Changes to Core Team and Programmatic Activities at The Carpentries

Announcing Change and Continuity

Yesterday we announced an executive leadership transition at The Carpentries. On 1 September 2026, Dr Kari L. Jordan will step down as Executive Director, and Associate Director Dr Erin Becker will also step down. Dr SherAaron Hurt, currently Director of Workshops and Training, has been appointed by The Carpentries Board of Directors to serve as Interim Executive Director for six months, beginning 2 September 2026.

We also announced that the transition includes changes across the Core Team and affects the programmatic activities of The Carpentries. These changes are part of a broader effort to align The Carpentries’ staffing structure and activities with our current financial resources and to position the organisation for greater long-term sustainability. Throughout this transition, our priority is to maintain continuity in the programs and services most central to our mission, while ensuring our commitments reflect the capacity of our continuing team.

Below, we recognise and celebrate our colleagues who will be departing, introduce the Core Team moving forward, and explain what these staffing changes mean for our programs, services, and community.

Celebrating Departing Core Team Members

As part of the restructure, we announce the departure of two more Core Team members: our Associate Director of Technology, Maneesha Sane, and our Communications Manager, Oscar Masinyana.

Maneesha Sane, Associate Director of Technology

As part of the changes to our Core Team, Maneesha Sane will conclude her time with The Carpentries on 1 October 2026. In the 11 years and across numerous roles at The Carpentries, Maneesha has become a remarkable source of institutional knowledge. Her experience has spanned workshop administration, data and reporting, infrastructure, documentation, and organisational systems, giving her a unique understanding of how our programs, community, and technology intersect. Our Core Team and community have benefited from Maneesha’s ability to make complex technical topics understandable and approachable.

Maneesha’s legacy is spread throughout much of the infrastructure that supports The Carpentries’ work today. She helped strengthen the quality of our workshop and program data, developed automations and reporting processes that made work easier for Core Team and community members, contributed extensively to the development and maintenance of AMY, and helped improve how we track Instructor Training, workshops, and partnerships. As a certified Instructor and Instructor Trainer, she has led pedagogical training and technical workshops across The Carpentries community.

During a major transition, Maneesha stepped into a leadership gap, supporting workflows, guiding contractors, and becoming a trusted point of contact for infrastructure across the organisation. These contributions led to her promotion to Associate Director of Technology. She also led the redesign of our websites and handbook, supported recurring community elections, managed data privacy and security work, and implemented countless documentation and process improvements.

Maneesha has been a generous colleague and mentor, regularly helping others understand our systems, improve their workflows, and build their own technical skills. We are deeply grateful for the care, reliability, and extraordinary breadth of knowledge she has shared with The Carpentries.

Check out the blog posts authored by Maneesha Sane.

Oscar Masinyana, Communications Manager

As part of this transition, Oscar will conclude his time with The Carpentries on 31 August 2026. During his tenure as Communications Manager since May 2023, Oscar has helped shape how The Carpentries communicates our work, connects with our community, and presents itself to the wider open science and open source landscape. His thoughtful, strategic approach has strengthened our communications during periods of significant organisational change and helped us communicate with clarity, care, and consistency.

Oscar’s contributions can be seen across many parts of The Carpentries online presence. He planned and delivered major communications campaigns, including our End-of-year Giving and Reigniting Community campaigns; played an essential role in the redesign and relaunch of The Carpentries’ website and handbook; strengthened our visual identity, newsletter, and social media presence; and with the executive team co-developed our Situation Response and Communications Playbook which has become an important resource for navigating complex communications. Oscar also deepened the connection between our communications and our programs, contributing to the Strategic Plan for 2020-2025 Evaluation Report, partnership program, and Instats pilot.

As a certified Carpentries Instructor and Instructor Trainer, he brought his skills directly into our teaching community, supporting Instructor Training and contributing to the curriculum and teaching demonstration process. We are deeply grateful for the creativity, care, adaptability, and community-centered perspective Oscar has brought to this work, and we celebrate the lasting foundation he has created for The Carpentries’ communications.

Check out the blog posts authored by Oscar Masinyana.

The Core Team’s Next Chapter

As we bid farewell to four Core Team members, The Carpentries Core Team will now comprise five team members, with three continuing on a full-time basis and two shifting to half-time. Below are the continuing Core Team members with their roles and key areas of responsibility moving forward, explaining how their roles and responsibilities will change during this transition.

Dr SherAaron Hurt, Interim Executive Director

Dr SherAaron Hurt assumed the role of Director of Workshops in 2022, after joining The Carpentries in 2017 as a part-time Workshop Administrator and then as Workshop and Logistics Manager. On 2 September, she will take over from Dr Kari L. Jordan as Interim Executive Director of The Carpentries for a 6-month term. In this role, SherAaron will provide organisational leadership and continuity throughout the transition period, working closely with the Board of Directors and continuing Core Team to steward The Carpentries through its next phase.

In collaboration with the Board of Directors, SherAaron will assume immediate responsibility for organisational strategy and operations, financial management, Core Team leadership and support, Board relations, funder and partner relations, and ensuring The Carpentries remains focused on the programs and services most critical to its mission and community during this period of reduced capacity and resources.

Dr Toby Hodges, Director of Curriculum

Toby joined the Core Team as Curriculum Community Developer in 2020 and took on leadership of the Curriculum Team as Director of Curriculum the following year. He will continue in this role full-time.

A certified Carpentries Instructor since 2016, Toby has devoted his efforts in the Core Team to growing and supporting The Carpentries Lesson Developer and Maintainer community. He has led the development, launch, and administration of the Collaborative Lesson Development Training program, and facilitated the growth of The Carpentries Incubator to host over 200 lessons (up from 4 in August 2020). Toby represents The Carpentries in several adjacent Open Science and research computing communities. He has coordinated crucial outreach and community engagement activities, including a series of open discussions and community consultations. The focus of the current series is on the impact of generative AI on the skills that The Carpentries teaches and the ways in which we teach them.

Although the capacity of the Curriculum Team will be reduced by Erin’s departure, Toby will continue to coordinate and facilitate the community’s lesson development and maintenance activities, and the governance of our lesson programs as we enter a phase of strategic renewal for our curricula. He will remain engaged with the coordination and development of the AI Carpentry project.

Dr Robert Davey, Director of Technology

Rob joined the Core Team in 2023 as the Director of Technology, a role he will retain on a full time basis under the new structure.

Since becoming a Carpentries Instructor in 2014 and an Instructor Trainer in 2017, Rob joined the Core Team from a research institution leadership position into his current technical design, development and implementation role. This aligned with his desire to get back into active software engineering and infrastructure management, and he has focused on improving the stability and feature set of critical Carpentries tools and resources.

He has led the Technology Team through both large internal projects, such as the website redesign and harmonising of lesson program website builds, to strategic goals, such as the internationalisation and translation efforts of these sites and our handbook and lessons through Glosario and CrowdIn. He has overseen the testing, customisation, and deployment of key resources such as AMY for volunteer management and Pretix for our centralised event scheduling. He has resolved long-term issues with services like the Etherpad and survey reports site, greatly improving uptimes and resilience including speed improvements across processing, analysis and feeds generation. He guided technical policy for the organisation, for example the development of the Carpentries Generative AI Contributions Policy.

He took on the role of lead Workbench maintainer following on from Dr Zhian Kamvar’s exceptional work into the lesson build and maintenance software, making sure day-to-day builds and community support were priorities, as well as a set of improvements to our GitHub Actions and workflows including official Workbench Docker containers, Glosario integration and new lesson program implementation.

Rob’s focus has always been on making sure the tools and services the Technology Team provides are fit-for-purpose and help the Core Team and community maximise their capacity. As such, both the preemptive and responsive support demands of the role will not be changing into the future. The key areas will remain the Workbench, our cloud infrastructure, and the development and maintenance of mission critical software and websites that support our core programming.

Dr Angelique Trusler, Associate Director of Community

Angelique joined the Core Team in 2019 as the Regional Consultant for Southern Africa, became the African Capacity Development Manager in 2021, the Community Manager in 2024, and was promoted in 2025 to Associate Director of Community. She will continue in this role at a reduced, half-time (20 hours) capacity beginning on 1 October.

As Associate Director of Community at The Carpentries, she leads the Community Engagement Team’s strategy, partnerships, and workshops across Africa and Europe. Her work sits at the intersection of community engagement, open science, and data education.

Going forward, she will support relationship management, tracking, and communications for current and potential Partner organisations. She will also coordinate and manage Carpentries Clippings, our newsletter, as well as our blog, our social media, and other communications needs. Lastly, she will coordinate logistics and manage communications for Self-Organised and Centrally-Organised workshops in Europe and Africa.

Danielle Sieh, Workshops and Training Manager

Danielle joined the Core Team in 2021 as the Workshop Administrator, and was promoted in 2025 to Workshops and Training Manager, a role that expanded her focus to include Instructor development and the leadership of initiatives supporting the Workshops and Instruction Team.

Danielle coordinates logistics and manages communications for Self-Organised and Centrally-Organised workshops in the Americas, Asia, and Australasia, leads and supports the Instructor community through communications, meetings, and resource sharing, and serves as Executive Assistant to The Carpentries Board of Directors.

She will continue in the same role at a reduced capacity, focusing mainly on coordinating workshops and host and Instructor support to help things run smoothly, while sticking more closely to standard workflows and guidelines. Reduced capacity will be half-time (20 hours) beginning 1 October.

What This Means for Carpentries Programming

The Carpentries remains open for learning, teaching, and community participation, and yes, please continue to organise Carpentries workshops! Instructor Training, existing Partnerships, and essential community infrastructure will continue, although our smaller Core Team means that some activities and response times may change. We know community members will have questions about curriculum maintenance, subcommunities, support, and how you can help during this transition, so below is detailed information on what is continuing, changing, or pausing, and where to go for support.

Continuing

These programmes/services will proceed exactly as before:

Partnership and Membership program - support for these programs will continue as usual, including quarterly partnership updates and timely delivery of all partnership benefits.
Workshop administration - full administrative support for Centrally-Organised Workshops and survey administration support for Self-Organised workshops will remain in place. Additionally, support for Genomics workshops will continue as outlined in our Genomics Workshops Terms of Agreement. Response times may be slower than previously, as our workshop administrators, Angelique and Danielle, will be in half-time positions.
Instructor Trainer community support - the Instructor Trainer Leadership Committee will continue to guide our Instructor Trainer community, maintain the Instructor Training curriculum, and host monthly community meetings.
Instructor Trainer Training - will continue to be offered every two years. The next training will be hosted in 2028.
Bi-monthly Instructor community meetings - we will continue to offer regular meetings for our Instructor community to come together, discuss teaching techniques and experiences, and grow their professional skills.
Monthly Maintainer meetings and ongoing support for the Maintainer community will continue uninterrupted.
AI Carpentry coordination - the Curriculum Team’s support for the coordination and development of the AI Carpentry program will continue.
Core technical services - All core technical services will be maintained in as timely a fashion as possible, but support will be limited to UTC timezone working hours.

Continuing, With Changes

These activities will continue, but their delivery will be adjusted:

Newsletter - will be issued quarterly instead of monthly. Each issue will also contain the latest updates for Partners. The last monthly edition will be released on 27 August.
Core lesson support - Data Carpentry, Library Carpentry, and Software Carpentry lessons will continue to be supported, but selected lessons that have low usage will be retired. Details of this will be shared in another update soon.
Learner-Centered Teaching and Short-Format Professional Development sessions - will be run on-demand rather than on a fixed schedule.
Instructor Training events - we will run fewer events per year, but each will allow larger participant cohorts. The same will be true for Welcome Sessions for onboarding new Instructors.
The Carpentries Incubator - support will be reduced to a monthly review of pending lesson-addition proposals.
Workbench feature development - new feature work will be scaled back. Support, bug fixes, and minor enhancements will continue.
Translations and CrowdIn - support will be minimal, and only critical breaking situations will be addressed. Maintenance of The Carpentries CrowdIn instance will continue.
GenAI + Teaching Community of Practice seminars - will be held every other month. We are actively pursuing funding that would allow us to return to hosting monthly sessions. We invite community volunteers interested in helping coordinate this program to get in touch.
HPC Carpentry launch - still proceeding as our fourth lesson program, but on a slightly delayed timeline, with the latest possible launch date of 1 November (original launch was scheduled for 1 September).

Pausing

These activities will be temporarily halted while we focus Core Team capacity on our highest priorities. Each pause indicates the effective date and notes any future reconsideration.

Instructor practice teaching sessions - paused immediately, may resume if staffing levels increase.
Carpentries-sponsored workshops - paused immediately, may resume if staffing levels increase.
Collaborative Lesson Development Training (CLDT) program - paused for at least twelve months. We will honour existing contractual obligations, but new partnership agreements will not include CLDT during this period. Support for the Lesson Developer Trainer community and CLDT curriculum maintenance will also be suspended.
2027 Maintainer Onboarding cycle - cancelled for this year. Maintainers can still step down via the existing Offboarding process. We are grateful to José Niño Muriel, our Maintainer Community Lead, and all Maintainers who will continue to support their lessons through this period.

Concluding

These activities will no longer be offered:

The Carpentries Lab - will close on 31 August 2026. No new lesson submissions will be accepted, and any pending reviews will be closed. Existing documentation (e.g. review checklists) will stay online for reference but will no longer be maintained.
Regular lesson publication cycle - the plan to run a recurring schedule of lesson releases has been shelved indefinitely.
Glosario co-working sessions - no new Glosario co-working sessions will be scheduled. However, translation contributions via GitHub issues and pull requests will continue to be supported.

What’s to Come

We recognise this is a significant transition for The Carpentries, and changes of this scale raise questions about what comes next. We have prepared a leadership transition FAQ that provides additional information and will continue to be updated as further decisions are made. Questions may also be directed to team@carpentries.org.

As we move forward with a smaller Core Team, we will remain focused on stewarding the organisation responsibly, supporting our community, and concentrating our capacity and resources on the programs and services that are most essential to our mission. We are grateful for the patience, care, and continued commitment of our community as we navigate this transition together, and we will continue to communicate openly as plans and priorities shift. We are also prioritising high-impact software development and maintenance tasks directly related to our ongoing programmatic activities

Additionally, early next week we will share a Board resolution on the strategic renewal of our curriculum portfolio. This resolution provides additional clarity about the future of this important area of The Carpentries’ work. This will be one of several opportunities to engage our community in conversation about how The Carpentries evolves from here. While our staffing structure and the scope of some of our activities are changing, our commitment to teaching foundational data and computational skills, supporting our global community, and advancing inclusive, accessible learning remains at the heart of what we do. We look forward to working alongside you to shape a sustainable future for The Carpentries.