Welcome to our Newest Lesson Maintainers!

I am thrilled to share the news that our latest cohort of Lesson Maintainers has completed their onboarding and are now poised to provide valuable support across The Carpentries curricula. Nineteen individuals participated in the comprehensive three-hour onboarding program, which included a wide range of goals and objectives. These included gaining a better understanding of The Carpentries’ vision and goals for lesson maintenance, connecting with other Maintainers and the larger Maintainer community, and developing the necessary skills to create a welcoming and inclusive environment for all contributors. Additionally, participants gained valuable hands-on experience with core technical skills for lesson maintenance.

We are thrilled to welcome these enthusiastic new members to our Maintainer community and are eager to collaborate with them, as well as our continuing Maintainers, in the months to come. Their contributions will be invaluable in our mission to provide high-quality educational resources to learners around the world.

Our new Maintainers are:

For Data Carpentry - Ecology

• Adam Mansur
• Aswathi Surendran
• Benjamin Tovar
• James Azam
• Jay Lee

For Data Carpentry - Social Sciences

• April Moreno
• Bernard Kwame Solodzi
• Jean Baptiste Fankam Fankam
• Johanna Bayer

For Data Carpentry - Geospatial

• Alber Sánchez
• Johanna Bayer

For Data Carpentry - Genomics

• Heidi Steiner
• Paul Smith
• Travis Wrightsman
• Valentina Hurtado-McCormick

For Library Carpentry

• Freddy Chia
• Kevin French

For Software Carpentry

• Hugo Gruson
• Isaac Jennings
• Martino Sorbaro

I also want to give a big thank you to three people who have played an important role in supporting our community of Maintainers. Vini Salazar, as The Carpentries Maintainer Community Lead, contributed a lot to planning and developing our curriculum, and independently led an onboarding cohort. Toby Hodges created and led a GitHub skill-up program that helped new Maintainers get up to speed. Zhian Kamvar provided valuable support on onboarding calls and behind the scenes. We truly appreciate the hard work and dedication of Vini, Toby, and Zhian, and their contributions have helped to make our community stronger and more effective.

Finally, I want to send thanks to all those who have served as lesson Maintainers over the past year and are now stepping down from the role. Thank you to Akshay Paropkari, Amanda Charbonneau, Angela Zoss, Asela Wijeratne, Azalee Bostroem, Brian Seok, Christopher Erdmann, Clarke Iakovakis, David DeMuth, François Michonneau, Jacqueline Frisina, Jemma Stachelek, Juan Fung, Katy Felkner, Kristina Hettne, Liz Stokes, Luca Di Stasio, Marissa Block, Pauline Karega, Saba Ferdous, Sangram Sahu, Sara El-Gebali, Sathya Pandalai, Silvana Pereyra, Silvia Di Giorgio, Stacey Borrego, Thomas Guignard, Till Sauerwein, Tobias Busch, Trevor Burrows, and Valerie Gartner for all of your contributions to The Carpentries lessons and for creating a positive environment for contributors across our community.