Maryana Iskander

Maryana Iskander is the kind of leader who lets substance speak louder than her formidable credentials. A Cairo-born Rhodes Scholar trained at Oxford, she paired law with social entrepreneurship, working on youth employment in South Africa before becoming CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation in 2022. Stewarding the infrastructure behind free knowledge for the world is a quietly enormous responsibility. I find it humbling that the encyclopedia so many of us take for granted was steered by someone with such serious purpose. She stepped down in 2026, but her bet on democratizing knowledge is exactly the kind of work I want to applaud.

Name (English)

Maryana Iskander

Name (Japanese)

マリアナ・イスカンデル

Reading

まりあな・いすかんでる

Born

September 1, 1975 (age 50)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Virgo / Rabbit

Origin

Cairo, Cairo Governorate, Egypt

Occupation

business executive / lawyer / executive director / social entrepreneur

University

University of Oxford

Awards & achievements

• 1997 Rhodes Scholarship
• 2001 The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans

• Official sitehttps://wikimediafoundation.org/?profile=maryana-iskander
• Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/maryanaiskander/
• Xhttps://x.com/MaryanaIskander
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryana%20Iskander
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%9E%E3%83%AA%E3%82%A2%E3%83%8A%E3%83%BB%E3%82%A4%E3%82%B9%E3%82%AB%E3%83%B3%E3%83%87%E3%83%AB
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q86589685

Tags

• Cairo Governorate
• business executive
• lawyer
• executive director

Last updated

2026-06-21

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.