First, she's working for Automattic/wp dot org, not the WP Foundation.
Also, an executive director never has control over the board - they serve the board.
But a major difference between the WP Foundation and Rails Foundation is that the Rails one appears to be a legitimate foundation, with real budget and activities, real governance and transparency provided by actual, living, involved, knowledgeable humans who have agency.
The Wordpress Foundation is a shell for trademark and tax fraud... It has no governance, transparency, or even seemingly any activities. And the TWO non-Matt directors are completely MIA, with one of them seemingly having no Wordpress affiliation while also working in Matt's much-maligned private equity industry (who also fund his own company!)
Also, the Rails Trademark is under exclusive, seemingly transparent license to the Rails Foundation.
Whereas the WP Trademark was ceremoniously "given" to the WP Foundation (controlled, in effect, exclusively by Matt) in 2010, and then secretly given right back to Matt the same day.