Thank you for the introductions. I appreciate you taking the time to explain
your chapter's thinking behind your hiring in a public venue like this mailing
list.
Many WMF affiliated organizations are expanding so it is helpful to share this
information to encourage discussion about different organizational models.
Sydney Poore
User:FloNight
Member Fund Dissemination Committee
Sent from my iPhone
On Sep 5, 2013, at 10:18 AM, Frédéric Schütz <sch...@mathgen.ch> wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I'm very glad to tell you that Wikimedia CH has just hired two new directors.
> Duc-Ahn Chung will be our new Chief Administrative Officer, starting in
> November, and Charles Andrès, our former president of the board, will be our
> new Chief Science Officer. Read on for more details!
>
> When Chantal Ebongué, our CAO and first employee, told us she was planning to
> leave, we set a recruiting committee to replace her. One of the reasons she
> was leaving was that it was difficult to take care of both administrative
> work and project work -- both because of the high workload, and because these
> two tasks require very different competences. Thus, while drafting the job
> description, the recruiting committee proposed to the board to hire two
> people. This was accepted, and we now have filled these positions.
>
>
> Duc-Anh ("Anh") Chung, our new CAO, originally studied hotel management, and
> worked as project manager in different hotels around the world. She then
> worked as an executive assistant in a start-up company in Geneva, in charge
> of all administrative matters. Since May 2012, she is assistant director in a
> large non-profit organization in Geneva. In this position, she is responsible
> for all administrative matters, and has a wide experience helping a purely
> volunteer organization transform itself into a professional structure.
>
> Among other tasks, Ahn will be in charge of the human resources and the
> finances of our association, including the annual fundraiser and the
> financial side of the FDC application, and will report directly to the board.
> She will start working for Wikimedia CH on 1 November -- just in time for
> the fundraiser :-)
>
>
> Charles Andrès, our new CSO, was originally trained as a biologist; he
> received a Master in Genetics followed by a PhD in Cellular Biology in
> France. Since 2007, he has worked as a senior scientist at the University of
> Neuchâtel, where he is a researcher and lecturer in biology. He is a
> Wikipedian since 2007, board member of Wikimedia CH since 2010 and the
> chairman of the board since June 2012.
>
> Charles will be responsible for all the projects conducted inside our
> association, including both support of individual initiatives (members
> projects) and institutional partnerships, and will be responsible for the
> annual FDC application. Among other projects, he will oversee our GLAM
> activities, as well as the development of our education program. He will
> report directly to the board. Charles has started working part-time as CSO on
> 1 September (just in time for the preparation of the FDC application :-), and
> will join us full time in early October.
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------
> The choice of a Chief Science Officer (CSO) position
>
> The decision to create a CSO position stems from the fact that many of our
> efforts (current and planned) are focused on "scientific" projects; by this
> we mean not only that we have established many collaborations with academic
> institutions, but also that we intend to drive our projects using a
> scientific approach, as a tool to improve quality. We have received very good
> feedback on this from many people in the Wikimedia community.
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> The choice of two directors rather than one executive director
>
> In our current structure and given our level of development, the board still
> takes care of many tasks traditionally in the hands of an executive director.
> The choice of hiring two directors, each with well-defined areas of
> competences, working closely together and with the board, was deemed the best
> solution (note that despite the title of "directors", they will not simply
> delegate the day-to-day work to other employees, but will actually perform
> most of it).
>
> This solution fits well with the Swiss culture, as even the Federal
> government is organized following such a collegial structure
> (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Council_%28Switzerland%29 ).
>
> We are also glad to have been able to make a balanced hiring: not only have
> we hired one man and one woman, but we have one director who knows the
> Wikimedia movement very well, and another one who will bring a fresh pair of
> eyes. Unfortunately, we have not been able to find a balance between the
> different languages spoken in Switzerland, as we hired two native French
> speakers, but we have made sure that our staff can cover adequately the
> different language communities in the country.
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> Governance and management of potential conflicts of interests
>
> At the time when Chantal left, Charles Andrès had indicated an interest in a
> potential position within the Wikimedia movement. As such, he was not part of
> the recruiting committee who suggested the creation of a CSO position and did
> not participate to the board discussion that approved this position. He did
> not participate either to any of the discussions that took place afterwards
> during the hiring process for both positions, until the final choice made by
> the rest of the board, and resigned immediately after being told he was
> chosen. During the process, we received the advice of Dominique Freymond, a
> widely-recognized Swiss expert in governance
> (http://www.mas-ltd.ch/index.php?page=97), who helped us eliminate possible
> conflicts of interests. In particular, it was determined that our president
> did not have to resign during the selection process.
>
> The main people taking part in the recruiting committee were Chantal Ebongué,
> Ilario Valdelli and Frédéric Schütz, who followed the entire process. Several
> other people from the board, the staff, our members and external people were
> involved at one step or another, commenting on the process or the
> applications and participating to the interviews.
>
>
> ----------------
> Board transition
>
> The board has chosen current board member Patrick Kenel as president of the
> board ad interim, and Frédéric Schütz as vice-president ad interim. The
> current priority goes to the upcoming FDC application and the annual
> fundraiser; the organization of these activities does not depend on the
> transition, and so will not be affected in any way.
>
> The next general assembly is planned on 22 March 2014, and a new president
> will be elected at that time.
>
> Before finishing this long email, I would like to thank Chantal Ebongué again
> for the huge work she did while working with us, and for her collaboration
> within the hiring committee.
>
> Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions!
>
> Frédéric
> Board member of Wikimedia CH, in the name of the core of the recruiting
> committee: Chantal Ebongué, Ilario Valdelli and Frédéric Schütz
>
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