The title says it all here. I ran for a seat on the Steering Council for the 2026 term, and I was elected…which feels pretty wild, if I’m being entirely honest. Kind of wild in the same way that becoming a core developer felt wild, but even more so, since this means that the core team not only trusts me with the big shiny green merge button but also to help make good decisions about the technical direction of the language. A language used by millions of developers all around the world to build all kinds of applications, from web apps to data science analyses to machine learning models and everything in between. A language that I love and is so tremendously important to me.
Python was my first programming language, learned because a mentor at my first internship suggested I could script away all the button clicks I was doing in ArcGIS.
Python was my first and second job out of college, where I automated drone flights to try to shoot tree seeds out of pneumatic tubes for reforestation (the startup has since pivoted!) and built a data pipeline for processing geospatial data in a mapping application used by millions on their phones.
Python was the epicenter of my career pivot to product management, where I learned that I love working on developer tools.
Python was where I met my now husband, the coolest and smartest person I know.
Python was where I found my confidence that it was not just okay that I don’t have a degree in engineering but actually welcomed and cool that I didn’t.
Python was where I found my community and made friends that live all over the world. Under any other circumstances, I may never have met these people but I’m so lucky that Python gave me this opportunity.
I guess I’m saying all this because maybe when people hear me say that Python is really important to me, they think I mean it purely from a technical perspective. While it’s true that I think Python is an amazing programming language, it’s really a lot more than that to me. There’s this swirly, amazing mess of social, technical and emotional factors that keep me coming back to Python.
Running for a seat on the Steering Council is honestly not something I even imagined myself doing. Earlier this year in my EuroPython keynote, I spent 45 minutes telling the audience that I had impostor syndrome. Okay, it wasn’t quite that simple but really the talk was about coming from a non-traditional background and figuring out how to contribute to CPython. During the talk, I had a couple calls to action for attendees. The first was to find your community and to surround yourself with people who encourage you to do things outside your comfort zone. In this case, I am forever grateful to Pablo for nudging me over text three days before the nomination deadline with a “hey, crazy idea, what if you ran for the steering council?”. The second call to action was something I try to apply to many things in my life, which is to “do it, scared”. Running for a seat on the Steering Council was definitely a “doing it scared” moment for me.
All this is to say that I’m really excited to have this opportunity over the next year or so. I had all of this in more detail in my nomination statement but thematically, my goals right now are: 1) ensure that all the right bits come together to make Python 3.15 the fastest Python ever (and lay the groundwork for future versions to be even faster), and 2) support making CPython and related projects under python/ the most welcoming and healthy projects in open source. That involves supporting today’s contributors by making things like the PEP process less arduous, and extends to new contributors by understanding and addressing barriers to entry. In my mind, both of these areas are absolutely table stakes for making sure Python’s future is as bright as can be.
Anyway, I just wanted to write this all down because I have feelings™️ but I’m sure many, many other things will pop up. I’m sure that I’ll learn a lot from my fellow Steering Council members, the core team, and the community.
Thanks for reading. I love Python! Python is forever!