Board
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The Board is responsible for the strategic governance of the charity. It normally consists of up to 11 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
- Caroline Ball - Trustee and Chair of Community Development Committee (re-elected July 2024, term expires 2027)
- Adrian Beidas - Trustee and Chair of Audit and Risk Committee (elected July 2022, term expires September 2025)
- Mark Cruickshank - Trustee (co-opted April 2022; renewed April 2024, term expires April 2026)
- Sammy Fox - Trustee (elected July 2023, term expires 2026)
- Alex Ashby - Treasurer and Vice-Chair, serving as interim Chair (co-opted September 2023, term expires 2025)
- Sarvesh Ramachandran - Trustee (co-opted September 2023, term expires 2025)
- Monica Westin - Trustee (elected September 2024, term expires 2026)
- Andrew Russell - Trustee (elected September 2024, term expires 2026)
- Lucy Yu - Chair of the Board of trustees (appointed by trustees 18 September 2025)
- Ian Watt - Trustee (elected 27th September 2025, must stand for election September 2027)
- Douglas Scott - Trustee (elected 27th September 2025, must stand for election September 2027)
See also Trustee officer roles.
Biographies
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 elected term runs until the 2024 AGM.
Adrian Beidas
Adrian has supported Wikimedia UK's Audit and Risk committee since March 2021, and joined the board as a trustee in July 2022. He has been working in finance for over two decades, advising many of the UK's largest companies. Prior to his finance career, he earned a Masters in Chemistry at Imperial College. He has acted as a trustee of an educational charity, and as a school governor.
Adrian believes that the Wikimedia projects rank among the greatest achievements of the Information Age, and are an important public utility. He believes the Wikimedia projects' global impact are still in their infancy, and believes that Wikimedia UK can help that potential be fulfilled through further collaboration with our country’s great cultural and educational institutions.
Adrian's elected term runs until the 2025 AGM.
Mark Cruickshank
Mark is a lawyer with over 16 years’ experience in Intellectual Property and copyright, adding value to the Wikimedia UK Board with his legal and advisory skills. He has managed a diverse range of copyright issues, including licences, fair use exemptions and dispute resolution, much of which has related to new and emerging technology. In his role at the Bank, he works closely with strategic partners for which open sourcing and sharing information is a key deliverable. As a member of the Law Society of Scotland’s IP Committee, Mark has also gained experience of creating and influencing policy at national and UK level through drafting responses to requests for evidence and consultations. He therefore has a detailed working knowledge of the benefits of making content available to the public as well as the political and economic challenges that may arise.
Mark has worked with a number of BAME and socially disadvantaged organisations to increase access to the legal profession and has seen first hand the barriers that exist when there is a lack of resources, information and opportunities. He's passionate in helping redress these issues and providing service to an organisation that has open knowledge as one of its main goals.
Mark's co-opted term runs until April 2024.
Sammy Fox
Sammy has been a Wikimedian since 2008, serving on the English Wikipedia and globally across Wikimedia projects in a variety of functionary and governance roles.
Through their work as both a volunteer and a member of Wikimedia Foundation staff, they've worked closely with communities to implement technical solutions to issues they face in building and accessing the sum of all human knowledge.
They have an active interest in fostering closer collaboration between the editing community and the Wikimedia Movement.
Sammy's elected term runs until the 2026 AGM.
Alex Ashby
Alex has been Treasurer and trustee of Wikimedia UK since September 2023. He is a chartered accountant, chartered treasurer and fellow of both the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants and the Association of Corporate Treasurers.
Alex has been a treasurer and finance leader for all his career with over 15 years of experience in the treasury field and has worked in the media, energy, and retail sectors. Alex is a big believer in open knowledge and with the expansion of social media and AI believes Wikimedia UK continues to have a major role to play in growing and preserving this for future generations. He was previously a Trustee of the Stephen Lawrence Day Foundation. Alex also sits on the Audit and Risk Committee.
Alex’s term runs until September 2025.
Sarvesh Ramachandran
Sarvesh is an accomplished business leader with many years of experience leading and advising large and complex international organisations. He is currently the UK head of a listed insurance business, where he is responsible for setting up and scaling the company’s presence in the UK. Prior to his current role, he spent over a decade in management consulting advising clients on strategy, operations and M&A topics. He is a passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion and strongly believes that access to information and education, has the remarkable power to contribute to a more just and equitable society.
In his spare time, he works with various fintech and start-up organisations in an advisory capacity and serves as a Trustee on the board of an educational charity. He studied Financial Strategy at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford and has qualified as a Chartered Certified Accountant.
Sarvesh’s term runs until September 2025.
Monica Westin
Monica Westin is a librarian passionate about Open Access, scholarly search, and the future of fair use/fair dealing. She currently serves as Associate Director, Content and Discovery, at Manchester Metropolitan University Library, where she leads teams of librarians working on collections investment strategies, access & discovery, and digital transformation. With a background in copyright policy, web indexing, digital preservation, and product management, Monica's career spans roles at the Internet Archive, Google Scholar, and the University of California Libraries. Monica is also a member of the Board of Directors for COUNTER Metrics and an active volunteer in various Open Access and scholarly communication membership groups and initiatives.
Monica has been editing Wikipedia since 2014 and organizing Wikipedia edit-a-thons and other events for new editors since 2018. She's particularly interested in strategies to retain new Wikipedia editors and to ensure a welcoming space for all editors.
Monica’s term runs until September 2026.
Andrew Russell
Andrew is a policy, public affairs and communications consultant with over fifteen years of experience advising CEOs, founders and charity leaders on political engagement and thought leadership. He has worked for global brands including McDonald’s and Pearson, and social impact start-ups focused on improving education, skills and health outcomes. Passionate about access to knowledge and respectful dialogue, between 2015 and 2022 he served as a trustee of The Philosophy Foundation, a charity that promotes the teaching and practice of Philosophy across the UK. At present, he is also on the Board of Trustees for Humanists UK.
Andrew’s academic background is in Philosophy and he holds a BA and MA from the University of Cambridge and King’s College London, respectively. In his spare time, he runs two book clubs with a combined membership of over 6,000 readers.
Andrew’s term runs until September 2026.
Lucy Yu
(full profile coming soon)
Ian Watt
Ian has nearly 30 years of experience in technology, data, and public service, with a strong track record in charity governance. He has served on the boards of two charities, one at UK level.
Ian has been an active contributor on Wikipedia and its sister platforms since 2008, with over 143,000 global edits. For the past six years, he has delivered Wikimedia UK training across Scotland and beyond, helping community groups, universities, and cultural organisations to ensure local history, culture and voices are represented online. He also runs his local Wiki Meetup, supporting newcomers and helping build confidence in new editors.
Ian has been an active advocate for open data since 2010, and has led data projects at national scale. Since leaving the public sector, he has been deeply involved in setting up and driving the civic open data movement in Scotland. He has worked with government, cultural and educational institutions on digital access and inclusion. He is passionate about the power of open - whether data, knowledge, software or transparency. He is deeply committed to equity and inclusion and believes in elevating diverse perspectives in open knowledge.
Douglas Scott
I am a long time Wikipedia editor (since 2006) and have been very involved in both online and offline community events in a volunteer capacity since 2011. In that role I have been a director of Wikimedia South Africa for 12 years and was the chapter’s president for 5 of those years. A period that saw the hiring of the chapter's first employee and the establishment of long term partnerships with national entities in higher education to support the growth of multiple African language Wikipedias. In my role as a volunteer organiser I was lead organiser of Wikimania 2018 and a contributing organiser of multiple regional Wiki conferences (Wiki Indaba). I have been the volunteer project lead for over 20 events ranging from multiple Wiki Loves Monuments (and other photographic events), to edit-a-thons and other outreach initiatives. I have also led the chapter's initiative to advocate for Wikipedia friendly copyright legal reform in South Africa since 2014. I now organise a regular Wiki meetup in Edinburgh.
I am passionate about furthering the free knowledge movement by supporting community growth and health. In addition to fostering stronger relationships with the Wiki movement globally.
In my professional life I am the research manager at Campaign Lab. Before that I was a criminologist in Cape Town at the Safety Lab, a South African non-profit organisation focused on innovation to reduce violent crime, where I was the chief research and technology officer.
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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
- to act in good faith and with integrity to promote the success of the charity in achieving its objects
- to use the charity's resources reasonably and only for the promotion of its objects
- 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
- 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
- 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[2]. 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