34 Exploring Origins as a Decolonizing Practice

Adele Vrana is Co-Director and co-founder of Whose Knowledge?. Adele has led business development and partnerships initiatives to help build a more plural and diverse communities in her native country of Brazil and globally. She is the former Director of Strategic Partnerships at the Wikimedia Foundation and a 2015 Erasmus Prize laureate on behalf of her work to expand access to Wikipedia in the Global South. Adele holds a BA in International Relations and a Master’s Degree in Political Science from the University of Sao Paulo. When not re-imagining what the internet of the future would look like and advocating for that online, Adele spends most of her time raising two feminist boys, reading black feminists from the Global South, and spending time with her friends from close and afar.

Siko Bouterse is Co-Director and co-founder of Whose Knowledge?. She’s organized, localized and imagined a more plural and truly global web for over 10 years. She is former Director of Community Resources at the Wikimedia Foundation. Siko has an MA in Middle East History from the American University in Cairo, where her award-winning thesis focused on social history not captured in traditional historical sources. She also holds a BA in Anthropology from UC Berkeley where she worked at the Phoebe Hearst Museum. When not rabble-rousing online, Siko is paddleboarding in the ocean, cooking and reading about delicious feasts, making bad mixed-media art, and raising a feminist daughter.