Kojo Idrissa: 2026 PSF Board Election Candidate Interview

Who are you? 

I'm a software engineer at REVSYS. Before that I was an accountant. I was also a university instructor in the US and China.  I taught English, Western Culture, Problem-Solving, Accounting and MIS.

What would you bring to the PSF Board of Directors?

I bring business acumen from my accounting degree, MBA, and prior career as an accountant. I've also been on a non-profit board, when I was a board member for DEFNA, the non-profit that puts on DjangoCon US. I bring a global perspective of the Python community. I'm American, but I've spoken at conferences in Canada, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Europe, Africa, and Australia. I used those opportunities to build ties with those local communities and increase my awareness of how their needs differ from the communities in the US, where the PSF is based.

What motivated you to run for the PSF Board of Directors?

I hadn't thought about running for the board until someone suggested I consider it, based on my prior community activity. As I thought about it, I realized I had some expertise and experience that I could use to benefit the broader Python community. In addition to my business background, I've made lots of connections with people from different parts of the global community.

What problem or challenge do you want to address if you are on the board?

The decline in the community's confidence in the board.
What I see (and hear, from other community members) is more a set of related challenges, instead of a single problem. The word "consistency" keeps coming up when discussing the PSF, both in action and communication. It comes up when discussing the Fiscal Sponsorees program and the Grants program. When do these programs open/close? Who are they available to and why/how? What type of support do they offer?

There's also an issue of "focus". The PSF's core activities are, "Infrastructure", "Community", and "Investing in Python & Tools". But at what rates are PSF resources allocated to those different activities. And do those allocation rates need to change?

Where do you see the PSF in 5 years from now?

If we handle things properly, I see the PSF thriving. I see a PSF more focused on the the parts of the core mission that only the PSF can best perform ("Infrastructure" and "Investing in Python & Tools"). I also see a PSF with better internal infrastructure in place to provide Community support in a clear, consistent, sustainable fashion.

However, if the board doesn't improve its internal infrastructure to provide Community support in a reliable fashion, I can see the global community "moving on" from the PSF and building its own mechanisms for support.

What areas of the Python community are you involved with?

I've been a DjangoCon US organizer since 2016 and the DEFNA North American Ambassador since 2017. I'm also a former DEFNA board member. I'm the Orientation Chair for DjangoCon US and I've helped lead the Newcomer's Orientation for PyCon US since 2022. I'm also the co-founder of Black Python Devs. I've spoken at multiple Python and Django conferences, been a Django Girls coach multiple times.

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Note from the election administrators: 

Want to learn more about this candidate or ask them a question? 

Check out their nomination statement.

Check out their AMA thread on discuss.python.org.

Ramya Ravi: 2026 PSF Board Election Candidate Interview

Who are you?

I'm Ramya Ravi, a Developer Advocate for AI and Open Source at NetApp Instaclustr, based in Connecticut. My day to day is teaching developers how to actually build with open source technology, not just read about it. I write technical tutorials, record videos, and speak at conferences, about things like vector search, retrieval augmented generation, and open source AI infrastructure. Python sits underneath almost everything I work on. The PyTorch and OpenSearch tooling I write about every week both run on it, so in a very real sense I've been a daily Python user for my entire career, even before I thought of myself as part of the Python community in the traditional sense.

Outside of work, I care a lot about lowering the barrier to entry for newer developers. Earlier in my career I built a developer community from zero to over 6,000 members, and watching someone go from lurker to confident contributor is honestly what keeps me doing this kind of work.

What would you bring to the PSF Board of Directors?

I'd bring three things: a track record of building community from nothing, a habit of teaching at scale, and a genuinely outside perspective. I grew a developer community from zero to 6,000+ members earlier in my career, so I know what it actually takes to onboard someone new, keep them engaged, and turn them into someone who helps the next person. I've applied that same instinct to technical education, writing tutorials and producing videos across multiple open source ecosystems with one consistent goal: make the next step easier for whoever is reading.

What I think is most useful, though, is that I come to Python from the outside in. My daily work sits at the intersection of Python, AI/ML, and open source infrastructure, which means I see how people who use Python constantly, but through frameworks built on top of it, experience the ecosystem. That's a growing and increasingly important slice of the Python user base, and I'd bring their perspective directly into board conversations.

What motivated you to run for the PSF Board of Directors?

Python is the layer underneath almost everything I build and teach. Every tutorial I write about PyTorch or OpenSearch is really a tutorial about Python doing something useful under the hood, and I realized at some point that I'd spent years benefiting from this community without ever putting energy directly into it. That felt worth correcting.

I'm also motivated by a specific pattern I keep noticing: a huge number of developers write Python every single day through AI/ML and data tooling, but many of them have never engaged with the PSF, attended a PyCon, or thought about Python as a community they belong to rather than just a language they use. I think that's a real opportunity. I want to help build the bridge between that audience and the PSF, using the same hands on, teaching first approach that's worked for me elsewhere, and turn "I use Python" into "I'm part of this community" for a lot more people.

What problem or challenge do you want to address if you are on the board?

I want to help the PSF reach the enormous number of developers who use Python daily but arrived through a specific framework or tool rather than through Python itself. AI/ML practitioners are a great example. Someone can spend years writing Python through PyTorch, Hugging Face, or OpenSearch tooling and never once engage with the PSF, attend a Python event, or think of themselves as part of this community. That's a missed opportunity in both directions: the PSF loses potential members, volunteers, and advocates, and those developers miss out on a community that could genuinely support their growth.

I'd like to work on lowering that barrier, through education content, event partnerships, and simply making the path into PSF involvement more visible to people who don't think of themselves as core Python developers yet. I think this matters more every year, as more of the fastest growing parts of the Python ecosystem are AI and data focused.

Where do you see the PSF 5 years from now?

I'd love to see the PSF recognized as the natural home not just for traditional Python developers, but for the much larger and still growing population of AI/ML and data practitioners who write Python every day through the tools built on top of it. Five years from now, I hope the PSF has stronger, more visible pathways for that audience: clearer education initiatives, more partnerships with the events and communities where these developers already gather, and a membership base that reflects how broad Python's real world usage has become.

I also hope the PSF continues to grow its global reach, so that community members anywhere in the world feel like there's an obvious way to get involved. Ultimately, I want the PSF five years from now to be an organization where someone who just uses Python for AI work feels just as welcome as someone who's been contributing to CPython for a decade.

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Note from the election administrators: 

Want to learn more about this candidate? Check out their nomination statement.