the Wikimedia UK board

Wikimedia UK's volunteer board provides strategic guidance, direction and oversight for the charity as a whole while recognising and respecting the domain of staff and volunteer responsibility. In particular, it:

• sets and maintains our direction, vision, mission and values, and helps develop strategy for effective charitable impact
• sets and maintains the policies, practices, budgets and other processes necessary to deliver those aims
• selects and supports the CEO who has oversight of operations, staff and employment procedures
• maintains fiscal oversight and accountability, including risk management and ensuring that the charity operates in a prudent and solvent manner
• ensures that the law and our Articles of Association are complied with
• promotes and champions the charity
• maintains its own effectiveness as a board

Board members

• Julian Akodoye Manieson - Trustee (elected 2021, term expires 2024)
• Caroline Ball - Trustee (elected 2021, term expires 2024)
• Sangeet Bhullar - Trustee (elected 2019, term expires July 2022)
• Lorna Campbell - Vice Chair (re-elected 2019; term expires July 2022)
• Jane Carlin - Trustee (co-opted; term expires Sept 2022)
• Andrea Chandler - Trustee (elected 2019, term expires July 2022)
• Kelly Foster - Trustee (elected July 2020; term expires July 2023)
• Monisha Shah - Chair Elect (co-opted July 2021; term expires July 2023)
• Marnie Woodward - Treasurer (co-opted; term expires Sept 2022)
• Rod Ward - Trustee (re-elected July 2021; term expires July 2024)
• Mark Cruickshank - Trustee (co-opted April 2022; term expires April 2024)

See also Trustee officer roles.

Biographies

Julian Akodoye Manieson

Bio and photo pending.

Email: julian.manieson@wikimedia.org.uk

Julian's term runs until the 2024 AGM.

Caroline Ball

Photo of Caroline Ball

Caroline Ball has been an editor of Wikipedia since 2018. She is an academic librarian at the University of Derby, supporting programmes in the fields of Business, Law and Social Sciences, and has also worked as a copyright and licensing advisor. She is an organiser of the #ebookSOS campaign, advocating for fairer pricing, licensing and access for academic ebooks.

She has been active in promoting Wikipedia within the higher education sector, bringing Wiki editing into the curriculum of several programmes, writing and presenting at conferences on the numerous ways Wikipedia editing can be used as a teaching and learning tool within higher education. She was awarded the UK Wikimedia of the Year Award in 2020.

She is interested in strengthening Wikimedia’s existing links with educational and cultural institutions, and is particularly keen to build on the work embedding Wiki editing within school curricula.

Email: caroline.ball@wikimedia.org.uk

Caroline's term runs until the 2024 AGM.

Sangeet Bhullar

Photo of Sangeet Bhullar

Sangeet has been a Trustee since January 2019. She is the Founder and Director of WISE KIDS, which focuses on New Media Literacy Education, Digital Citizenship, Online Safety and Digital Well-being. In the last 18 years, Sangeet has worked with thousands of young people, parents and professionals in the UK, Singapore and Malaysia, addressing these themes. She is passionate about young people’s own voices, rights and agency in addressing risk, harm, opportunity and well-being online. She is a member of a number of Welsh government and non-government committees.

Email: sangeet@wisekids.org.uk

Sangeet's term runs until the 2022 AGM.

Lorna Campbell

Lorna Campbell

Lorna has been a trustee of Wikimedia UK since July 2016. She has been involved in the open education technology community since 1997 and currently works with the OER Service at the University of Edinburgh. Her main areas of expertise include digital infrastructure for open educational resources, open education policy, open licences, and technologies for supporting the management and distribution of educational content.

Lorna's term runs until the 2022 AGM.

Jane Carlin

Jane has been a trustee of Wikimedia UK since September 2018. She has served in a wide range of senior finance roles within the publishing and wider media sector, including within Educational publishing, and brings a strong commercial finance, international and compliance skills to the board. Jane is a chartered management accountant and she chairs the Audit and Risk Committee.

Jane’s current co-opted term expires in September 2022.

Email: jane.carlinwikimedia.org.uk

Andrea Chandler

As a systems librarian within academia Andrea is a champion of open source software, open access approaches to research and publishing, and collective approaches to sharing resources, problem solving and future-proofing. Andrea is a qualified librarian, so metadata standards, storage, copyright and availability are all part of her daily concerns. Andrea has helped Wikimedia UK strengthen links with existing academic digital collections and encourages collaborative projects and policies. Her personal interests are in women’s health and wellbeing, and in the development and use of audio content.

Andrea's term runs until the 2022 AGM.

Kelly Foster

Kelly Foster

Kelly has been an active contributor to Wikipedia since 2012, since then she has been involved in projects both online and in-person. Kelly is an accredited trainer with Wikimedia UK and have delivered training for a variety of organisations from the national museums and libraries to local community groups. Since 2018 Kelly has been the UK lead for AfroCROWD, an initiative to increase the numbers of African-descended people contributing to Wikimedia and other open knowledge projects and to improve the content about the African Diaspora. I’m also involved in supporting Wikimedia communities in the Caribbean region and the diaspora, and currently serve on the Wikimedia Foundation’s Project Grant committee. Kelly is the lead for Creative Commons UK and active in the open knowledge networks around the African diaspora. I've served on Creative Commons Summit's program advisory committee and I'm an active member of the Open GLAM platform. Kelly is currently the Wikimedian-in-Residence on the University of Sussex's Making African Connections, working with museums in England, Sudan and Botswana. Outside of Wikimedia, I'm a London Blue Badge Guide and public historian specialising in Black, working-class and women’s histories of London.
Kelly's term runs until the 2023 AGM.

Monisha Shah

Monisha Shah

Monisha is Chair of Rose Bruford College. She is also the Senior Independent Member (Chair) of the Arts and Humanities Research Council, board member of the Office for Students and a member of the Ofcom Content Board. She serves as a Trustee of the Art Fund, Caterham School and is a lay member of the Queen's Counsel Appointments Panel. In previous roles, she has served as Trustee of the Donmar Warehouse, Tate, Foundling Museum and the National Gallery. She has a professional background in media and intellectual property having worked for 10 years at BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the BBC before stepping down in 2010. In December 2015, Monisha was invited by the Prime Minister to join the Committee on Standards in Public Life. Monisha has a post-graduate degree from SOAS and an executive MBA from the London Business School. In 2010, she was nominated Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

Monisha has been appointed Chair Elect of the board, co-opted July 2021.

Monisha's term runs until July 2023.

Marnie Woodward

Marnie Woodward in the Wikimedia UK office

Marnie has been Treasurer and trustee of Wikimedia UK since September 2018. She is a Chartered Management Accountant, and has been involved in the charity sector as a finance director for most of her professional career, having worked with the Dulwich Picture Gallery, the Mental Health Foundation, the Musicians Benevolent Fund and RPS Rainer among others. Previously she was a trustee and the chair of the Finance and Administration Committee of the Church Urban fund. She brings knowledge and experience of financial and organisational issues across a range of charitable enterprises. Marnie sits on the Audit and Risk Committee.

Marnie’s current co-opted term expires in September 2022.

Email: marnie.woodwardwikimedia.org.uk

Rod Ward

Rod Ward

Rod has been a trustee since July 2019. He is a nurse who worked in the NHS before entering higher education. His teaching and research has related to the use of the internet and open access to knowledge. His first edited Wikipedia in 2004 since which he has made over 200,000 edits and has been the primary author of 50 pieces of featured content.

Rod's term runs until the 2024 AGM.

Duties

Board members are directors of the charity, and trustees. They have certain legal duties and responsibilities, which include:

1. to act only within the powers given to them by the Articles of Association
2. to act in good faith and with integrity to promote the success of the charity in achieving its objects
3. to use the charity's resources reasonably and only for the promotion of its objects
4. to exercise independent judgement and reasonable care, skill and diligence and consider getting external professional advice on all matters where there may be material risk to the charity
5. to avoid conflicts of interest, declare them where necessary in accordance with applicable law and not to accept benefits from third parties where these may give rise to a conflict of interest
6. to avoid undertaking activities that might place the charity's assets or reputation at undue risk, and to ensure that the charity remains solvent.

In addition, trustees are required to ensure that the charity complies with its other legal duties such as those arising from being an employer and its reporting obligations to Companies House, the Charity Commission, and the tax authorities. Trustees are in addition required to comply with the charity's Conflict of Interest Policy.

To be eligible to act as a trustee, you must:

• be member of the charity
• be prepared to publicly disclose your real name, date of birth, and the names of any other companies of which you are a director
• be over the age of 16.

You cannot act as a trustee if you are disqualified under the Charities Act. This includes if you:

• are disqualified as a company director
• have an unspent conviction for an offence involving dishonesty or deception (such as fraud)
• are an undischarged bankrupt (or subject to sequestration in Scotland), or have a current composition or arrangement including an individual voluntary arrangement (IVA) with your creditors
• have been removed as a trustee of any charity by the Charity Commission (or the court) because of misconduct or mismanagement

See also

• Trustee Code of Conduct