The PSF Community Service Awards (CSAs) are a formal way for the PSF Board of Directors to offer recognition of work which, in its opinion, significantly improves the Foundation's fulfillment of its mission to build a vibrant, welcoming, global Python community. These awards shine a light on the incredible people who are the heart and soul of our community– those whose dedication, creativity, and generosity help the PSF fulfill its mission. The PSF CSAs celebrate individuals who have been truly invaluable, inspiring others through their example, and demonstrates that service to the Python community leads to recognition and reward. If you know of someone in the Python community deserving of a PSF CSA award, please submit them to the PSF Board via psf@python.org at any time. You can read more about PSF CSA’s on our website.
The PSF Board is excited to announce 5 new CSAs, awarded to Abhijeet Mote, Elena Williams, Hugo van Kemenade, Kevin Horn, Sarah Abderemane, for their contributions to the Python community. Read more about their work and impact below.
Abhijeet Mote
Abhijeet Mote has spent more than a decade teaching Python and expanding access to technical education across Asia, Europe, and North America. In 2019, he founded the Python Penang Meetup, which he led until 2022 and which grew into one of Malaysia's most active developer communities, giving students, engineers, and enthusiasts a place to learn and share knowledge. In India, he has trained university faculty, students, and professionals, and he works with universities to design curricula that integrate Python, AI/ML, and data engineering. In the United States, Abhijeet leads community Python classes at public libraries, and he also mentors students in rural India remotely, offering guidance and encouragement to young learners with limited access to technology.
Abhijeet's contributions extend to the international Python community and to academic research. He has spoken and led workshops at conferences including at PyCon X Italy and PyCon US, and he supports researchers and PhD scholars in using Python, Pandas, and PyTorch to turn theoretical work into working experiments. On the open source side, he has contributed to GNUKhata, advises the open-source education initiative FOSSLipy, has served as a technical reviewer for several Python books, and maintains open repositories that have helped learners worldwide. Through the AWS Community Builders program, he also promotes Python best practices in cloud and DevOps. In 2025, he was named a Fellow of the Python Software Foundation, and he serves on the PSF Diversity & Inclusion Working Group. Abhijeet is known for his humility, empathy, and consistency. He has opened doors for learners at every stage through his work in classrooms, libraries, conferences, and open-source projects across three continents.
Elena Williams
Elena Williams has spent well over a decade building Python communities in Australia and beyond. In 2011 she co-founded PyLadiesAU, and in 2012 she founded the Canberra Python User Group, which she still helps organize. She went on to help run the Perth Python User Group in 2013 and co-founded Sydney PyLadies in 2014. Elena has also been a core organizer of PyCon AU, with a history of involvement in DjangoCon AU and DjangoCon US, and she is a regular speaker at Python conferences.
Elena's Django Girls work has had a particularly far-reaching impact. She organized the second Django Girls event ever held, and the first without the program's founders, then went on to organize Django Girls events in Brisbane, Perth, Sydney, Canberra, and Adelaide, as well as the first in North America. Her Perth event, which was combined with a Rails Girls workshop, directly gave rise to SheCodes, an award-winning national organization that is now ten years old, and her Django Girls work has helped spark other substantial diversity-in-tech organizations in Australia. Today, Elena continues to teach, support, and mentor people across Python communities, especially in the Django world, where she serves as a moderator on the Django Discord and as a member of the Django Code of Conduct committee. She is also involved in open source at the national level in Australia as a council member of Linux Australia.
Hugo van Kemenade
Hugo van Kemenade is a steady, ever-present contributor to the Python community, and his work spans nearly every layer of the project. He is the release manager for Python 3.14 and 3.15, a role that keeps new versions flowing to the community at every stage of the release cycle. A CPython contributor since 2017, he joined the Python Triage team in 2022, became a core developer in 2024, and has served as a PEP Editor since 2022. Hugo also chairs the monthly Documentation Working Group meetings, helping make it easier for community members to get involved, and co-organizes the Helsinki Python meetup.
Hugo's reach extends well beyond core development. He has been a maintainer of Pillow since 2014, where he modernized the codebase and helped automate its release process, and he helps maintain other widely used packages such as termcolor, humanize, and PrettyTable. He also maintains community resources that track top PyPI packages, Python version readiness, and free-threaded wheel support, giving the ecosystem useful data at just the right moment. Hugo is also a constant presence in the places where Python happens, from reviewing pull requests to answering questions on Discord and Discourse, always ready with a helpful pointer. A Python Software Foundation Fellow since 2022, Hugo's generosity with his time and expertise makes Python better for everyone who builds with it.
Kevin Horn
Kevin Horn has been a constant presence in the Texas Python community for more than fifteen years. He attended his first PyTexas conference in 2009, became an organizer in 2011, and has helped bring the annual event to the community ever since. In the early 2010s he also became an organizer of the DFW Pythoneers meetup, which he still helps run today, hosting monthly gatherings for over a decade. In 2014, he joined two others in founding the PyTexas Foundation and guiding it through the process of receiving 501(c)(3) status, and he has served as its Vice President ever since.
Kevin is always willing to mentor anyone on any topic, has guided numerous new meetup organizers and attendees, and freely shares advice on community organizing with those who ask. His encouragement has helped other organizers step into leadership roles of their own. Kevin’s warmth is also on display at PyCon US, where he has been a regular since attending his first conference in Dallas in 2006. One year, he made a point of sitting with people he didn't know at every meal, and by the end of the conference he was struggling to find a table where he didn't already know someone. That openness captures what Kevin brings to the community.
Sarah Abderemane
Sarah Abderemane has become a cornerstone of the Django community, with a journey that began with Hacktoberfest and grew into long-term maintainership. After contributing to accessibility work in the Jupyter ecosystem through Read the Docs, she implemented dark mode on the Django website, which led her to become a maintainer of djangoproject.com. She is also a co-founder of Djangonaut Space, a mentorship program that lowers the barrier to entry for new contributors to Django and its ecosystem. Her service to the Django Software Foundation includes chairing the Website Working Group, serving on the Social Media Working Group, and previously contributing to the Fundraising Working Group.
Sarah's impact extends across accessibility, governance, and global community building. As a core member of the Django Accessibility team, she co-authored the 2023 accessibility report and co-led the onboarding of four new team members in 2024. Sarah delivered a keynote on accessibility at PyCon IT and helps organize the Inclusive Web Devroom at FOSDEM. She served on the DSF Board in 2024 and 2025, including as Vice President in 2025, where she led outreach, coordinated working groups, and managed membership. Throughout, Sarah has been a steadfast supporter of the francophone Python and Django communities, including Python Cameroon, helping organizers access resources and visibility and showing up in person at their events. Her work helps ensure that Python and Django are welcoming across both languages and geographies.
