As others have already said, it will be difficult to see Sue leave the
organization (but not the movement). I thank her for the years of effort
that have gone into first stabilizing and then building the Wikimedia
Foundation. While I don't predict that this transition will be
completely painless (that's okay, it's a good thing), I'm sure that it
will be much less painful than it might have been (that's also a good
thing).
During my time as chair of the Board of Trustees, I had some extended
conversations with Sue about succession planning, partly because this is
something the board always has to be thinking about, and partly because
at that point we would have faced tremendous challenges if Sue were to
leave and we were forced to find a successor. The issue has remained in
the back of my mind ever since. As I have watched the organization
develop, it has been good to observe how she has built the capacities of
those around her, bringing us to a point where I feel much more
comfortable that all of the good work can continue on without her
personal involvement. There's a long list of things Sue has accomplished
as Executive Director, but making an organization capable of surviving
her departure is a critical one.
One of the things I believe we all try to do with the work on our
projects is to leave things - a Wikipedia article, MediaWiki code, the
culture of our movement, everything - in better shape than we found it.
Sue has done that on an organizational scale, and impressively so. For
that, Sue, and all of the other things on which we have worked together,
thank you.
--Michael Snow
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