 Alright, welcome, welcome to this office, how to the community resilience and sustainability office hour. I'm handing over directly to Maggie. Hello everybody thanks for joining us and zoom and online. I'm not going to say a whole lot. In fact, because I'm nervous and I forgot what I was going to say, but I will be introducing the people who are joining me today. First, I am the Vice President of Community Resilience and Sustainability at the Foundation, my teams are in charge of trust and safety. There's been strategy support, board governance selection support, human rights and community development. Today we are being joined by two members of the transition team who are steering the foundation as we work to find a new ED or CEO I've forgotten what we call that. And Amanda Keaton our general counsel is here I may Villa Gomez our chief financial officer will be here in a minute. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I was able to join us wonderful Robin. She is our chief of talent and culture, which is encompasses HR, human rights, no, human resources, sorry HR means something different to me, and the development of staff. We also have several board members with us, although I'm not sure who is joining us but I imagine we will find out as we go. I just want to remind everybody who is in this meeting that this one is perhaps a little different than some that we've done before it is being live broadcast on YouTube and it will be up on YouTube for all time. So if you come off Mike and on camera, you'll be captured for all of time so please do keep that in mind if you're uncomfortable in the zoom space with being broadcast in that way you can type questions and they will be taken in order and I will pass it off to Jackie to tell you a little bit about the process. Hi everyone thanks for joining us. I am Jackie Kerner, I am a facilitator with movement strategy and governance. And there will be commit questions that can be submitted. My, my co pilot here taco. We have questions that were submitted beforehand through the email. So thank you everyone who's done that. I do accept questions via YouTube. I believe Cornelius do we have someone watching telegram as well. Okay, well Cornelius is watching telegram so great. We're a team of many talents. So your questions can be addressed. We're going to be addressing the ones that were sent beforehand as well so that we recognize attending a meeting, especially during a weekday for some and so we want to take consideration for those questions or submit beforehand as well, as well as people who were in the room so we will be going between the two. We have interpretation as was said available today in German, French, Spanish and Arabic. If you want to listen to the interpretation. You have in the zoom session go down to the globe icon at the bottom of the zoom window, click that, and you may select your chosen language. Please, as well speak slowly. If you do take the mic, and this is something I will try to remember as well, because live translation is something I am certainly not capable of doing and I definitely appreciate the people who are able to do that for us today. As well as people who might be speaking English as their second language. Our colleagues are doing this so please be patient. This is a first time experiment for them. So thank you for joining us on this experiment. Go ahead and pass over to Amanda to start us off, and we will then monitor the additional channels for questions, and we'll begin with questions. So Amanda. Jackie thank you so much and thank you so much to the staff who pulled this together on short notice, because of the importance of this topic, and our desire to be in conversation as soon as possible. I just want to let you know I'm incredibly nervous. This is definitely not the circumstances under which I would have picked to meet many of you, names that I've seen, often on mailing lists. And, you know, here and there scattered around our movement work. So I just want to be really honest about the circumstances and the fact that I'm a little nervous. At the same time, my goals today are simply to show up, explain how we got here, and explain how we would like to move forward and then really listen to the concerns that many have shared very eloquently in in the postings, but also wanted to make a space, if anybody else wanted to share some of their concerns that maybe hasn't weighed in on the mailing list as well. So I'll, I'll share shortly, just the facts and circumstances leading up to this. This is obviously a moment of tremendous change for the foundation, and that is compounded by this pandemic moment that we are living together through as a world. So there have been, you know, some enormous challenges handed our way and of course many opportunities for us to move forward in our work together. So the first thing that I want to mention and remind folks is that I am the lawyer, the general counsel for the foundation. And so there are many aspects of the facts and circumstances that I can't share 100% currently. And the way that I square that from a values perspective in addition to my professional responsibility is just that we also hold privacy, you know, to be a key movement value. And so when we're discussing the facts and circumstances of the individuals involved here, I want to be respectful to that too. And so I just thought I would take a minute to mention that I have that professional responsibility, and also that I am trying to balance those two movements and foundation, guiding principles or values of transparency on the one hand, and on the other. So I've gone back over my work. It has been on on repeat in my head. And I wanted to share a little bit about how we got here from my perspective. So I can assure you, as I mentioned, this idea of Maria's transparency started with a key business need in response to the transition committee, asking us what we needed in order to stabilize the organization, and make sure to come out of this moment as strong as possible, especially given the high stakes with strategy recommendations being so mature, and also us being fairly well into the process of board governance reform. As I undertook the analysis of the business need. I did try to consider the kind of skills and expertise that we needed. And I also consulted with our conflict of interest policy. And so I really tried to follow that I consulted about 30 people with this idea to both understand the need, and potentially the relevant skills and expertise that I was curious if Maria might uniquely bring to this role. That's the process that I undertook, you know, in order to get here. I did follow the law from a US perspective as a US nonprofit. I also followed our written policies. Now since then there have been two really good points that I don't want to gloss over and I really want to lift up and say thank you to the people who have raised them. Number one, the appearance of this and the timing looks quite suspicious. And I hear you and I just want to say that I am coming to understand how deeply this can hit people from a feeling and an emotional perspective, given our volunteer ethos. And so I continue to really learn about the appearance of this from that perspective. Second, I also understand that there is not a level playing field, because many of our affiliates have been held to different standards. As a result of really a sort of peculiar application of US law which I want to spend just one minute unpacking for you. From a US law perspective, we have duties as a public charity of 501 C3 public charity, and that's to have the right policies and practices and praise. And we do from a US law perspective. We also have a separate set of obligations as a grand tour of funds from the US to other movement entities. And so in certain cases, we have made recommendations to our affiliate chapters on how to comply with those from the perspective of being a grand tour. Now, putting all of that aside for a minute. It does make a lot of sense to me and it deeply resonates that we should actually be holding ourselves to the same standard as our movement affiliate partners chapters and user groups. So I want to share you that we will take a look at and update the conflict of interest policy. And we will publish that back to the community for a rich community discussion to make sure that there isn't other advice that I may have missed, or that my team may have missed as we update that policy. Another curiosity that I have is whether we can take another fresh look at our grant making agreement. And again, ensure that there's consistency between what we're asking from our US legal perspective, our grantees, our partners, the affiliates, chapters and user groups and our movements, and the things that we commit to do ourselves. I want to just say, I've spoken with Maria, I've spoken again with all of the 30 people that I consulted to get to this moment. And had we known upfront that there was a difference in the way that affiliates were being asked to conduct themselves and manage conflicts of interest, we wouldn't have entered into this arrangement in the first place. And number two, there is willingness to undo this actually walk away from the contract, given these concerns that have been raised and the relative sense of unfairness that has been experienced. We are also willing to put this on a pause. You know, and wait for a cooling period. I understand that some affiliates may have a six month cooling period. Some affiliates may have a 12 month cooling period, and we would be open to your thoughts. And finally, I'll just say, I'm sorry for how we got here. And I will be more careful in the path in the future, excuse me, about how I manage conflicts of interest, including in this exceptional moment where I'm wearing multiple hats, both as a business owner from the perspective of the organization team, and also as the general council, who has the responsibility to ensure that we move forward, and that doing the right thing is always the most important consideration for the foundation and our movement. So with that I want to make sure to get to questions, but I wanted to give just a little bit of context from my perspective around how we got here. And I also wanted to say, thank you so much to all the people who have raised concerns, who have come transparently forward and shared with me additional information that I didn't have so that I can improve our policies and improve the way that we are working together, which is my highest aim. Thank you Amanda for that. And I appreciate everyone's willingness to come to this conversation and join together. So let's begin with some of the questions that we had submitted ahead of time. Let me just one additional but let me come back to that one let me pull one that speaks directly to the theme that seems to have encouraged this conversation. So let me bring this one up because this actually ties directly into what Amanda was speaking about just now. Conflict of interest policies exist to protect organizations and ensure confidence and decision making. What changes should be made to this policy to address conflict of interest concerns. That's a great question. Thank you for asking it so pointedly Jackie I really appreciate it. So number one, I'm going to freely admit that we need to take another look at this I believe the last time there was a complete overhaul of the conflict of interest policy was in 2014. So we want to make sure to evolve it to be current with us law and make sure just take another look at case law and ensure that we really are embodying the best practices that that US law currently requires. Second, we want to make sure that we harmonize this with any additional expectations that may have been placed formally or informally on our affiliates chapters user groups again our biggest partners. And third, I want to say just taking one step back from it. A big lesson, a painful lesson that I learned from this is the importance of the appearance of, or the perception of conflicts of interest. Now, I'm trying to be generous in myself to help me get through this. But I also really deeply understand the need, especially given the erosion of trust in basic and fundamental institutions. Over the past 20 years, I understand the need for us to take conflicts of interest, extremely seriously, and go far above just the black letter confines of the law. So we will be doing that. And we will also be publishing our work and trying to ensure in a collaborative way with our communities that we are really holding ourselves to that high standard that I think we all want to embody, because of the importance of and the nature of our fundamental work. This is not a moment when we can negotiate or be freewheeling with the moral authority that the free knowledge movement both requires and deserves. And I want to let you know that I'm not shying away from that. But I also want to let you know that I'll need your help in order to get this right. And so I think it's going to be a really rich, boisterous, lively discussion. Hopefully one that sparks a little bit less cortisol than I've had in my blood over the last six days. I'd like to do this in a really collaborative manner and hopefully in one that they can heal this rift that I may have caused or widened in this moment. I hope that answers the question. There's actually a follow up piece I did break this one up. This might not be one that you'd be able to answer given what you said being having to go back to look and ask what policies and practices will be put into place about board members accepting staff positions. And at this point, the only I want to be really clear, I'm imagining that we're going to end up with a cooling off period. It seems very much that the staff that I've consulted as well as the board members, in addition to Maria herself, really the cooling off period is is the embodiment of the movements ideals. And again, probably in the context of our work, a best practice. I'm hesitant to say that and commit to that today, because I want to make sure that we have a conversation about it. And more than anything, I want to harmonize the practices across the entities in our movement so that they're fair. That's the most important thing. One thing that's coming to mind right now is that I reached out to Jimmy I reached out to many trustees almost almost all of them actually, as well as all the staff members about 20 or so that I that I consulted with. And Jimmy cautioned me in this way that both, but he does believe that there should be a cooling period, but that there probably should also be a clear basis for exceptions. I don't want an exception for Wikimedia Foundation only, I would only want to allow exceptions if those exceptions could be used by any of our partners in the movement, if the facts and circumstances required it. So that's why I'm being a bit cagey about saying yes absolutely cooling off period. And those kind of things because I want to do this in a moment. That is less reactive, and that is more responsive and thoughtful, both to the requirements of the law to the evolved best practices since the last time that we did this, and in respect to the harmonization that should occur with the other entities in our movement. So those are the considerations that I'm trying to balance, which is why I don't have it written and ready to go today. I also will be very candid that we are in the middle of a transition and there are many aspects to attend to. So despite the fact that I have been working a lot in the last six days, I didn't actually have time to put a draft together in partnership with my team. So that's hopefully a little bit more about the specifics that we're considering at this moment. Thank you for that response. I'm going to go ahead and to go to another question. This might be a little contextually different says how are consultants selected. And I know consultants can have a different meaning depending on the audience so I know that the meaning of consultants is different for folks in the UK and you versus folks who are in the US so this question so how are consultants and advisors that might be a better word, the consultants selected. Do you advertise, why or why not. Yeah, that's great I can take this one to, and of course Jaime or Robin or any of the board members if you if you feel like I've answered and sufficiently or want to clarify anything please do. So it depends on the specific facts and circumstances in this case we wanted somebody. Just like a soft said it is a contract based paid role, and it is meant to advise both on governance matters, as well as on the movement strategy implementation. I think there actually was another question that came in around whether or not we'd be willing to publish the scope of work and I think we can share that the specific pieces of this of this role to help it a little bit better. And I do understand that risk or was, or and I don't know what you like to go by and in these settings did clarify that advisor can often mean unpaid, so I don't want to shy away from or be unclear that this was a paid role. I think that some of the confusion as well has to do with the perception of consultants I know that it can mean very different things in in in settings where some consultants are potentially not as active or involved of a role and it's it's viewed as a situation where someone might be getting benefit from a situation that's beyond their expertise or experience or the benefit that the organization is receiving so I think that that might be some of the confusion as well that I've, seen from from some of the community conversation. So thank you risker for bringing that question question forward. And thanks to whoever submitted the question in the email, clarifying that I just want to do a quick pulse check, could the interpreters tell us if we are speaking slowly enough us native English speakers please just give us something in the chat please. And I'll go ahead and go to the next question here. This one. See, what would you say to people who are concerned about the timeline of Maria stepping down from the board and accepting this role. Yeah. I'm sorry is the first thing that I would say I do get how this looks. And for that, I don't have any other response, really than just that that I'm sorry that this transition is delicate. Again, I have to say I can't share all of the confidential details about the transitions that we've gone through. I will say, and I want to go, you know specifically on the record on this. The three trustees who are not in favor of holding over the three trustee terms last year that we held over for the pandemic are the ones who are in those seats currently. Marius James and Maria were really concerned about holding over their elections, and had all planned, either to potentially run again, or in Maria's case actually to get off of the board after seven years of service. And so, you know, in looking at this year realizing we were in the middle of a pandemic, our movement brand project was in a very challenging place. We had committed to the universal code of conduct and we knew that that was going to be an extraordinary moment for our entire movement. We also knew that the 20th birthday was coming up, and there were several executive transitions that were already being contemplated. So in light of all of that, we really thought that the consistency of these board members at this time. In addition to the fact that community members and staff members did not have the additional capacity to help with this election led to the moment of really holding these people over. So, Maria had been looking to step back for quite some time, but really wanted to commit to get us all the way through the many things that we had planned for this year, especially, and perhaps catalyzed by the pandemic that started 16 months ago. So, while I understand that there are concerns about the timeline, I once again want to assure you that we followed the letter of the conflict of interest policy as closely as possible. And I'm really, I'm really sad that the appearance of this contract, as well as the fact that there was different guidance that was given to our affiliate chapters and user groups, our partners was different. So I do understand that there was a concern from that perspective. I hope that that gives a little bit of a help in terms of the timeline. During all of that work, we continue to assess the organizational needs and the kind of competencies resources and support that could be most helpful in positioning, not only the foundation as strongly as possible, but also that could be helpful for the movement, especially given that it's this exciting moment for our entire movement, where many aspects of movement strategy are now ready to be implemented. I hope that helps. I'm happy to go deeper but I realized that there are a lot of questions, and I've been talking quite a bit. Thank you for that. And thank you, Dennis for speaking that out in the chat. For those of us who are native English speakers. If we could try to break our sentences down into smaller segments that would be helpful for for the folks who are translating so thank you for that. I'll take a little bit to a question that was brought up. Some believe that while on the board, Maria influenced the outcome of a trust and safety case to the advantage of her personal connections. How can we know that is not part of the pattern. Maggie, do you want to take this one. I spoke to this at fair length on the mailing list and would prefer not to go through all that again, but I will say that it is not true that Maria or any other board member has influenced a trust and safety case in this way. Trust and safety cases are reviewed by our staff and then executives and the board are seldom even made aware that a case is going on unless there is specific and special need. I'm cautious of going too deep into this if there are further questions I would prefer to follow up elsewhere and leave space for other people to talk but I do hope that this reassures people, at least somewhat. Great Maggie thank you for that. And us asked. I would like to know why this position was not advertised. Maybe other skilled people without a conflict of interest could have accepted the role. That's fair. And I think we need this is another practice that we need to take a look at. At the same time. I believe that, given the nature of this role. Maria was actually uniquely positioned to do this work and let me explain a couple of reasons why. First of all, given the multiple situations that I mentioned in my previous answer. The board has taken and spent a lot of time on its board work over the last 16 months punctuated by the pandemic. Second, there was a lot of action just as a reminder. There was a lot of challenge with the brand project. Second, there was the actual universal code of conduct that we started. Third, we really engage deeply in board governance reform, specifically to add more trustees because we realized that the time commitment for each trustee is so great. I estimate that over the past year for the chair and vice chair, it's been anywhere from 10 to 30 hours per week per week. So this has been an exceptional moment. Given that, and I know that this is this is the same problem that many of our amazing volunteers have on wiki. There hasn't been a lot of time to document some of these practices. And so ironically, to avoid a situation like this, where we were unaware of past practices and past precedents. It was really important to me to write this down. I thought Maria in particular would be really helpful at codifying all of this and preparing us for the new board members that we're going to have as we live into the board governance reform and the recent expansion. And with that addition to that, the movement strategy, knowing that we lost from the foundation's perspective, that that leader, you know, Catherine's brilliant vision, and so much of her hard work, and her tenacity. You know, we didn't have as directly. And so I was looking for somebody who could help steady that ship. And I asked you why I am so excited to get to a movement charter, and a global council, so that we can very clearly describe the systems, the processes, the structures, and the roles and responsibilities of our movement, as well as the foundation. Because in this moment, I am very scared that we are going to be bycatch in regulators sort of additional laws that they're going to try to pass. And I'm worried that our community system of content moderation could potentially get implicated by some of the upcoming public policy discussions that are happening now. So the importance for me as general counsel and literally with the exception of the last six days. The only thing that keeps me awake at night is that something will actually happen that erodes our ability to put all of the editorial decisions firmly in the hands of our community of contributors. And I think the biggest promise to move us forward as a movement and allow us to come through this moment unscathed and protect free knowledge as we do it exists in implementing the movement strategy. In particular, the movement charter and the global council. So I was looking for those two things, in particular, in response to the transition committee, asking the transition team, me, Jaime, and Robin, what kind of additional support we needed. And so I ended up really reflecting that it was almost, I hate to use this word because it's loaded, but almost a unicorn roll. And so it felt like, given the fact that Maria had been wanting to step down for nearly 12 months, once she actually did, and she got us through the very last meeting of the fiscal year. It would be a good time to actually keep those skills, keep that knowledge in the movement and position us as strongly in partnership to move forward as possible, because let's face it, we are unique. But again, I did not have all the facts and circumstances at hand in making this decision and I want to be very clear that I think, even though it is my feeling my belief. And again, in consultation with about 30 other people that Maria is uniquely suited and qualified for this role. There still could have been, and very possibly will be a different answer in terms of how we move forward, because it is important for us to be fair. I am very sorry about all my sentences during that answer. I could not figure out how to make them shorter. I am a little nervous. I appreciate I want to express the appreciation for everyone to to be cognizant and thank you Amanda for trying to be cognizant of that I know it's very hard speaking openly in this way and especially this this environment and this is something new we are trying so thank you so much for for trying this with us. I'm going to mix this up a little bit and break this up so I see Christoph you had your hand up in the room so I will encourage you to speak and be concise please, because we do have the questions that were submitted in the room, so please. Thank you, I have a quick question to better understand the process in your email you said you had the first discussion about the transition from Maria a few months ago from from everything you said I would say it was earlier this year. So, like, January or February right. Okay, so I have two follow ups and that the first one is that I'm very surprised you're saying that there was no conflict of interest where there is a resolution from the board. Regarding the budget for the next year, where that region specifically says that the focus for the foundation is governance and strategy, which creates the room in budget and energy to a role like Maria's and she voted and approved that resolution. So she's a designated person and do this was the resolution that was impacted a role in the future, so to me they're clearly he's a conflict of interest there, because the discussion started before the discussion that decision. So the resolution happened after the beginning of the discussion. So it was a known potential conflict interest. There was no requisition there was an approval and the resultant that she is eliminated so I'm a bit surprised when you say there is no conflict of interest, even by the policy. Thanks Christoph I appreciate your follow up question. I'll tell you from my perspective, we did. We did vote in that but first of all we don't we don't present the budget to the board of trustees at the level of individual staff members, and certainly not have individual consultants. If you actually present it by thematic area will be rolling that out next month for conversation with our communities and I'm actually really excited because we've taken a bit of a different approach. Hopefully to demystify some of the work that we want to do, but putting that aside for one second. We did approve an amount in the budget that would be for consulting help. At the same time, we did not hardwire that this was definitely going to be Maria, and just to put a finer point on that, if we're not able to move forward with Maria as a result of this discussion today. And then what we will do is we will be hiring additional capacity and support, probably in the form of multiple positions to be honest, because it's very likely that we won't find the sort of one unicorn candidate that I mentioned. There are resources in the budget, they were not earmarked for a particular person, and they were not presented at that level to the board of trustees. So, from my view, again, I still followed the conflict of interest policy. At the same time, I'm just going to say that I will take your question and the consideration that you've put forward. I'm not going to be able to reflect on it. I'm not going to be able to do that in the context of this meeting because I'm still fairly nervous. And so it's just, it's not going to happen in this, in this moment for me. But I'd love to further consider that and ensure that as I move forward. Again, I can be an exemplar of the kind of ethics and the kind of the kind of commitment to doing the right thing that I think we all want. I hear you and I'm sorry I'm putting up on that and taking more time in this promise I stop after that. I'm not to talk a lot to wait too much. I understand what you were meaning. First, I just be reassured I do know how the budget making an approval works at the foundation I've been there quite a few times. And then what you're saying I'm just saying that in the spirit of the coffin of tears, it's opening up a wide range of possibilities that are not good. And second is that back then we were not in that transition period we were not in a situation where we are off of the servers living and we were in a situation where in that context of that process, we had discrepancies on the different people telling the story on when the discussion started and how it went. And that by email and even today by all we had even other timeline and dates. And so it is important for me to address that that situation and I made said that my email is not about Maria. I'm a great consultant and I'm going to trust anyone that thinks she should be hired in that position. It's not my role to judge that. However, as a part of that movement. It is my role of you did be concerned about the situation and on things that are even though seemingly disconnected pining up on something that looks like a deeper issue. The situation is so high that's the off of the sweet that has been leaving in the foundation in a few months and so on. And so I just want to point out and make it clear that first it's not about Maria as a person and for me it it's about the process is about all things are going on and it's about the shred of events suite of events that build up to a situation where right now, even for me and I was chair of the foundation for two years. It is hard to read how it's going and it's about trust in the situation and just want to waste that. Thank you for voicing that I appreciate that. And I believe Maggie wants to speak to timelines. Yeah, just briefly. And also, well, no, I'll just get straight into the timeline several people have reached out to me to say that the time that I talked about this with Amanda seems inconsistent with the time that Amanda talked to this about the board. I would just like to say, I don't actually join in the board meetings, and I do not know what conversations Amanda had with the board about a potential role for Maria when in terms of board governance. I only took on movement strategy with my team after Ryan departed the foundation our chief of staff, and my looking around for the support that I needed was independent of any other conversations that might have been going on. So I contributed to any confusion, but I can only speak for the timeline that I myself was part of in my emails. Okay, great. And I just want to give a moment, Jaime, do you want to speak to the budgeting process for a moment or that was that was me the one thing that I was pointing out to Christophe was because he was a member of the board several years before and Robin was our Amanda was not yet here that he may have had a misunderstanding of the way budgets were defined and how they've evolved in recent years, but I think that Amanda described it very clearly. I would agree with that. Yes, thank you. Thank you, Maggie. Yeah, and the conversations I put this in chat but just to make sure the conversations were ongoing. I want to be clear about that. I have a couple more answers on that. I'm going to go ahead and move to one of the questions that was submitted in the chat. Thank you. Was the contract to hire Maria as a consultant equivalent to other ones that have been considered at the community foundation in the past. Yes, we did both consider market comparability as well as other consultants doing similar work in arriving at Maria's rate of pay for this consulting contract. Another follow up question to this is how many hours is this consultancy. That was another question that was raised. No minimum, and it is up to 40 40 hours per week as needed. And Amanda, you may have addressed this earlier in the conversation. But this has been asked, what additional steps can the with media foundation leadership take to understand how the with media foundation as an entity interacts with affiliates and other policy areas. Great question. I'm going to be really honest, but you know, first, I think we need to look at our conflict of interest policy. Second, we need to look at our grant agreements with affiliates. Third, we need to look at our process for documenting how we engage with our affiliate partners. So if we need to do an internal governance review, and my view, especially in light of this situation is that we want to update our own policies, so that we can be extremely proud of and confident that we are reflecting not only any changes in the law, but even best practices and harmonizing them across the other movement entities with our affiliates, our chapters, and our user groups. So those are a few of the concrete steps that will take. In addition to that, not a concrete policy change, but practically, my role on the transition team and the fact that I met Robin and I are responsible for business decisions to the extent that I am involved in making a business decision where there is a possible potential, or even simply a perceived conflict of interest, I will be seeking the advice of one of my other lawyers to ensure that I don't, that I don't have any cognitive dissonance between my role as a business owner, and a member of the transition team, as well as my role as general counsel. So that's one of the additional practices that I'll be implementing as a result as well. Thank you for that. We're going to go ahead and pivot to some of the other questions that were submitted. Now these have to do more with the transition for the CEO and the C team. So on more general transition, will the Wikimedia Foundation be significantly progressing to fill C suite roles prior to finding a new as executive director. That's a great question. So the one that is like least. We will move forward with filling the chief technology officer. We are also undertaking this moment to really explore and understand what's best in service of the organization as some of the needs have evolved. And that that will be happening and moving forward here. At the same time, we understand, for example, that a chief creative or chief communications officer, as well as chief operating officer and a chief of staff can often be built in different ways to complement the specific skills, experience, expertise, and ultimately the strategy and the vision of the new CEO. So we are very likely to hold those three roles open. Thank you for that. Now, could you go into a bit more about the timeline for finding the CEO ED that was directly asked in this, in this chat as well. Great, I think I have some members of the transition committee on the line. So, I can answer that. Oh, wonderful. I'm just going to have my video just for a little bit. It's my internet is acting up if I'm in video too long, but hi, I'm Robin, chief of talent and culture. We are moving forward with the CEO candidates, we're getting a lot of engagement and a lot of interviews ongoing. There has been a first round with our board transition committee, and we're progressing into the next round with the C team. So we are we are continually progressing so fingers crossed it does it seems very optimistic very hopeful that it won't take way too long than than we expected. Robin, I just want to invite you transparently. If I have misrepresented anything with respect to the other C level positions. I would love to correct it here. I know that you're closer to that and I probably should have let you answer but for those who don't know it's Robin's birthday and she was not made to be on this call, but she is actually calling in really out of support for all of us. And so apologies, I should have let you answer that so if you want to totally fine. That's totally fine. Thank you. Yes. At the moment we are in discussions with the board transition committee on whether to backfill backfill these roles in the short term, or, or perhaps wait for the incoming CEO to make the hiring decision. We will be proactive in updating all of you with information. Right now we feel that the teams are in really good hands. We have three vice presidents in the technology department, all coalescing and aligning as a transition group for the technology department. And then we've got a new show who will be taking on interim duties as Heather departs for the communication communications role so we feel quite strongly that there is very good leadership there. Grant's first few weeks really focused on ensuring that he's got very strong leadership layers as proven so we're feeling really strongly that there is good leadership, strong support, all of us current C team, really leaning in and supporting these two departments as well and so we will keep you posted on on whether the backfill will will will be soon but I but I would like to continue an evaluation with with the board transition committee support. I thank you for that Robin and happy birthday. Thanks for joining us. I think that's in the queue Jackie, and I just want to, we only have seven minutes. Oh, yes, yes, please. Hello, everyone. So that Hector asked a question about whether and how the board was involved in Maria's role, and whether we recused like any of us recused. The board does not pass any resolutions on hiring individual contractors. We also do not hire staff members. Basically, only employee is CEO or ED. Everybody else is not in direct like not directly responsible to us and then not directly report to us. So, because of the nature of the need of needing somebody who is kind of like a unicorn. We can totally disagree on how many unicorns we actually have in the movement, but there was one. And because of that nature, this need was actually brought up to us very broadly in the role is going to be of Maria as chair is going to end soon. I think about the need or whether it is possible to approach and, you know, feel the needs in identified fields with her expertise, but in another capacity, not as a volunteer, not when you know we are taking away her time from her family and everything else, I don't know, I live in Wikipedia, but in another role. So, the idea brought up by the staff to us was discussed again broadly, very broadly, like, would it be something possible to do. Yes, was the answer from the board. And it's not as if the details of the scope, because again, if I'm real left no one was able to talk or to envision or to discuss with her the exact scope or the market price or when it's going to start so neither of the details were discussed, the conversation was about the idea. And at that, there was no real conflict of interest, at least, it was not envisioned and seen by us, there was a conflict of interest, because there was nothing concrete in the air. The offer, for example, her term ends, and the staff just cannot come up with a good offer, or she would not accept it. Or, you know, all other kind of things. So, no, it was not seen, at least by us as a conflict of interest, I can tell you, then, I myself know of the current of period only applied towards government, government employees. For me, this was like a very novel idea that the Community Foundation was actually asking affiliates about that. And I'm sure that other people also didn't think about that in those regards. But the short answer to your question is no, because of what I described. I think I finished. Thank you, Nat, for that. I appreciate you speaking up and thank you, Amanda, for letting me know that Nat was in the queue. Sometimes it's hard to keep track. And I just want to speak to this. I see, I see you, what your question here, Pharros. The focus of the conflict of interest has been on Maria, which is unfair to her. Has there been thought given to the power and financial imbalance between the staff and the board. And if you feel that we have not addressed that please, please note in the chat, or if anyone wants to speak any further to that. Any additional questions that are provided here in the chat. Certainly, we're willing to send response, if follow up is needed. Yes, we only have three minutes and I am just really curious, given what folks on this call no, I was actually hoping to get some guidance. I'll need to make a decision on this today. I don't want to prolong this. Maria is very willing to walk away. We are willing to walk away. We want to do the right thing here. I'm, I'm, I'm curious if there's any guidance around how you would like us to proceed. You know, given that you don't have all of the facts and circumstances but you know we have tried to be transparent, while also respecting people's privacy and confidentiality. Oh, no, no, please. The land I saw you said something relating to that in the chat. Did you want to take a moment to speak to that briefly as we only have two minutes. Yes, have you got me. We can hear you. Yes. I think, given where we are, I don't think it's, I don't think it's plausible to continue in the way that that you were planning to this time last week. I mean, I welcome virtually all of what Amanda's saying, and lots of it sounds like exactly the kind of progress that the WMF tries to make, should make. But I, I don't think that's mitigates the issues with continuing with the plan that you've got. And also, I think you can, you can probably do more with the strategy process. Given the team you've got, then I think some people think. Darius, I see you have your hand raised in the chat. Yeah, I just want to go for some context, I think it is very clear, we should avoid a situation when different entities in the movement have different rules. It's, it's unreasonable we didn't know this is so and doesn't make any sense. We definitely don't want the situation in which any trustee lands themselves a position you know, get something they've been dreaming to a dream job basically you know make a lot of money it's definitely something we should avoid at all costs but this is not exactly what I think was happening at all I think the sentiment that was given was basically that given Maria's unique position, and giving the amount of work that is needed, it would be basically exploitative. Somebody who is a volunteer who has been doing what they've been doing for the moment for a long time is uniquely positioned to help us out. Assumption was it would not be fair to ask them to do it on a longer basis. To the extent that it's needed. And I think, of course, we should have discussed it differently. Definitely we should have approached it more but we were in a very suboptimal situation. We, we, our CEO moved on, our chief of staff moved on. We are in a very particular movement with a strategy, waiting for another year or six months or a year and whatnot. In theory it's really great but we need to move on right now so that's what this is a context that I think we've been operating in. We all knew it was suboptimal, it was not good. But I think the decision was made to optimize for for the movement's benefit and that's that's why I saw it. Thank you for that. I just want to grab I see we're at time but knows back there. Could you briefly speak for just maybe 60 seconds. Okay, I've written a song in zoom chat but for general one. I think calling off periods vary depending on what the role was. Had this been say pose the community one before the role was decided, it could be possible that this was an exception. But we obviously have to deal with things they are now and I'd like to firmly commend on how she came to set that out. I for myself think six months would be fine for a cooling period for a role like this given the current circumstances, but I'm of course not aware on how those with more experience for things like this on affiliates might think thank you and thank you to everyone who's talked today. Thank you everyone. That completes our session is Maggie Amanda Robin Jaime and what else on the call to anybody who's who's come and hosted this office are want to say a final closing statement or a few sentences before we close the session. I would like to say thank those of you who came who wrote in advance this was difficult, I have to say, hasn't been the best week of my wiki life, but your civil approach to a major disagreement certainly made this comment easier than I feared it might have been. Thank you to all who brought up the additional points and considerations that were raised here and on the list. I also really appreciate the collegial nature of our time together today, and I look forward to, you know, putting this putting us on on more solid footing as as we move ahead. Thank you. And thank you. Thank you so much.