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Arkadii Yakovets

PSF Board Candidates 2026

Open Source·· 12 mins
#elections #governance #open-source #psf #python
PSF Board Candidates 2026
Table of Contents

Four seats are open on the Python Software Foundation Board this year, and voting runs through Tuesday, September 15, 2026, 2:00 pm UTC. I am a voting member, so this is my working notes on the race: how Approval Voting works, what I am weighing, and a pass over all 17 nominees with links to their nomination pages, AMAs, and PSF blog candidate interviews where those exist.

I have no personal affiliation with any of the candidates. The opinions below come from public materials and from casting a ballot as a member, not from private relationships or shared employers. Facts, employer strings, and links are a best-effort snapshot from those sources and may be incomplete or wrong -- if you spot an error, contact me and I will fix it. The short takes under each name are my read of that record. Other voting members will weight the same materials differently, and they should.

How this election works
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The 2026 election dates and candidate announce are on the PSF blog. Cheuk Ting Ho, Christopher Neugebauer, Denny Perez, and Georgi Ker are at the end of their current terms. Of those four, Christopher and Georgi are running again, Cheuk and Denny are not on this ballot. The nominees page lists 17 people.

This election uses Approval Voting. You may approve as many candidates as you wish -- one, several, or all of them. The four candidates with the most approvals are elected after conflict of interest, affiliation, and co-affiliation checks in the PSF Bylaws are satisfied.

If you can vote, cast it on the membership side before the deadline. If you cannot, the materials below are still a decent map of who is asking for the job.

What I am weighing
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  • Sustainability and fundraising realism under capped grants and conference pressure
  • Global community fluency -- regions, languages, organizer succession
  • Governance and nonprofit judgment versus first-time energy
  • Packaging / infrastructure literacy without turning the Board into one employer's proxy
  • Communication trust: consistency, clarity, willingness to own hard tradeoffs
  • Useful independence versus useful ties, with conflict of interest awareness either way

Candidates
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Ordered A-Z by first name. Each section opens with a short Facts block -- Election (Nomination, Interview, AMA), Profiles, Prior Board, PSF signals when public, Focus, Employment, Education when known, and Country last -- then one paragraph on what I take from the materials. I skip unknown fields and label a missing AMA or interview. A ballot check ☑️ before a name means I support that candidate on my ballot. A muted eye after a name means that candidate reacted to my request to review these notes. A trophy 🏆 after a name means that candidate was elected to the Board.

☑️ Agata Skamruk (Bublewicz)
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Agata organizes around PyCode Conference, PyLadies Poland, and OSWorld.pl, with a mix of community leadership and operator work in education and open-source media. The conference and chapter track record is easy to check against real events, and the European perspective is not only EuroPython-shaped. Board service is slower and more about money, staff, and oversight than running a conference, though, and her statement puts more weight on community building than on Foundation budgets. That finance and Board-process story is clearer for some incumbents and staff-adjacent candidates on this ballot.

Benjamin Manning
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Benjamin's statement spans decades of Python use across industry, academia, and enterprise systems, including AI/ML and security-shaped work, plus teaching. He is comfortable talking about Python as infrastructure inside large organizations, and the AMA engagement shows willingness to take questions in public. The day-to-day Python community organizing footprint is thinner than conference chairs and workgroup leads on this ballot, and the Lockheed Martin affiliation will matter to some voters on optics and co-affiliation math even when disclosure is clean.

☑️ Calvin Tsang
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Calvin is VP of Open Source Hong Kong and conference chair for PyCon Hong Kong 2026, with roots back to the local PyCon's early years plus OSHK community growth, mentoring pathways, PyLadies Hong Kong (2025), and Asia-Pacific ties through Python Asia and peer communities. The AMA and interview materials stress multilingual outreach and connecting local communities to PSF machinery so the Foundation can support regional growth and weigh Asia-Pacific needs in strategic choices -- though some voters will still want sharper public positions on grants design, staffing, and PyCon US dependency.

☑️ Cecília Tivir
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Cecília is a Mozambican educator and organizer behind WansaTI Lab, Django Girls work, and PyLadies Maputo/Beira -- a ballot line that pulls the map south of the usual conference circuit. Lived experience building chapters where resources are scarce is a strong inclusion and education story, and the representation is not "same three regions again." There is less published evidence of PSF-scale governance, fundraising, or staff oversight, and voters who prioritize immediate fiscal turnaround may underweight organizers who have not yet lived that specific firefight.

☑️ Christopher Neugebauer
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  • Election: Nomination · Interview · AMA: None
  • Profiles: chrisjrn, chrisjrn, chrisjrn
  • Prior Board: 2018-2021, 2023-2026 (term ending; running again)
  • PSF signals: Long-serving director; North Bay Python fiscal sponsoree operator
  • Focus: governance / conferences / institutional development
  • Employment: Senior Software Engineer at Pilot.com
  • Country: 🇺🇸 United States

Christopher is an incumbent seeking another term, with a long Board history, North Bay Python (a PSF fiscal sponsoree), and prior PyCon Australia work. His term is among those ending this cycle. Institutional memory on staff growth, grants work, and the recent strategic plan is real -- continuity candidates are easier to evaluate because the record is public. Continuity is also the risk if you want a sharper break on trust or focus, and no AMA thread turned up for this cycle, which is a missed Q&A surface when peers are hosting them.

☑️ Ee Durbin 🏆
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Ee has already done deep PSF work without having served on the Board: PyPI volunteer admin, PyCon US chair roles, staff leadership as Director of Infrastructure, and years of adjacent volunteer work. The operational literacy is unusually deep -- staff wellbeing, member/sponsor experience, and infrastructure durability are specific, not slogan-shaped, and PyPI and PyCon execution are checkable. OpenAI adjacency will dominate some ballots for co-affiliation and capture concerns even with careful conflict of interest hygiene, and that same deep knowledge of how the Foundation already runs can look like an insider pick to voters who want an outside challenge.

☑️ Elaine Wong 🏆
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Elaine is a Toronto-based journalist and organizer with PyCon US / PyCon Canada / PyLadies Toronto threads and a communications-shaped professional background. People-and-volunteer sustainability framing matches a Board that keeps burning organizers, journalism habits help with clarity and public accountability, and the Canadian / North American community ops are not only PyCon US staff lore. The AMA thread looked quiet as of draft time, and there is less obvious packaging/infrastructure depth than several peers if that is your primary lens for 2026.

☑️ Georgi Ker 🏆
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Georgi is an incumbent who has served as Treasurer and Vice Chair, with roots in Asian community work and current ties across PyLadiesCon, EuroPython, and related networks. Term ending this cycle; running again. Hard-earned finance and officer experience sits in the room that actually sets budgets, and the priorities match the sustainability problem many statements name -- the independent employer line is also simpler for co-affiliation optics. Incumbency still inherits Board trust baggage from the last few years whether or not it is fair to pin on one director.

Jeremy Tanner
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Jeremy's pitch centers packaging infrastructure, corporate partnership fundraising, regional events, and operational transparency, with NumFOCUS adjacency and an NVIDIA employer line. Fundraising and packaging supply-chain fluency are on-theme for a Foundation that needs both money and durable tooling stories, and global distribution of resources is an explicit goal rather than a footnote. NVIDIA on the ballot line is still a co-affiliation and optics factor, the AMA was thin as of draft time, and "corporate partnership program" language needs proof it will not skew priorities toward sponsors who already have a megaphone.

☑️ Kalyan Prasad
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  • Election: Nomination · Interview · AMA
  • Profiles: itskpflow
  • Prior Board: New
  • PSF signals: Diversity & Inclusion Workgroup; NumFOCUS volunteer threads
  • Focus: conferences / D&I / organizer succession
  • Employment: AI & Data Science Practice Lead at GDS
  • Country: 🇮🇳 India

Kalyan started as a room monitor and later took on leadership roles at PyConf Hyderabad and PyCon India, with PSF D&I workgroup and NumFOCUS volunteer threads plus CoC experience. Full-stack conference ops across CFP, sponsorship, logistics, and safety are Board-relevant, South Asia organizing scale is real, and the D&I / CoC work is not decorative. Employer "GDS" is easy to misread without context for non-local voters, and the statement is strong on community delivery but lighter on PSF fiscal architecture compared with Treasurer-shaped incumbents.

☑️ Karo Ladino-Puerto
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Karo Ladino-Puerto (Karobot) is a PSF Fellow with years of PyLadies Colombia / PyCon Colombia / Python Colombia work, Grants and D&I workgroup service, and a second Board run focused on sustainability after leaving a conference org on values grounds and helping rebuild national community infrastructure. The sustainability framing from outside the usual funding centers is sharp, non-monetary organizer support and regional sponsorship ideas are practical under capped grants, and bilingual communication priority is a concrete inclusion lever rather than a vibe. There is no AMA thread this cycle, and a second-time candidate still has to prove Board-meeting grind fits the PM skill story.

Keith Murray
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  • Election: Nomination · Interview · AMA
  • Profiles: keiththeee, KeithTheEE
  • Prior Board: New
  • PSF signals: Education and Outreach Workgroup
  • Focus: education / online community
  • Employment: Self/Independent
  • Country: 🇺🇸 United States

Keith (KeithTheEE) works Education and Outreach, Python Discord leadership, PyOhio, and prior Reddit moderation -- online community ops as a first-class skill. Running large online spaces is useful Board experience that voters often undervalue, education and outreach fit is clear, and the self-employed line keeps employer capture simpler. Discord and Reddit skills are not the same as nonprofit finance and executive oversight, though, and some voters will want a clearer story for how online moderation experience changes Foundation budgeting.

Kojo Idrissa
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Kojo brings accounting/MBA background, DEFNA / DjangoCon US organizing, Black Python Devs co-founding, and an explicit focus on consistency, communication, and core-mission discipline. Business and nonprofit board experience is scarce and useful here, and the diagnosis of confidence/consistency problems matches community chatter without only vibes, with a global speaking footprint that pays attention to non-US needs. His AMA had little back-and-forth when I checked it. The stated priorities are concrete, though some voters may still want a clearer picture of the tradeoffs and budget choices under those headings.

☑️ Laís Carvalho 🏆
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  • Election: Nomination · Interview: None · AMA: None
  • Profiles: laisbsc, laisbsc, Laiscarvalho, lais_bsc
  • Prior Board: New
  • PSF signals: Fellow; Community Service Award (2024); EPS Fellow
  • Focus: community ops / DevRel / AI ecosystem posture
  • Employment: Growth Marketing and Developer Advocate at Pydantic
  • Education: Postgraduate Degree, Innovation and Enterprise Development, Trinity College Dublin (2025-2026)
  • Country: 🇮🇪 Ireland

Laís is a PSF Fellow and Community Service Award recipient with Python Ireland and EuroPython board experience, PyLadies Dublin work, and Developer Relations at Pydantic. Goals in the nomination span Foundation growth, funding the people already doing community labor, and an honest PSF posture toward AI ecosystems -- with an explicit step-back note where employer conflict appears. European board experience plus the Fellow and award recognition are easy strengths to see, and the AI section talks plainly about maintainer load and company profit without pretending neutrality is free. She has no AMA and no blog interview, so there is less public Q&A than for many peers, and the Pydantic employer line may still worry voters who care how packaging-adjacent companies look next to a Board seat, even with her stated plan to step back where needed.

☑️ Nina Zakharenko
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  • Election: Nomination · Interview · AMA
  • Profiles: nnja, nnja, nnja
  • Prior Board: 2020-2023 (Communications Co-Chair; Co-Vice Chair)
  • PSF signals: Prior director; grants and accessible-membership work called out in statement
  • Focus: education / security / communications
  • Employment: Self/Independent
  • Education: B.S. Computer Science, Stony Brook University (2002-2006)
  • Country: 🇺🇸 United States

Nina served on the Board from 2020-2023. Outside that term she has organized PyCascades, taught, given keynotes, and worked at Microsoft and Google on open source and supply chain security. Running again as an independent. Prior Board reps shorten the ramp, grants and accessible membership work are concrete, and security and education angles are timely without being a single-issue campaign -- the self-employed line helps affiliation optics. Returning directors still owe voters a crisp "why now" beyond the resume.

Petr Andreev
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Petr teaches Advanced Python and CPython internals, with a pathway story from students to research, contribution, and speaking, plus mentorship and reviewing work across conferences. The contributor-retention thesis is measurable in principle, technical depth plus education is a rare Board pairing, and international teaching/community work supports "next generation" strategy language with receipts. University affiliation and country of residence will be a hard filter for some voters regardless of statement quality, and pathway success in a cohort does not automatically translate to Foundation-wide program design under budget caps.

Ramya Ravi
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  • Election: Nomination · Interview · AMA: None
  • Profiles: ramya-ravi19
  • Prior Board: New
  • Focus: DevRel / AI-adjacent Python users
  • Employment: Developer Advocate, AI and Open Source at NetApp
  • Education: Master's, Computer Science and Engineering, Michigan State University
  • Country: 🇺🇸 United States

Ramya is a developer advocate at NetApp focused on AI and open-source education. She says that the PSF should also reach people who write Python every day in stacks like PyTorch but never show up in the usual community spaces. That names a real constituency the PSF under-serves, teaching-at-scale instincts are useful, and an outside-in perspective can challenge insider defaults. The classic Python community organizing record is thinner than most of this field, and there is no AMA.

After you read
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If you are eligible, vote before September 15, 2026, 2:00 pm UTC, and read the primary sources rather than outsourcing judgment to any one blog post -- including this one. If a fact here is wrong, contact me and I will correct it. I will also make a best-effort attempt to reach the candidates so they have a chance to verify their information and suggest corrections where something is off.

References
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