Franziska Heine

Franziska Heine is the Executive Director of Wikimedia Deutschland, the organization that builds and maintains the software powering the Wikipedias of the world and Wikidata the Linked Open Data knowledge base. She was born in Schwerin, and before joining the non-profit as Head of the Software division in 2017 she learned what it takes to create successful software products by working for eBay and developing digital products for Nokia, Microsoft and HERE Technologies. Her involvement in the successful opposition of the regulation to censor online content in 2009 by the German Government taught her a lot about the power of volunteer communities and activists which influences how she looks at technology till this day.