Building the Movement
Wikipedia Projects
From founding India's first Wikipedia Club to directing healthcare initiatives and leading communities across two continents. The only Wikipedian to have served in leadership roles in both India and the United States.
Current Leadership
I currently serve on two committees of the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia. These roles sit at the intersection of governance and community support, shaping how the movement elects its leaders and how it funds the work of volunteers around the world.
Chair, Elections Committee
Wikimedia Foundation
Current
Chairing the committee responsible for overseeing elections to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. The Elections Committee ensures that the global community of Wikipedia editors and contributors can participate in selecting the leadership of the Foundation in a fair, transparent, and inclusive process.
Member, Grants Committee
Wikimedia Foundation
Current
Serving on the committee that reviews and approves grant proposals from Wikimedia communities worldwide. The Grants Committee evaluates funding requests for projects that advance free knowledge, from edit-a-thons and outreach programs to technology tools and research initiatives.
Previous Leadership
Before my current Foundation roles, I held leadership positions in both India and the United States. I am the only Wikipedia community member to have served in leadership roles on both continents. That experience shaped how I think about the movement: the challenges in Pune are different from the challenges in New York, but the mission is the same.
Vice President
Wikimedia NYC
Previous
Served as Vice President of the New York City chapter of Wikimedia, one of the most active Wikimedia affiliates in the United States. The chapter organizes edit-a-thons, outreach events, and partnerships with cultural institutions across the city.
Leader
Wikimedians of New England
Previous
Led the New England regional user group, connecting Wikipedia editors and contributors across Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the broader New England region. Organized the Wikipedia 15th Birthday celebration at Harvard.
Director
Wikipedia SWASTHA
Founded and directed SWASTHA, Wikipedia's largest healthcare initiative in Indian languages. The project brings together 50+ volunteers, doctors, and linguists to translate and culturalize medical content across 10+ languages.
Director
Wikipedia Summit India
Directed the Wikipedia Summit events in India, bringing together the country's growing editor community to share knowledge, coordinate on projects, and strengthen regional language Wikipedias.
Director
Hindi Wikipedia Conference
Directed the first-ever offline Hindi Wikipedia event, creating a space for Hindi-language editors to meet in person, plan promotional activities, brainstorm partnerships, and accelerate Hindi Wikipedia's growth. This was the first offline event for the biggest Wikipedia in any Indic language.
"Every Wikipedia project starts with the same question: who is being left out? If the answer is 'people who don't speak English,' then we have work to do.
The Two-Way Exchange
One of my core motivations for starting Wikipedia Club Pune and running activities across India was always a two-way exchange. On one side, the goal was to give a platform to local ideas, personalities, and spaces on the world's biggest encyclopedia. Pune's history, India's scientists, regional art forms, local landmarks: these stories deserve to exist in the global knowledge commons, and Wikipedia is the place where they reach the widest audience.
On the other side, the goal was to bring English-language knowledge into local languages. Medical information, scientific concepts, historical events: if this knowledge only exists in English, it only reaches a fraction of the people who need it. The same philosophy drove my work with TED and TEDx. I always believed that knowledge should flow in both directions.
Having led communities in India and in the United States, I understand both worlds. I know what it feels like to build a Wikipedia community from scratch in a city where nobody has heard of editing Wikipedia. And I know what it feels like to sit on a Foundation committee deciding how to allocate resources across dozens of countries. That dual perspective is rare in the Wikimedia movement, and it informs everything I do.
Flagship Projects
These are the projects that defined my Wikipedia journey: from healthcare to rural outreach, from spoken articles for the visually impaired to city-wide photography campaigns. Each one started with a specific gap in free knowledge and grew into something larger.
Project SWASTHA
2019Founder & Director
The Special Wikipedia Awareness Scheme for Healthcare Affiliates. When COVID-19 hit India, Wikipedia was getting 10 times more traffic than the CDC and 300 times more than government health portals, but most healthcare articles in Indian languages were incomplete or missing. SWASTHA brought together doctors, linguists, and Wikipedia editors to translate and culturalize medical content into 10+ Indian languages. The project has been covered by Indian Express, NDTV, Hindustan Times, Deutsche Welle, and was featured on the cover of MultiLingual Magazine.
50+ contributors across 10+ Indian languages. Edit-a-thons at the US Consulate. Partnered with medical institutions. Featured in major Indian and international media.
View on Wikipedia
WikiConnect
2014Chief Convenor
A large-scale project to connect Wikipedia with rural populations and individuals who lack direct access to the platform. WikiConnect aimed to bridge the digital divide by bringing Wikipedia's resources to people in remote parts of India, engaging medical students and teachers, and creating new communities in areas that had never interacted with free knowledge before.
Proposed and led the initiative to bring Wikipedia access to rural India. Built on earlier smaller-scale outreach work in Pune.
View on WikipediaSpoken Wikipedia in Indic Languages
2012Volunteer & Organizer
A project to create audio recordings of Wikipedia articles in Indian languages, making knowledge accessible to people who are visually impaired or prefer listening. The project organized workshops, trained volunteers to donate their voices, and created audio files that could reach audiences who would never read a screen.
Organized the Indian Spoken Wikipedia Workshop in Pune (December 2012). Donated voice recordings and created audio files for multiple languages.
View on WikipediaCommunity Building
Wikipedia runs on communities. Before there can be articles, there need to be editors. Before there can be editors, there need to be spaces where people learn how to contribute, meet others who care about the same things, and feel like they belong. That is what these projects were about.
Wikipedia Club Pune
2013Founder
The first Wikipedia Club outside the United States. Wikipedia Club Pune created a regular meeting space for editors and new contributors in western India. The club became a hub for training, edit-a-thons, collaborative editing, and community building. It launched several sub-projects including Spoken Wikipedia in Indic Languages and WikiWomen Day. The founding motivation was the two-way exchange: giving local ideas a platform on the world's biggest encyclopedia, and bringing English knowledge into local languages.
First Wikipedia Club outside the US. Launched multiple sub-projects. Created a sustainable community of editors in Pune.
View on WikipediaWikipedia Summit India
2013Director
A two-day summit organized to promote Wikipedia as an effective means of education, to empower and reach out to India, and to bridge the gender gap in editing. The summit was action-oriented: university directors, deans, and potential project administrators came together to formulate plans for growing Wikipedia in Indian languages. Spoken Wikipedia was the central focus.
Brought together university directors and deans. Formulated action plans for growing Indian language Wikipedias. Central focus on Spoken Wikipedia implementation.
View on Wikipedia
Wikipedia Takes Pune
2012Organizer
A scavenger hunt for free content photography in Pune, inspired by 'Wikipedia Takes The City' events around the world. Participants competed to photograph as many local sights and cultural heritage objects as possible for Wikipedia articles. The goal was to generate 5,000 photos documenting Pune's cultural heritage for the encyclopedia.
Aimed to generate 5,000 photos for Wikipedia. Documented Pune's cultural heritage through community photography.
View on WikipediaConferences & Milestone Events
Some of the most important work happens when people come together in person. These events brought Hindi editors together for the first time, celebrated Wikipedia's milestones, and created spaces for planning the next chapter of free knowledge in India and the United States.
Delhi Hindi WikiConference
2016Director
The first-ever offline event for the Hindi Wikipedia community. This conference brought Hindi-language editors together to plan promotional activities, brainstorm potential partnerships, and accelerate various online projects. Hindi Wikipedia is the largest Wikipedia in any Indic language, and this was a milestone for its community, which had previously only coordinated online.
First offline Hindi Wikipedia event. Led to subsequent conferences in Bhopal (2017) and Delhi (2018).
View on WikipediaWikipedia 15 Boston
2016Organizer (New England Wikimedians)
A celebration of Wikipedia's 15th birthday, hosted by the New England Wikimedians and supported by Harvard University's Language and Literacy Department. The event included India Language Wikipedia outreach brainstorming, pizza, cake, and discussions about the future of free knowledge.
Hosted at Harvard University. Featured India Language Wikipedia outreach brainstorming session.
View on WikipediaWikiConference India 2011
2011Early Community Member
India's first national WikiConference, a flagship event that brought together Wikimedians from across the country. This was where the Indian Wikipedia community first came together as a unified movement, setting the stage for everything that followed.
First national WikiConference in India. Established the template for future Indian Wikimedia events.
View on WikipediaWikiConference USA / North America
Multiple YearsOrganizer / Participant
Participated in WikiConference USA (now known as WikiConference North America), the annual gathering of the North American Wikimedia community. These conferences provided a space to connect with editors, organizers, and Foundation staff, and to bring perspectives from my work in India to the North American community.
Bridged the Indian and North American Wikimedia communities. Brought dual-continent perspective to conference discussions.
From Pune to the Global Stage
What started in 2009 as an editor in Pune has grown into a 15-year commitment to free knowledge. I founded India's first Wikipedia Club, directed the first Hindi Wikipedia Conference, served as Vice President of Wikimedia NYC, led the Wikimedians of New England, and now chair the Wikimedia Foundation's Elections Committee. I am the only Wikipedia community member to have held leadership roles in both India and the United States, and that dual perspective informs everything I do.
I understand both worlds. I know what it takes to build a Wikipedia community from scratch in a city where nobody has heard of editing Wikipedia. And I know what it takes to sit on a Foundation committee deciding how to allocate resources across dozens of countries. The projects on this page are not just my work. They belong to every editor, translator, and volunteer who showed up and said, "I want to help."
How This Connects
Every project on this page connects to the same mission: making knowledge free and accessible across language barriers. The healthcare work flows into SWASTHA. The community building flows into governance. The language work flows into everything. And the two-way exchange, local ideas onto the global stage, global knowledge into local languages, runs through it all.
Wikipedia
The main Wikipedia page covers SWASTHA in depth, Wikimedia Foundation governance, and the culturalization philosophy.
TED & TEDx
The same two-way exchange philosophy. TED's Open Translation Project was about bringing global ideas into local languages.
Healthcare
SWASTHA, anosmia advocacy, mental health awareness, and Spoken Wikipedia all connect to the open knowledge mission.
Languages & Policy
Wikipedia localization connects directly to my work with the Government of Maharashtra on Marathi language policy.