Epic Human Podcast

Epic Human Podcast


Running Wikipedia, with Katherine Maher

June 21, 2019
Katherine Maher is CEO and Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization that manages Wikipedia - the multilingual online encyclopedia, based on open collaboration through a wiki-based content editing system. Wikipedia is the fifth most popular website in the world and gets more than 18 billion page views per month.


In this episode, Katherine and I discuss Wikipedia’s role in the era of "fake news," the recent NorthFace/Wikipedia controversy, how her organization is looking to grow and diversify the editor community, and what the future holds for Wikipedia, including risks and opportunities.


We also go deep into Katherine’s background, covering her atypical academic experience, her early career path, and how she became CEO of one of the most important technology platforms of our time.


As with every podcast, I also asked Katherine about her personal philosophy, where she shared a personal story of a time she experienced failure, some advice for young adults seeking to make a difference, and a few quotes that inspire her.


-You can find Katherine on twitter @krmaher https://twitter.com/krmaher


-You can watch her “Sum of All Knowledge” talk she delivered on Google’s corporate campus at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESVQknHESuA&t=24s