Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2011/06/21/karen-gnome.html

In November 2010, after I informed
the GNOME Foundation that I’d
like to submit some names of potential Executive Director candidates,
Germán
Póo-Caamaño invited me to serve
on the
GNOME Foundation’s Executive Director Hiring Committee. We agreed
that the Committee’s work would remain confidential (as any hiring
process is wrought with complicated and frank discussions). I usually
prefer open processes to confidentiality, but with things like hiring,
confidentiality is somewhat of a necessity.

As it turned out, though, I did find myself needing to resign from the
committee. Once a particular candidate seriously submitted herself for
consideration, I felt that I just had too much of a conflict of interest
to continue as part of the Hiring Committee. Specifically, this
candidate has been my personal friend for six years (we met after she
was hired to work at SFLC), and even co-hosts
an oggcast with me.

By now, the world knows why it is that I had to resign from the Hiring
Committee: Karen Sandler was today appointed the
Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation.

The GNOME project faces a lot of challenges in the next few years.
While I am obviously biased, I firmly believe that Karen is an excellent
choice to lead the GNOME Foundation and help the GNOME project through
these challenges.

Karen will fortunately continue co-hosting the Free as in
Freedom oggcast with me, and will still spend some time as pro
bono legal counsel to Conservancy. But, her primary role now is
leader of the GNOME Foundation, and I welcome her into the job of
Executive Director. I did warn her how hard of a job Executive
Director can be, but she’s the type to take on a challenge. 🙂

Update: You
can hear Karen discuss
her new position on Free as in Freedom Episode
0x12, or
her interview
on LWN with Joe ‘Zonker‘ Brockmeier about the new position.