María Sefidari

María Sefidari Huici (born 1982, Madrid) is the chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees.[1] She was re-elected to the position in August 2019.[2] Sefidari was named a Techweek "Women's Leadership Fellow" in 2014.[3] In 2018, an essay she wrote about the upcoming European copyright reform was widely covered, including by Techcrunch and Boing Boing.[4][5][6]

This article uses Spanish naming customs: the first or paternal family name is Sefidari and the second or maternal family name is Huici.

María Sefidari
Sefidari in 2014
Born
María Sefidari

1982 (age 37–38)
Madrid, Spain
Alma materComplutense University of Madrid
TitleChair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
Board member ofWikimedia Foundation

Wikipedia experience

Sefidari discovered Wikipedia when her little sister explained that it was a website that anyone can edit. "Everything begins," she said in an interview with online newspaper eldiario.es, "when you start to get involved in a topic and spend many hours improving articles, and you see that there are Wikipedia policies that should be changed."[7] Shortly afterwards, she launched Wikiproyecto:LGBT to give visibility to these groups and improve and organize all the contents related to this topic, taking inspiration from English Wikipedia's WikiProject LGBT studies.[7] She has also worked to close Spanish Wikipedia's gender bias.[8][9]

Sefidari is also a founding member of Wikimedia España (WMES), the Spanish chapter of the Wikimedia movement, and she served on its Board as its first Vice President.[10] In 2012, she was elected a member of the Chapters' Committee (ChapCom), the Wikimedia community committee entrusted with advising the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees on the approval of new national or subnational chapters. In mid-2012, following a community discussion and a resulting Board of Trustees' resolution, the scope of the Committee was expanded and it transitioned into the Affiliations Committee (AffCom), and now includes thematic organisations and user groups.

In 2015, she gave a conference on Wikimedia at King Juan Carlos University on their Digital Communication, Culture and Citizenship program.[11] In 2017-1018, she was in charge of the discipline "Communities in Network: Cooperative creation at the Internet", provided by Wikimedia Spain, as part of a master degree on Communication, Culture and Digital Citizenship, at the same university.[12]

Wikimedia Foundation Board

In June 2013, Sefidari was elected to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees by the community of Wikipedia editors. Her term expired in June 2015. In 2016 she was appointed to the Board in fill a vacancy.[1] She was re-elected to the position of Chair in August 2019.[2] In March 2020, Sefidari requested a four month leave from the Board, in preparation for her upcoming maternity, being replaced in the role by Nataliia Tymkiv, as acting Vice-Chair of the board.[13]

Professional career

Sefidari received a Bachelor's Degree in Psychology and a Master's Degree in Management and Tourism from Complutense University of Madrid.[14]

References
  1. "María Sefidari". Wikimedia Foundation. Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved 2 September 2019.
  2. "Wikimedia Foundation announces Shani Evenstein Sigalov as new Trustee, as well as leadership appointments at fifteenth annual Wikimania". Wikimedia Foundation. Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved 29 August 2019.
  3. "Women's Leadership Fellows". Techweek (conference). Retrieved 2 September 2019.
  4. Sefidari, Maria. "Your internet is under threat. Here's why you should care about European Copyright Reform". Medium. Retrieved 15 September 2019.
  5. Lomas, Natasha. "Wikimedia warns EU copyright reform threatens the 'vibrant free web'". Techcrunch. Retrieved 15 September 2019.
  6. Doctorow, Cory. "Wikipedia's warning: EU copyright changes threaten the internet itself". Boing Boing. Retrieved 15 September 2019.
  7. Caballero, Lucía (15 March 2017). "La española que ha llegado a vicepresidir Wikimedia defendiendo al colectivo LGBT" [The Spanish Woman Who Has Become Wikimedia Vice President Defending the LGBT Community]. eldiario.es (in Spanish). Retrieved 15 September 2019.
  8. Puga, Jessica M. (18 October 2016). "Wikipedia se llena de nombres de mujer" [Wikipedia is Filled with Women's Names]. El Comercio (in Spanish). Oviedo. Retrieved 15 September 2019.
  9. Calvo Tarancón, Sara (8 July 2016). "Nosotras creamos, nosotras editamos" [We Create, We Edit]. Público (in Spanish). Madrid. Retrieved 15 September 2019.
  10. Delclós, Tomàs (11 January 2011). "Wikipedia: 10 años y 278 ediciones" [Wikipedia: 10 years and 278 Editions]. El País (in Spanish). Barcelona. Retrieved 15 September 2019.
  11. "Wikimedia: otras formas de colaborar para compartir conocimiento". Medialab Prado. Retrieved 2 September 2019.
  12. King Juan Carlos University. "Table of disciplines on the Masters in Digital Communication, Culture and Citizenship 2017-18" (PDF). Retrieved 8 October 2019.
  13. "Minutes/2020-02 - Wikimedia Foundation Governance Wiki". foundation.wikimedia.org. Retrieved 26 June 2020.
  14. "María Sefidari Huici | Medialab-Prado Madrid". www.medialab-prado.es. Retrieved 26 June 2020.
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