Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees founded by Jimmy Wales
three selected by the community encompassed by all the different Wikimedia projects;
two selected by Wikimedia chapters;
four appointed by the board itself; and
one founder's seat, reserved for Jimmy Wales.Over time, the size of the board and details of the selection processes have evolved.  As of 2020, the board may have up to 16 trustees:
eight seats sourced from the wider Wikimedia community (affiliates and volunteer community);
seven appointed by the board itself; and
one founder's seat reserved for Wales.As of February 2023, the board comprised six community-and-affiliate-selected trustees (Shani Evenstein Sigalov, Dariusz Jemielniak, Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight, Victoria Doronina, Mike Peel and Lorenzo Losa); five Board-appointed trustees (McKinsey & Company director Raju Narisetti, Bahraini human rights activist and blogger Esra'a Al Shafei, management consulting executive Lisa Lewin, Nataliia Tymkiv, and McAfee executive Tanya Capuano); and Wales. Tymkiv chairs the board, with Al Shafei and Sigalov as vice chairs.In 2015, James Heilman, a trustee recently elected to the board by the community, was removed from his position by a vote of the rest of the board. This decision generated dispute among members of the Wikipedia community. Heilman later said that he "was given the option of resigning [by the Board] over the last few weeks. As a community elected member I see my mandate as coming from the community which elected me and thus declined to do so. I saw such a move as letting down those who elected me." He subsequently added that while on the Board, he had pushed for greater transparency regarding the Wikimedia Foundation's Knowledge Engine project and its financing, and indicated that his attempts to make public the Knight Foundation grant for the engine had been a factor in his dismissal. Heilman was reelected to the board by the community in 2017.In January 2016, Arnnon Geshuri joined the board before stepping down amid community controversy about a "no poach" agreement he executed when at Google, which violated United States antitrust law and for which the participating companies paid US$415 million in a class action suit on behalf of affected employees.