Megan Byrd-Sanicki

Manager, Research & Operations, Open Source Program Office at Google

Number of years as an open source contributor: 10

Projects or communities: Drupal, Open Source Initiative, Go, Linux Foundation, SustainOSS, Covid Act Now, FOSS Responders

Summary of contributions:

Megan’s inspiration for getting involved with open source is the alignment with her own values of wanting to create a better world. Megan has a very kind heart and a genuine passion for helping others achieve their full potential whether that be on an individual level or that of a business. Open source is an avenue for her to impact the lives of many through the creation of sustainable jobs and to unlock the tools to build better systems that connect all of us. She believes open source is the winning choice for moving the technology industry forward and improving our world.

Megan’s work as the Executive Director of the Drupal Association is a leading reason why the Drupal community is strong. Megan helped define revenue models inline with community principles established collectively with community members. She focused on sustainable contributions, contributor growth, and employment opportunities through a global training program, mentorship program, job fairs, and CxO days with presentations by businesses using Drupal. Megan developed partnerships between Drupal and major open source offices at Google, Microsoft, and more.

Megan redesigned Drupal's code of conduct to align with industry best practices and helped promote diversity and inclusion in the Drupal project. She championed greater recognition of non-code contributors to the success of open source software. When Megan is at a code sprint or working with the community, you can see the level of caring that she has and how much she wants to support all community members by providing a solid foundation for them to continue their software, documentation, support, or other contributions to open source.

As the Manager, Research & Operations at Google Open Source Program Office, Megan works across Google to aggregate resources and lessons learned and share them with the industry to further strengthen Google’s open source citizenship and commitment to making open source more sustainable. Megan also serves on the board of directors for the Open Source Initiative, with the goal to strengthen the leadership in open source that the organization offers to projects and businesses around the globe. Megan’s impact can be felt around open source communities including Go, Linux Foundation efforts, and SustainOSS wherein she has led leadership summits, advised sustainability initiatives, and helped build stronger community-to-corporate partnerships. Megan started a leadership retreat for women in technology and open source to help more women find the support and fellowship for having successful careers in open source.

Megan brings her passion, experience, expertise, intellect, and skill at networking to open source. She uses all of these to identify the ways to bring sustainability and stability to communities and businesses and to elevate all participants.

What she hopes to accomplish in the next year and beyond:

Megan will continue working on open source sustainability and on supporting companies in adopting principles of open source collaboration through her work with Google, Open Source Initiative, and Sustain OSS. Megan’s focus on sustainability is a much needed corrective in an environment that often champions efforts and habits known to lead to contributor burnout. On the financial side of sustainability, it's also the case that projects need revenue to sustain their own infrastructures and cultivate long-term contributors and users. More open source projects could become stronger and more enduring with the leadership and guidance from Megan.

Megan continues to show her care for people’s wellbeing by addressing new challenges presented by COVID-19. She is involved with Covid Act Now, which does real-time data modeling of how the spread of COVID-19 affects hospital capacity in the U.S., and with FOSS Responders, a centralized initiative to support open source communities as they have to cancel physical events and move them to virtual mode.