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PSF Fellow Nominations

PSF Fellow Nominations are added to this page. Please send your nomination to psf-fellow@python.org .

More info about the nomination process can be found here: https://www.python.org/psf/fellows/

Nominations

Please add new nominations here and also post them to the psf-members mailing list.

Example Entry: Joe User

I, John Doe, propose that Joe User be recognized as a Fellow of the Python Software Foundation, due to his significant contributions to the Python community as a co-founder of the PyCon Foobar regional conference, a lead organizer for the 2011 and 2012 editions of the Marsian Python community's flagship Python conference, MarsPython and as a long-term contributor to international collaborative efforts amongst the Marsian Python community.

2025 Q4 Nominations

Aritra Pal

I, Anna Wronka, propose that Aritra Pal be recognized as a Fellow of Python Software Foundation. I write this in the capacity of a Director at First Citizens Bank with Aritra Pal reporting directly to me. Being one of the fastest growing banks in the US, First Citizens relies heavily on automation to ensure efficient & coherent operations. Over the years, Aritra has been instrumental in creating critical finance based and complex modelling applications through Python. These applications are critical to the daily and strategic operations of the bank, as many of them are based on regulatory requirements. For these applications, Aritra has ensured not only the correct functionality but also the critical security aspects, through application of encryption-based login details, timeout based features etc. Additionally Aritra has been instrumental in setting up the Python infrastructure from scratch, including AZDO repository and code pipeline, creating and setting up custom libraries and utilities to enable sharing by multiple teams, setting up different environments and creating guardrails, such as package formats, automated test scripts and detailed documentation to ensure all Python implementation and use adhere to the best practices and are thoroughly tested. Post setup, Aritra has contributed towards multiple training sessions with the team and beyond to ensure a wider Python adoption within the bank, with the goal of seamless new user onboarding while ensuring that users are aligned with the established best practices and guardrails.

As an ongoing proponent of Python use in the bank, Aritra plays an active role in timely reviewing the Python utilities and custom functions, to ensure that the custom utilities and functions gets updated with the latest user requirements, updating the python wiki/guide while championing the use of Python and onboarding more users within the Python fold. Aritra also constantly attempts to find key areas of improvement, for e.g. establishing use of polars based dataframes and operations for heavy database related activities to improve processing times for users etc. Aritra has also been instrumental in addressing known security vulnerabilities for certain python libraries in coordination with the IT infrastructure team.

Lastly, in order to enable the acceptance of Python within the team and bank, Aritra has also been instrumental in enabling code translations to Python, with one of the key examples being converting a key R based modelling application to Python with updated features, thus establishing a more diverse and rich Python base ecosystem within the bank.

All the above efforts have led to a much wider adoption of Python within the bank through ease of onboarding and cross-sharing of applications between the different teams. I believe this nomination to be the next key logical step in Aritra's career aspirations which will enable him to connect with like-minded enthusiasts and help usher in those learnings/advancements to our team and the bank as a whole.

Inessa Pawson

Selected in Q4 of 2025

I, Noa Tamir, propose that Inessa Pawson be recognized as a Fellow of the Python Software Foundation, due to her significant and consistent contributions to the Python community as:

- NumPy Steering Council member (2021 - present) and key contributor (2019 - present) - Scientific Python Project SPEC Steering Committee member and contributor (2022 - present) - Maintainers Summit at PyCon US organizer (2020 - present) - SciPy conference organizer (2020 - present) - PyLadies South Florida founder and organizer (2019 - present) - PySWFL founder and organizer (2020 - present) - pyOpenSci Advisory Board member (2023 - present) - CHAOSS Science and Research Working Group co-chair (2023 - present)

Her contributions and achievements were previously recognized by: 2019 NumPy New Contributor Award 2024 NumFOCUS Community Leadership Award

Mia Bajić

Selected in Q4 of 2025

I, Cristián Maureira-Fredes, nominate Mia Bajić for her exhaustive contributions to the Python community, specifically focusing on the Czechia community and EuroPython conference. Mia has been the main organizer of the Prague Python meetups since 2021, organized a Python Pizza event in 2024, and was in charge of many tasks during PyCon CZ 2023 including speaker management, media communications, and web development. Mia also joined the EuroPython conference as an organizer in 2023, 2024 and 2025, taking care of PyLadies events,workshops, speaker dinner, communication, design, programme, and many more things. She joined the EuroPython Society board in 2024 and has been there since.

Besides all the organizing she is doing, she has been also a speaker in many conferences including PyCon US, PyCon UK, PyCon FR, PyCon Namibia, PyCon IE, PyCon CZ, EuroPython, and many others.

Mia is a person focused on having a conference that includes many people, paying attention on how to push for underrepresented groups in different communities, and highlighting people that deserve some recognition. She is very good at taking ownership and being accountable for all her responsibilities, which is not a very common trait in the different communities that I have been around.

Rakesh Mittapally

I, Hemachandra Ayodhya, Senior Manager at AARP with over 20 years of experience in the IT industry, proudly nominate Rakesh Mittapally to be recognized as a Fellow of the Python Software Foundation, in honor of his exceptional contributions to Python-driven innovation within AARP and the broader technology community. Rakesh has led numerous initiatives leveraging Python for infrastructure automation, cloud optimization, and data analytics modernization. His work includes developing custom Python scripts to streamline AWS operations, automate disaster recovery, and enhance BI platform performance—resulting in improved system reliability and reduced operational costs. He also served as a lead speaker at the 7th International Conference on Communication and Computational Technologies, where he presented advanced Python concepts such as context managers, error handling, file operations, and asynchronous programming. Rakesh’s leadership in integrating Python with platforms like MicroStrategy, Tableau, and AWS has empowered teams to adopt scalable, maintainable solutions while fostering a culture of data-driven decision-making. His contributions reflect a strong commitment to technical excellence, knowledge sharing, and community impact. I strongly recommend Rakesh Mittapally for Fellow membership based on his technical expertise, thought leadership, and continued innovation in the Python ecosystem.

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I, Thiyaghu Muthuswamy, AWS Principal Architect at AARP with over 21 years of experience in the information technology industry, am honored to nominate Mr. Rakesh Mittapally for recognition as a Fellow of the Python Software Foundation.Having worked closely with Rakesh, I have witnessed firsthand the depth, breadth, and impact of his contributions to the Python ecosystem—both within AARP and across the broader technology community. His technical expertise, leadership, and unwavering commitment to open-source principles have made him a driving force in promoting Python as a tool for innovation, education, and collaboration.

Rakesh exemplifies the spirit of the PSF Fellowship through his sustained technical excellence, community-oriented mindset, and forward-looking innovation. His work has consistently demonstrated how Python can be leveraged not only as a programming language but as a strategic enabler of enterprise transformation. At AARP, Rakesh has led the design and implementation of Python-based automation frameworks that have significantly improved operational efficiency, reduced manual overhead, and enhanced the scalability of our cloud-native data platforms.

His expertise spans a wide array of advanced Python concepts, including but not limited to:

• Decorators and metaprogramming techniques for dynamic behavior injection

• Concurrency and parallelism models for high-throughput data processing

• Descriptors and the protocol for custom attribute management

• Context managers and the statement for resource-safe execution

• Metaclass programming for framework-level extensibility

• Deep understanding of memory management and Python object internals

These capabilities have been instrumental in architecting robust, maintainable, and high-performance systems that support mission-critical workloads at scale.

Beyond his technical acumen, Rakesh is a recognized thought leader and mentor. He has authored internal best practice guides on Python development, conducted workshops on asynchronous programming and