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Candidates for the 2018 PSF Board of Directors

The following people have been nominated as Directors of the Python Software Foundation for the term beginning in June 11, 2018. Their self-written summaries follow. The specific dates of relevance to the election are:

This is a notification of the 2018/19 board of director election timeline:
  • Open call for Board Director Nominations: May 1, 2018
  • Board Director Nomination cut-off: May 25, 2018 23:59:59 AoE[1]
  • Voter application cut-off date: May 25, 2018 23:59:59 AoE
  • Voting start date: June 1, 2018 AoE
  • Voting end date: June 10, 2018 23:59:59 AoE

[1]The above closing times are given in the "Anywhere on Earth" (AOE) timezone.

There are currently 4 open seats on the Board of Directors - 3 for 3 year terms (as part of the cycle established in the 2017 PSF Members vote), and one to fill the 2 years remaining on a departing board member's 3 year term.

Links

Registering as a PSF Board candidate

To register as a candidate for the Board elections, add your nomination to this page using the format listed at the end of the page. We'd like as many groups within the PSF membership as possible to have the option of electing candidates that can directly represent their interests in Board discussions, so if there's someone you'd particularly like to have represent you, you may want to consider getting in touch with them and (politely!) asking if they'd be interested in nominating themselves.

Read through the Letter from PSF Director of Operations - Expectations of Board Directors & Duties and Responsibilities of Directors. Please note that the PSF bylaws require that Board candidates disclose significant organizational affiliations (for example, their employer).

Note

Please follow the instructions on the FrontPage to gain wiki edit access.

Registering to vote on PSF ballots

While PSF Membership is open to anyone that chooses to join, Basic Members are not entitled to vote on PSF ballots, including Board elections. In accordance with the bylaws, the following PSF Members are entitled to vote on PSF ballots:

To register as a Managing or Contributing member, refer to this post on the PSF blog.

To register as a Supporting Member, please use the PSF Associate Membership site.

Outgoing Directors

The following members of the 2017/18 Board are not running for election this year:

Cleopatra Douglas

New Board Member.

I am the Head software developer at Guaranty Trust Bank (Sierra Leone) LTD, I use python to innovate and maintain payment systems, as well as teach python to young individuals as well as teachers who are interested in Python.

I was a speaker at the pycon Nigeria event and I hosted the first Django Girls workshop in sierra leone. I have also volunteered in Django Girls workshops in Nigeria.

Contributions to communities

  • Django Girls Uturu (Organizer)
  • Django Girls Freetown (Organizer)
  • Pyladies Sierra Leone (Organizer)

Affiliations

  • DSF individual Member
  • Women Who Code (Member)
  • NigeriaTechWeek (Founder)

Christopher Neugebauer

New Board Member.

Background

I’m an Australian Python developer, speaker, and serial conference organiser. These days, I'm based in Petaluma, California, USA.

I’ve been closely involved in PyCon Australia for many years, including as a lead organizer, and also as their lead for outreach and inclusion. During this time, PyCon Australia grew from 240 attendees to upwards of 600, and the financial aid we’ve been able to offer has grown to $20,000 (or close to 10% of the total conference budget).

I'm director of North Bay Python, a Python conference based in Petaluma, north of the San Francisco Bay. Running on a shoestring budget, we built a conference – from the ground up – that delivers on the Python community's values of inclusion and diversity: in our first year, we paid out more than 25% of our budget in outreach and inclusion activities, and more than 40% of our speakers were not men.

I’ve served as a Council Member for Linux Australia, an organisation that provides financial, legal, and technical support for open source-related conferences including PyCon Australia. In that role, I helped to develop and implement a policy for making sure our events are run in a sustainable fashion, and made sure that Linux Australia continued to be a healthy organisation.

Since 2015, I’ve served on the PSF’s Grants Working Group. We’ve helped substantially grow the PSF’s capacity to offer grants to important Python projects throughout the world. In my role in that working group, I've taken a strong interest in guiding policy around the PSF's ability to support events and causes that help promote the PSF's mission throughout the world.

What I want to get done

Through the PSF's grants program, we've done some great work making Codes of Conduct an expected part of Python events throughout the world, but this is only one step in promoting the PSF's mission of growing a diverse and international community of Python programmers.

The PSF has other means to promote diversity, through their trademarks and grants policies, and I've been working in this space within the PSF for some time now. I think now's the right time for me to promote this at a board level: we need to establish diversity and inclusion targets for all events that seek our support, and we can achieve this now.

Secondly, the PSF needs sustainable funding beyond PyCon US, and the Python community needs more events than just PyCon US. The PSF can play a vital role in empowering people who want to run local events, and this can provide both a vital revenue source for the PSF, and a more diverse set of events to grow our community.

In summary, this is what I hope to achieve in my first year:

  • Work at strengthening the PSF's policies around grants and trademark licensing, to ensure that events aligned with the PSF work in support of the PSF's mission
  • Build the PSF's capacity for fiscal sponsorship to empower the community to run projects through the PSF, and raise funds for the PSF
  • Help identify diverse sources of funding for the PSF, to reduce our reliance on PyCon US's success to deliver the remainder of the PSF's goals

Where to find me

Affiliations

  • Shutterstock, Inc. (Employer)
  • PSF Grants working group
  • North Bay Python Project Leadership Committee, at Software Freedom Conservancy
  • PSF Fellow

Katie McLaughlin

New Board Member. (Nominated by Trey Hunner)

Trey: I nominate Katie McLaughlin for the PSF Board of Directors. I have witnessed Katie enthusiastically greet new community members at conferences and patiently shepherd first-time open source contributors during BeeWare sprints. Katie is a concerned and compassionate Python community member. Katie wears many hats but also seems to have a good understanding of her own boundaries, both qualities that are helpful for PSF directors.

I have worked behind the scenes on various Python and open source events and conferences around Australia for the past few years (See “Background”), and have recently applied the knowledge gained from those experiences by taking on the leading role in coordinating such events, and serving on foundation boards.

I have an active role as a Director of the Django Software Foundation, and should I be elected to the Python Software Foundation board, I can act as a conduit between these two groups, sharing knowledge and ideas.

I am based in Australia, which is a country with it’s own thriving Python community currently unserved by a Director on the Python Software Foundation board in this geographic region. I am aware of the logistical complexities by adding a member from UTC+10, but I will be able to mitigate this via attending meetings out of hours, asynchronous communication, and remote voting, if required.

Background:

  • Open Source Developers Club, Treasurer, 2015
  • Linux Australia, Board Member, 2016
  • Django Software Foundation, Director, Secretary 2018
  • DjangoCon AU 2017 Organiser
  • PyCon AU 2018, 2019 Chair
  • O’Reilly Open Source Award, 2017
  • Red Hat Women in Open Source 2018 Finalist
  • PSF Contributing Member, since 2016
  • Open Source Initiative, Individual Member, since 2016
  • DSF Individual Member, since 2017

Affiliations: Divio (Employer), PyCon AU, Django Software Foundation, Linux Australia

Younggun Kim

2016 Board Member.

It was an honor to served as the first Board Director elected from East Asia. I brought the voices from the east part of our community to the board. I traveled as many PyCons in South/East Asia as I can just to show them we are one big community all around the world and to help them organize their own PyCon. In the result of their desire and the effort, Indonesia and Thailand have their first PyCon and I'm not going to stop here. We still have a lot more community members living in developing countries and I'd love to go there and help them as a representative of the PSF.

Background

  • PSF Grants Working Group
  • Program Committee Member for PyCon 2018
  • PyCon KR/Asia-Pacific organizer
  • Open Source Advocate at NIPA - NIPA is an affiliated organization of Korean Ministry of Science.

Affiliations: PSF Grants Working Group, PyCon Korea, NIPA

Paola Katherine Pacheco

2017 Board Member.

Description

Hi, I'm Paola Katherine, I'm Software Engineer, I work with Python because of the community that hosted me with Pyladies and with Python Brazil. I believe that without the knowledge and help of the community today I would not work with development. As I lived in Brazil for a long time I suffered a bit of prejudice and without the support of the community I would have given up. From the moment I started in the area, I've always tried to help everyone who wants to learn by focusing on women to understand the prejudice they suffer, but I've always intended to help those who want to learn, as well as Python's behavior. community. With that I got involved with events, thus reaching more people.

I believe that today Latin America in general needs attention in education, is in a process of transition, a new generation that is now learning technology, that is learning English, that has interest but in many countries still suffers a patriarchal culture that does not sees the woman working and also a technological backwardness.

Today I live in Argentina, where there is a delay and we do not have many companies here. Because of this I created an event called + CON, a free event, where the focus is students. Where the goal is to present the few companies that we have here to the students, so that they can get a job.

History of contributions to the community:
  • Organization of the first Django Girls Rio de Janeiro
  • Django Girls Python Brazil 2016 organization, Florianópolis, the largest in Brazil.
  • Participation in the Pyladies Brasil community
  • Participation in the Pyladies community Rio de Janeiro
  • Creation of Pyladies Mendoza
  • Creation of the Mendoza Python community
  • Organization of Django Girls Pycon Colombia, where I just organized remotely until I found a Colombian who could lead with that after the event a Python community was created in Cali, Colombia.
  • Volunteer at Pycon Colombia
  • Speaker at Pycon Argentina and Euro Python to talk about community and diversity.
  • Organization of the Django Girls Euro Python, event where I organized alone and remotely, going only in the day. It was an event where we had problems in previous years and we had the success of getting tickets for all participants.
  • Creation of a conference focused on students and aimed at the diffusion of open source. Rio DevDay was the largest conference in Rio de Janeiro, with 311 people, 18% women and 40% students / people who never had the opportunity to work with technology.
  • Creating videos teaching python for beginners, to contribute to those who do not have much knowledge of English. Also helping anyone who is starting out and trying to be a female inspiration to the girls who are just getting started.
  • Volunteer at Pycharlas - Spanish track at Pycon Cleveland 2018
  • Creator of +CON, a free conference aimed at students where the goal is to bring students to the area of technology.

My goals for 2018/2019 as a board member::

Promoting diversity: I would like to boost the issue of diversity in Latin America, we still need to include issues such as women, race, color. Since I lived in Brazil, which was much more ahead of other Latin American countries, we had problems with regard to female inclusion, and today in Argentina I see that the problem is a little more serious, perhaps because of cultural issues. I raise the Pyladies flag which encourages a lot of girls and minorities to be included.

Promote the increase of knowledge: By having another language, Latin America In relation to the rest of the world for many times ends up falling behind. I would like to encourage conferences, dissemination of knowledge, leverage this curious audience, students, to anyone who wishes to have this knowledge that often can not, due to lack of access to information.

I have a project in progress, a project for the secondary, where I want to teach about basic programming. From hardware to object orientation. I want to teach from basic knowledge to the minimum so that they can get jobs, or internships.

Affiliations - Pyladies Mendoza - Python Mendoza - Women Who Code - Women Techmakers - +Con ( free conference)

Thea Flowers

New Board Member.

Description

I owe my career to the Python language and community. I come from a non-traditional background and finding a language as approachable as Python with a community that is open and inclusive empowered me to build a life for myself. I am approaching my first decade as a professional engineer and I would like to give back to the community that brought me here in a more significant way.

My true calling in life is Developer Relations - a role that combines engineering, writing, and empathy to accelerate the growth of communities and empower people from all backgrounds to use code to improve their lives and the lives of those around them. I want to use this perspective and skill set to support and grow the Python ecosystem.

I have spent the last 3 years working with the community via the Python Packaging Authority and urllib3. I have been the primary maintainer of packaging.python.org for the last year. I want to continue and expand these efforts. If elected, here's what I would like to focus on:

  • Infrastructure and packaging: As part of work with the PyPA, I’ve seen how investments in infrastructure and packaging projects such as Warehouse can have a huge multiplying effect. I want to support additional investments through the infrastructure and packaging working groups to provide the community with an even better experience when it comes to sharing and using code.
  • Outreach and diversity of core contributors: I want to empower more people from more backgrounds to become core contributors. I have been inspired by the work of Mariatta in this area. I want to become a core contributor myself, share my experience, and create, support, and participate in workshops, sprints, and hackathons to help others contribute to our documentation and the core language.

You can find me at https://thea.codes and https://github.com/theacodes.

Affiliation: Google (employer), packaging.python.org (maintainer), PyPA (member), urllib3 (maintainer), PuPPy (member)

Jeff Triplett

New Board Member. (Nominated by Trey Hunner)

Trey: I nominate Jeff Triplett for the PSF Board of Directors. Jeff is passionate about pushing Python spaces to new heights of inclusivity and sustainability. Jeff has given me an enormous amount of actionable feedback in regards to Python/Django community work since nearly the day I met him. Jeff has a tendency to give constructive feedback and to follow through with his words through action.

Jeff about himself, his involvement, and goals: (To be added)

Jess Ingrassellino

New Board Member.

Background

I’m a software tester in New York, USA, and am currently the Director of Quality at Salesforce.org I teach python to middle and high school students, and have worked to help teachers who are interested in technology to learn about Python.

I’ve been most active in the PyCon Education Summit, serving for the past two years as the chair of the Summit, and serving as a volunteer for three years prior. In this capacity, I have helped to grow engagement with the summit, and to broaden the number and type of participants and speakers through engagement in social media, and with the international community.

In the past, I have volunteered for PyLadies NYC, and I have helped with national PyLadies fundraising efforts as well. In addition, I have spoken about Python and its uses in software testing at local meetup groups, as well as conferences.

What will I do?

My specific strengths are in strategic planning and research. I have a background in education (EdD in Education/Assessment), research, writing (Python Projects for Kids), and public speaking.

During my time on the board, I want to focus on: - outreach to existing communities to do needs assessment - planning for

Where to find me

Affiliations

  • Salesforce.org (Employer)
  • PyCon Education Summit - PyCon US (volunteer, past chair)
  • teachcode.org (founder)

Marc Garcia

New Board Member.

Academic and professional background

Computer engineer with master degrees in AI and finance. More than 15 years professional IT experience mainly in Python, first focused on web development, and later in data science. Worked for companies like Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Unilever, Tesco and NTT Communications.

Python background

I discovered Python in 2006, and really loved the language, mainly for its readability and for its "batteries included". It made me much more productive than any other language, and who doesn't like that. Same happened a bit later with Django.

As it was hard to find a Python job in Barcelona (my home town) at that time, I started freelancing, and specialized in web development, the main market for freelancers. I used Django for many years, I maintained the Spanish and Catalan translations, I authored and maintained few plugins (django-stdimage and django-transmeta being the most popular). And I made several contributions to the project, including a refactoring of Django localization system, as part of a Google summer of code scholarship in 2009. During that time I was a regular attendee of the Barcelona Python meetup, and I was the administrator of the distribution list of Python and Django in Catalan.

In 2012, I took a break of professional programming to study a master degree in artificial intelligence, and after that I spent one year in a business school.

In 2015 I came back to use Python professionally, this time as a data scientist. I spent some time mastering the Python data libraries, and after some time I started to get involved with the community again. First by creating the Mallorca Python meetup, and then the PyData Mallorca. In summer 2017 I volunteered as a NumFOCUS ambassador, representing the foundation in different conferences like EuroPython.

After moving to London, I found that the Python community was very healthy, with user groups meeting often, with great talks, excellent networking, and some programming sessions, mainly in the London Python coding dojo, one of the best Python user groups I know. But I found that it wasn't much about contributing to the open source projects (Python itself or the many libraries). With this in mind, I decided to start the London Python sprints group. To encourage and mentor people in their way to contribute to Python open source projects.

The London Python sprints group has more than 750 members, we hosted around 20 sprints, and I estimate we sent more than 100 pull requests to different Python projects, since we started in August 2017.

During this time, I was also the main organizer of the #pandasSprint, a join event between our group and 30 other Python user groups. The goal was to help improve the pandas API documentation. We estimated that around 500 people participated in the event in diverse locations such as Korea, China, India, Turkey, Nigeria, Brasil, Argentina and many places in the US and Europe. Around 300 pull requests related to the sprint were sent to pandas in the day of the sprint and the few days after.

PUGs I attend with certain regularity: London Python sprints (organizer), London Python Coding Dojo, PyData London, London Python meetup.

Python conferences I attended: PyCon US, EuroPython, DjangoCon, PyCon UK, PyCon PL, PyData London, PyData Amsterdam, PyData Madrid, PyData Barcelona.

My vision

While I arrived to the Python community because of the technical aspects of Python and its libraries, I really think that Python is much bigger than it. I like to think on how the world would be if it was based on the same values as the Python community. A place were diversity is one of the most valuable assets. Were people is valued by who they are, regardless of their gender, age, ethnic background, sexual orientation, religion, physical appearance... A world were kindness comes always by default, and helping and empowering others is a common practice when possible. A world with no tolerance for harassment of any kind.

I would love to live in a world like this. I'm very proud of all the people who made the Python community a micro-world with this principles. And I'm very happy and thankful to be able to be part of it.

If elected as a director of the Python Software Foundation, I will do my best, not only to promote, protect and advance Python and its environment, but to make sure we preserve the values that make our community extraordinary and unique.

Affiliations

  • Quantitative Mining Limited (self-employed)
  • Tesco (contractor)
  • London Python Sprints (founder and main organizer)

Maricela (a.k.a Mayela) Sanchez Miranda

New Board Member.

Backend developer and teacher of web development. I've worked in FOSS communities since 2011. I'm involved in closing the gender gap in technology and build a more friendly space to learn Linux and other FOSS technologies for everyone. I like mentoring because I think it's another way to learn. I'm involved in agile methodologies and I'm trying the adoption on any organization where I participate. I'm interested to increase the quantity of events organized at Mexico and Latin America of Python, create a network of organizers and expand the community and continue the labor of do a friendly and inclusive community.

Contributions to communities

  • Aztli GNU/Linux 2011-2013 - Logistics and translation
  • Software Freedom Day 2015 - Organizer
  • Preposada Geek 2015 - Organizer
  • OpenLove 2016 - Organizer
  • FLISOL 2016 - Organizer
  • OpenDev Sumer 2016 - Organizer
  • WoMOz Day Puebla 2016 - Organizer
  • Preposada Geek 2016 - Organizer
  • Agile Day Puebla 2017 - Organizer
  • Docker Birthday Puebla 2017 - Mentor
  • Django Girls Puebla 2017 - Organizer
  • Agile Open CDMX 2017 - Organizer
  • PythonDay Mexico 2017 - Organizer
  • RustDay Mexico 2017 - Mentor
  • OpenDev Summer 2017 - Organizer
  • Jornadas Ágiles Mexicanas 2017 - Organizer
  • PyCon Charlas 2018 - Co-chair, social media

Affiliations

  • Codeando Mexico - Teacher
  • Comunidad Software Libre de Puebla - Organizer
  • PyMx - Founder and organizer
  • LinuxChix MX - Founder and organizer
  • Rust MX - Organizer
  • Agiles Mexico - Coorganizer
  • Women Who Code CDMX - Director

Nina Zakharenko

New Board Member.

I've been involved with the Python community for 5 years. I attended PyCon US 2013 as my first tech conference, and I was so impressed with the community that I quit my job as a Java developer and decided to focus on Python instead. I haven't looked back since!

I took over a year off from contributing back to the Python community due to workplace demands, but now I’m fortunate enough to work in an organization that supports me and allows me the time and energy to involve myself in community work. I'm excited to use this opportunity to contribute to a community that I know and love.

Background

I've spent the past few years preparing talks for the community both at a local Meetup level, and at Python conferences all around the globe. This year I'm coordinating with the organizers of PyLadies PDX (Portland, OR USA) teach intermediate and advanced Python workshops in the Fall of 2018.

I've been fortunate enough to consider others in the community as mentors, and I’ve followed their example by offering one-on-one mentorship to underrepresented members of our community. In the past, I've also spent time mentoring junior developers and encouraging their contribution to open source projects, and volunteered once for the talk selection committee for PyCon US.

I've spoken at the following Python events:

  • PyCon Canada 2013 - Lightning talk
  • DjangoCon 2014 - 2 talks - (1) Angular JS + Django, A Perfect Match (2) Django REST API - So easy you can learn it in 25 minutes
  • PyCon US 2015 - Technical Debt - Code Monster in Your Closet
  • PyCon US 2016 - Memory Management in Python - The Basics
  • PyCon Russia 2017 - Keynote
  • PyCon Canada 2017 - Elegant Solutions for Everyday Python Problems
  • PyCon US 2018 - Elegant Solutions for Everyday Python Problems

I've also presented workshops and talks at local Meetups, such as Girl Develop It! Salt Lake City, The Salt Lake City Python Meetup, and the Montreal Python Meetup. I'm a published author of screencasts on Frontend Masters, and Pluralsight.

My Goals

My goals as a PSF board member center around the core values of mentorship, diversity, and inclusion.

  • Code of Conduct - PyCon US has been at the forefront of crafting conferences that foster diversity and creating an inclusive space for attendees. But, as our community grows, our Code of Conduct can't remain static. I plan to support initiatives and groups to improve the PSF and PyCon Code of Conduct policies.
  • Increase opportunities for community mentorship - The Python Core Mentorship initiative is a great start. I’d like to use the resources and reach of the PSF to help grow the program, increase awareness of it among underrepresented groups in our community, and implement better solutions for connecting mentors with mentees.
  • Increase the diversity of speaker lineups at regional Python events. - PyCon US has made great strides towards having an increasingly diverse speaker lineup, but regional events still struggle. I think it's important that the speaker lineup at events reflect our commitments. To that note, I'd like to help grow the diversity of speakers at all of our conferences. First steps would involve creating resources for potential speakers, facilitating connecting new speakers with community mentors, and working with regional conferences to ensure that their Code of Conduct, CFP, and other practices encourage a speaker lineup that reflects the diversity of our community.

These are just a few of the ways I think my involvement can make the Python community better, stronger, and more inclusive. I can't wait to work with others who share the same passion.

Affiliations

  • Microsoft - I joined 2 months ago as a Developer Advocate for Azure, focusing on Python. Before that, I've been a software engineer for 12 years.

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