Board

People

Board of Trustees — Committees — Employees — Job openings — Recruitment procedures — Staff Handbook — Operational policies

The Board is responsible for the majority of the day to day running of the chapter and is elected by the membership at the Annual General Meeting. Members of the Board act as Directors of the company and as trustees of the charity. Legal duties and responsibilities of board members are set out below.

Members

The current members were elected at the 2012 AGM:

• Ashley Van Haeften - Chair
• Michael Peel - Secretary
• John Byrne - Treasurer
• Roger Bamkin - Trustee
• Chris Keating - Trustee
• Joscelyn Upendran - Trustee
• Doug Taylor - Trustee

Biographies

Ashley Van Haeften (Fæ)

Fæ

Fae is currently a trustee of Wikimedia UK (since April 2011) with a particular interest in GLAM activities and supports the GLAM movement internationally as well as leading the GLAM UK task force. His main contributions are as an admin on Wikipedia (User:Fæ) but also supports Commons as an OTRS volunteer and trusted user.

Fae has a professional background in managing change and improvement in a number of sectors including Government agencies, utilities, retail and engineering. He used to be a pure mathematician and moved over to management and organizational strategy to "pay the bills".

Email: faewikimedia.org.uk

Michael Peel

Mike Peel

Michael Peel is currently Secretary of Wikimedia UK (since April 2010). He served as Membership Secretary from late 2008 to April 2009, and Chair from April 2009 to April 2010. A graduate and a doctorate student of the University of Manchester, Mike first edited the English Wikipedia in March 2005 and the Wikimedia Commons since July 2006. Like a lot of new editors, he started editing because he was irritated by a few grammatical errors he saw. Since that time, Mike has made over 14,000 edits on the English Wikipedia, and uploaded over 350 photos to Wikimedia Commons. He has been an admin on the English Wikipedia since July 2007. Outside of Wikimedia, Mike is an astrophysicist with knowledge of programming, web design and photography.

Email: michael.peelwikimedia.org.uk

John Byrne

John Byrne

John Byrne is treasurer of Wikimedia UK, and has been since May 2012. He has been editing Wikipedia since October 2006 and mostly edits topics relating to art and art history. A long-standing Wikimedia UK volunteer, he has close links with the British Library, and was instrumental in gaining charity status for Wikimedia UK.

Roger Bamkin

Roger Bamkin

Roger Bamkin is a director and trustee of Wikimedia UK (since April 2011) and an admin on the English Wikipedia (although he has also been active on Commons, Simple and Wikisource). He has written hundreds of articles, but more importantly he has nominated over a hundred articles, by other editors, for Did You Know. In real life he trained as a mechanical engineer, systems analyst and teacher but has also been a partner in a minor software company and chaired I.T. standard committees for the UK. He ran the Backstage Pass event at Derby museums in April 2011 and co-developed QRpedia codes that provide multi-lingual access to Wikipedia via QR codes. He is on the steering group for MonmouthpediA, and has acted as an advocate for Wikimedia UK in Austria, Germany, Israel, Norway and USA since April 2010.

Email: roger.bamkinwikimedia.org.uk

Chris Keating

Chris Keating

Chris Keating is a professional fundraiser, campaigner and long-standing Wikipedia editor. He's an administrator of the English Wikipedia where his contributions range from the article on the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead to the one on the dreadnought battleship. Elected to the Board of Wikimedia UK in April 2011, his main priority is making sure Wikimedia UK communicates well with the Wikimedia community and with our other supporters. He is also taking a lead on the 2011 Fundraiser.

Outside of both work and the Wikiworld, Chris is a keen amateur violinist and an even more amateur photographer. You can find him on Wikipedia as The Land and on Twitter as @chriskeating.

Email: chris.keatingwikimedia.org.uk

Joscelyn Upendran

Joscelyn Upendran

Joscelyn has been a trustee of Wikimedia UK since May 2012. As well as supporting the UK chapter, she is the Public Project Lead at Creative Commons UK, and Founder & CEO of her own company, lovle. She describes herself as "Passionate about accessible learning", and is a lawyer and lecturer specialising in Business Development and Business law. You can find her on Twitter : @Joscelyn

email: Joscelyn.Upendran@Wikimedia.org.uk

Doug Taylor

Doug Taylor is currently a trustee of Wikimedia UK (since May 2012). He edits Wikipedia under the username RexxS.

Previous members

Board members in previous years were:

September 2008 - April 2009:

• Kwan Ting Chan - Chair
• Michael Conn - Communication Officer
• Tom Holden - Treasurer
• Michael Peel - Membership Secretary
• Andrew Turvey - Secretary

2009 - 10

• Michael Peel - Chair
• Andrew Turvey - Secretary
• Tom Holden - Treasurer
• Zeyi He - Initiatives Director
• Joseph Seddon - Events Director
• Steve Virgin - Corporate Relations Director
• Paul Williams - Volunteers Director

Paul Williams resigned as a board member during the year and was replaced by Tom Dalton.

2010 - 11

• Andrew Turvey - Chair
• Michael Peel - Secretary
• Thomas Dalton - Treasurer
• Joseph Seddon - Director (resigned)
• Steve Virgin - Director

2011 - 12

• Roger Bamkin - Chair
• Michael Peel - Secretary
• Andrew Turvey - Treasurer
• Ashley van Haeften - Trustee
• Chris Keating - Trustee
• Martin Poulter - Trustee
• Steve Virgin - Trustee

Duties

Board members 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 chapter in achieving its purposes, with regard, where necessary to long term effects and the interests of employees, the community, the environment, relations with suppliers and customers, standards of business conduct and fair acting between members of the chapter
3. To use the chapter's resources reasonably and only for the promotion of its purposes
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 chapter, or where the board members may be in breach of their duties
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 chapter's assets or reputation at undue risk, ensure that the chapter remains solvent.

In addition, the chapter's Board members are personally required to ensure that the chapter complies with its other legal duties such as those arising from being an employer and its reporting obligations to Companies House and the tax authorities.

To be eligible to act as a Board member, a person must be:

1. A member of the chapter, or nominated by a member
2. 16 years old or over
3. prepared to publicly disclose their real name, date of birth, and the names of any other companies they are the director of. Note that residential addresses are no longer disclosable.
4. not an undischarged bankrupt, a person whose estate has been "sequestrated", who has made an undischarged arrangement with creditors or has granted a trust deed in favour of their creditors
5. not disqualified from acting as a company director or removed as a charity trustee by the Charity Commission, the High Court or the Court of Session (Scotland)
6. not convicted of any offence involving deception or dishonesty which is not a "spent" conviction - even if it was not in the UK