Portland technology veteran and Mozilla executive Selena Deckelmann has been tapped for a top role by the group that operates the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.
Deckelmann has been named chief product and technology officer for the Wikimedia Foundation. The San Francisco-based group powers projects such as Wikipedia, which is one of the world's most visited websites.
Deckelmann starts the role Aug. 1, according to an organization news release. She was most recently senior vice president at Mozilla where she oversaw the Firefox organization, which includes the popular web browser, along with a team of more than 400 people.
“Selena has a proven track record of delivering results by enabling individuals and teams to tackle unique and often complex challenges,” said Maryana Iskander, CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation in a written statement. “She has dedicated her career to open source technologies for empowerment and inclusion.”
Deckelmann will continue to be based in Portland.
In her new role she will oversee the teams that support the technology infrastructure needed to keep projects like Wikipedia online. That website alone received 16 billion page views per month and has more than 300,000 global volunteers that work on it, according to the organization.
“Open collaboration produces better solutions for the world, and technology is a critical enabler of making this true,” said Deckelmann in a written statement. “I look forward to contributing to Wikimedia’s inspiring free knowledge mission.”
Deckelmann was at Mozilla for about 10 years and led the Portland office. Prior to that she co-founded software company Prime Radiant. She was previously consulting director of development for the Ada Initiative, a nonprofit that worked to support women in tech. She was also a major contributor to open source database PostgreSQL. She also founded the group PyLadies PDX.
