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 (elected July 2021, term expires 2024)
- Adrian Beidas - Trustee and Chair of Audit and Risk Committee (elected July 2022, term expires 2025)
- Sangeet Bhullar - Trustee (elected 2019, re-elected 2022; term expires January 2025)
- Mark Cruickshank - Trustee (co-opted April 2022; term expires April 2024)
- Monisha Shah - Chair Elect (co-opted July 2021; renewed July 2023; term expires July 2025)
- Vivian Wineman - Trustee (elected July 2022, term expires July 2025)
- Sammy Fox - Trustee (elected July 2023, term expires 2026)
- Alex Ashby - Trustee (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)
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.
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.
Sangeet'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.
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 co-opted term runs until July 2023.
Vivian Wineman
Vivian went to of City of London School, a Rabbinical College in Israel and then read History and Philosophy at Caius College Cambridge gaining BA and then an MA. More recently, he gained a masters at University College London (Merit) and is currently doing a PhD there.
Subsequently Vivian qualified as a solicitor setting up his own firm, David Wineman, with a partner which they ran for just over 25 years. It grew to be a 10 partner firm until we merged it in 2008.
Vivian has appeared on numerous Radio and Television channels and published various articles on legal topics and topics of Jewish History as well as a book on the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 published by the Estates Gazette. For a number of years he was a Licenced Insolvency Practitioner.
In addition to running his own property investment and development company, Vivian has been an underwriter at Lloyd’s of London since 1984.
In the Jewish community, Vivian was President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and Vice President of the World Jewish Congress until 2015 and Vice President of the European Jewish Congress. From 2007 till 2013, Vivian was Vice Chair of the Inter Faith Network for the United Kingdom and from 2013 till 2016 was the Co-Chair of the Network. He is currently a Trustee of the Council of Christians and Jews and of the Next Century Foundation a track two diplomacy group which is a UN registered NGO. Vivian is president of the Institute of Polish Jewish Studies.
Vivian is married with three children and lives in London. His hobbies include music, skiing, mountain walking and surfing Wikipedia. He is a keen cyclist and has raised money for various charities by participating in cycle challenges including international ones on five different continents.
Vivian’s elected term runs until the 2025 AGM.
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.
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