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Hello!

My name’s Débora and I’m a member of the Python community in Brazil. I am the co-founder of Brazil’s national chapter, PyLadies Brazil, which is now the biggest chapter in Latin America. I’m a PSF contributing member, one of PyLadies Brazil managers, and currently helping with the global PyLadies interim leadership. I’m also in the PSF translation working group, working on the internationalization of the Python documentation for Portuguese speakers. Since 2014 I’ve been working with PyLadies, teaching Python, managing the community and organizing events.

For the past years, I’d like to highlight two special events I was part of the team responsible for. The first one, which is listed below, is the first PyLadies Brazil national conference, in 2018. To celebrate the 5 year anniversary of our national chapter, we had this vision of an event for people who identify themselves as women, organized by women, with women speaking and attendance of 100% women. I was the chair of this conference, working from the call for papers, finding a venue, securing sponsorship, estimating budgets for meals and swag, and finally supporting and managing the small staff team we had. Back then, this conference gathered about 150 women, free of charge, with amazing technical and community management related content. All this volunteer-based work was inspiring to other women to continue with the conference that had its second edition last year.

The second milestone in my involvement and work within PyLadies Brazil was the management of our crowdfunding campaign “PyLadies at Python Brazil”, our national Python conference, for the past two years. In this campaign, PyLadies members from all Brazilian chapters can answer a form about their involvement in the community, if they are first time goers to the conference, if they are going to present a talk or tutorial, among other information, and a committee decides how to prioritize the financial aid amongst applicants. Considering that Brazil is a continental country, it is complicated for most of our PyLadies members that are scattered all over the country to participate in this conference, due to all the costs that come with it. Since 2016, we’ve held crowdfunding campaigns and for the past two years, I’ve been working on management of the campaign, opening the application submission forms, estimating budgets for the rewards, helping the people who were contemplated with the financial aid to find the best means for transportation and lodging to participate of the conference. The campaign is an important achievement for the community because it shows how all the community works together, both organizing everything and helping financially. The Brazilian Python community fosters the inclusion and diversity in its largest national conference.

In a nutshell, this work takes a lot of free time, which makes me believe how precious it is to do something like this, we’re investing our time, our most treasured resource, to teach, advise and do outreach.

Python community work 1. PyLadies Brazil co-founder (2014) 2. Django Girls Natal organizer (since 2017) 3. First PyLadies Brazil Conf chair (2018) 4. Python Brazil conference co-organizer (2018) 5. PyLadies at Python Brazil crowdfunding campaign manager (2018 and 2019) 6. Python Brazil conference keynote (2019) 7. PSF Community Service Award winner (2019)

Being part of the Python community - which is only so strong because of the active involvement of its members - has brought a lot of personal growth, and it is a different way of giving back from so much I have received. I hope to be given the opportunity to broaden my participation and involvement by holding a seat at the PSF board.

Goals as a board member Work on PyLadies having a smooth relation with the PSF, as a partner to work on how to bring more diversity and inclusion for the Python ecosystem in general Support the work that has been done in order to have more official PSF and Python content translated into other languages, also encouraging the creation of non-English content. * Bring more outreach for Python in Education programs, especially in Latin America