Lila Tretikov (/ˈlaɪləˈtrɛtɪkɒf/) (born Olga (Lyalya)[a]Tretyakova,
Russian: Ольга (Ляля) Третьяко́ва, January 25, 1978)[1] is a Russian-American engineer and manager.[2]
Early life and education
Tretikov was born in Moscow,
Soviet Union.[3] Her father is a mathematician, and her mother was a filmmaker.[4] After moving to New York City at age 15,[5] she learned English while waitressing and attended the
University of California, Berkeley, but left before completing her degree.[6] Her
majors were computer science and art, and she researched
machine learning.[6]
Tretikov started her professional career at
Sun Microsystems as an engineer at the
Sun-Netscape Alliance, where she worked on the
Java server.[clarification needed] She then founded GrokDigital, a technology marketing company, and was later appointed chief information officer and vice president of engineering at
SugarCRM Inc.[9] In 2012, she was a
Stevie Awards bronze winner in the category for "Female Executive of the Year—Business Services—11 to 2,500 Employees—Computer Hardware & Software".[10] She has co-authored several patents in intelligent
data mapping and dynamic language applications.[11][12]
Tretikov was appointed executive director of the
Wikimedia Foundation in May 2014 in succession to
Sue Gardner[13][14] and took up the post on June 1, 2014. She had edited Wikipedia only once before her appointment.[11][6] Tretikov resigned from the Wikimedia Foundation as a result of the WMF's controversial
Knowledge Engine project and disagreements with the staff,[7][8] with her last day being March 31, 2016.[15] She was succeeded by
Katherine Maher in March 2016.
On March 16, 2016, it was announced that Tretikov had been invited by the
World Economic Forum to join its
Young Global Leaders community.[16] Tretikov is also on the boards of
OpenEd[17] and
Rackspace,[citation needed] and joined the board of directors of
Volvo Cars in March 2021.[18] She joined Microsoft Corporation in 2018, and currently is listed as its Corporate Vice President & Deputy Chief Technology Officer.[19]