Nationality American | Other names Keilana | |
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Born May 24, 1994 (age 22) ( 1994-05-24 ) Chicago, Illinois, U.S. Education Loyola University Chicago (B.A.) Occupation Wikipedian in residence Known for Creating Wikipedia articles about women scientists Awards Wikipedian of the Year (2016) Award Wikipedian of the Year (2016) | ||
Emily temple wood
Emily Temple-Wood (born May 24, 1994, in Chicago, Illinois) is an American Wikipedia editor who goes by the name of Keilana on the site. She is known for her efforts to counter the effects and causes of gender bias on Wikipedia, particularly through the creation of articles about women scientists. She was declared a joint recipient of the 2016 Wikipedian of the Year, by Jimmy Wales, at Wikimania on June 24, 2016.
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Early life
Temple-Wood attended Avery Coonley School, and won the 2008 DuPage County Spelling Bee. This victory led to her participating in the Scripps National Spelling Bee the same year, where she lasted until the quarterfinals and finished in 46th place. As a result, in June 2008, she was honored by the then-lieutenant governor of Illinois, Pat Quinn, along with the other regional spelling bee champions. In May 2016, she graduated from Loyola University Chicago with degrees in molecular biology and Arabic and Islamic studies. She began medical school at Chicago's Midwestern University in the fall of 2016.
Work on Wikipedia regarding women in science
Temple-Wood received national press coverage for creating Wikipedia articles about women scientists, as well as her activism to increase their representation on Wikipedia. She first started contributing to the site when she was 12, and it was when she was 12 that she was first harassed online as a result of her Wikipedia contributions. She began her efforts in regards to women scientists when she was in middle school. She co-founded Wikipedia's WikiProject Women Scientists in 2012. Editing under the username "Keilana", she began creating such articles when she noticed that few women who were members of the Royal Society had Wikipedia articles. She told the Wikimedia Foundation that when she first noticed this, she "got pissed and wrote an article that night. I literally sat in the hallway in the dorm until 2 am writing [my] first women in science article." The article she is the most proud of is that on Rosalyn Scott, the first African-American woman to become a thoracic surgeon.
Temple-Wood has also organized edit-a-thons at museums and libraries with the aim of increasing the representation of women scientists on Wikipedia. In October 2015, she told The Atlantic that she had identified 4,400 women scientists who did not have Wikipedia articles written about them even though each of them was notable enough to be covered by one. In March 2016, she gained international media attention because of her approach to the online sexual harassment she had received: for every such email she received, she plans to create a Wikipedia article about a woman scientist. That month, she told BuzzFeed News that with respect to her doing this, "My motivation is to channel the frustration I feel from being harassed into something productive."
Her work led to her being named as joint Wikipedian of the Year in 2016, along with Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight.
Positions
Temple-Wood is the vice president of Wikimedia DC, the District of Columbia-area chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation, as well as a member of their board of directors. She is also a board member of the Wiki Project Med Foundation, and a Wikipedian in Residence at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.