TODO strategic goals and project governance is overseen by a Steering Committee elected on an annual basis. We are pleased to share that several individuals will be joining the TODO Steering Committee in 2023. Their addition will help to continue to TODO’s mission in Open Source Program Office’s knowledge-sharing and adoption worldwide.
Welcome to New Steering Committee Members
TODO woudld like to congratulate and welcome to the Steering Committee three new members. We are grateful and excited to have this group of individuals join the board and bring their unique talents, expertise and perspectives in order to further TODO’s vision of nurturing an open community and vendor-neutral space where Open Source Program Offices Best practices and resources are openly available, shared, and re-used to create knowledge. Bellow are bios of each of our newest members.
Leslie Hawthorn
An internationally known open source strategist and community engagement expert, Leslie Hawthorn has spent her career creating, cultivating, and enabling open source communities. She has driven open source strategy in Fortune 10 companies, pre-IPO startups, and Foundation Boards including senior roles at Red Hat, Google, the Open Source Initiative, and Elastic. As a senior manager in Red Hat’s OSPO, she leads the team responsible for vertical community strategy. A frequent speaker on all topics of open source and digital transformation, Leslie enjoys dreaming about how open source and open standards can create citizen-centric Smart Cities.
Born and raised in Silicon Valley, Leslie has called Europe since 2014 and resides in Bonn, Germany with her daughter, their two canaries, Elle and Nana, and a small cat named Fee.
As the OSPO gains prominence in Europe, I would like to contribute my expertise to the Steering Committee as someone who has gained knowledge of how the OSPO creation exercise is different for European organizations. With my background coming from tech company focused OSPOs in American companies - Google, Red Hat - I believe I can act as an effective bridge/translator for the many constituents who are approaching the organizations for the first time and to help TODO most effectively serve their needs.
Leslie Hawthorn - OSPO at Red Hat
Annania Melaku
Annania Melaku is a Technical Program Manager in the F5 OSPO; established in 2021 and is managing all things open source, innersource, and standards. Since the OSPO is in its infancy, she is focused on building the foundation including using open source predominantly and securely, building an internal community and open source culture, establishing a baseline, and contributing to open source responsibly and strategically. Previously, Annania was Senior Technical Program Manager in the Comcast OSPO where she led the OSS Compliance Program. During that time, she architected and implemented automated solutions for open source license compliance and delivery and performed M&A and investment due diligence. She has experience in the defense & aerospace industry as well as in the telecommunications industry. Annania has worked various roles spanning software engineering, systems engineering, cybersecurity, and program management.
At Comcast I was internally focused and now I am looking to get more involved externally. At F5, I am currently building an OSPO from the ground up and am experiencing some of the challenges that come along with it. Comparing my experiences in both OSPOs I have more perspective on the influences on how we work and what we do. I plan to learn from my peers and share and contribute.
One thing I would like to see or learn more about is how to have hallway conversations virtually. I have attended several virtual conferences including OSSNA and missed out on that aspect of the in-person experience. I’d be interested in how we can build relationships in a virtual world.
Annania Melaku - OSPO at F5
Georg Kunz
Georg is an open source advocate and a long-term contributor to a wide range of open source communities and projects, such as OpenStack, OPNFV, and OpenSSF. He is a member of the Technical Steering Committee of the Anuket project and has been a project lead and TSC member in OPNFV. After working in the Cloud organization at Ericsson for several years, he is now with the Open Source Program Office at Ericsson, focusing on Ericsson’s open source strategy and supporting Ericsson’s transformation to an open source company.
I’d like to serve on the Steering Committee to further broaden the reach of the TODO group and advocate the value of jointly exploring and defining best practices for OSPOs to groups and organizations not yet fully involved in the TODO group.
I have the telecommunication industry in mind, for example, which is adopting open source software at a huge rate while aligning ways of working with more traditional approaches such as standardization. So, as an SC member, I would dedicate my efforts to continue making the TODO group a place for facilitating the cross-industry exchange of experiences and best practices. Hosting an OSPOlogy.live event is the first step in this direction.
Moreover, I am very passionate about open source security - and getting it right. OSPOs play a critical role in communicating within organizations the nuanced challenges around open source security and guiding organizations to address open source security in a proactive and enabling fashion. I am working on this topic at the OSPO @ Ericsson and I would like to carry this momentum into the TODO Group, e.g., by increasing the collaboration with working groups in OpenSSF (e.g., End Users WG), aiming to jointly create guides and best practices documents specifically geared towards OSPOs.
Georg Kunz - Open Source at Ericsson
Congratulations to the new members and thank you to all the 2023 TODO Steering Committee!
Farewell to Outgoing Steering Committee Members
Last but not least, the TODO Group would like to extend a big ‘thanks’ to the outgoing Steering Committee members that served in 2022:
- Dawn Foster
- Stephen Jacobs
- Stephen August
Thanks to their guidance and expertise in open source and OSPOs, they have made outstanding contributions to the project’s governance and the community.