PyCascades 2026

Brett Slatkin is the author of Effective Python. He's a Principal Software Engineer at Google, where he's written Python professionally for 20 years. He earned a B.S. in Computer Engineering from Columbia University in the City of New York.

Chantelle is a senior backend software engineer at Cohere working on North, Cohere's enterprise AI platform. She leads development of North’s My Drive feature, a file RAG solution enabling document storage, syncing, and retrieval. Her latest work focuses on optimizing RAG performance through prompt engineering and context management. Previously, Chantelle was a full-stack engineer at Multi (acquired by OpenAI). Chantelle combines product-minded engineering with a passion for AI-driven solutions, bridging technical innovation with user-centric design. Outside of work, Chantelle enjoys exploring food science experiments in her kitchen and training her cat to perform new tricks.

Constance Martineau is a Staff Product Manager at Astronomer and a long-time contributor to the Apache Airflow open-source project, where she’s helped shape features across Airflow 3.

She works at the intersection of data engineering, orchestration, and developer experience — turning complex infrastructure into tools that feel intuitive and fun. When she’s not working on new features, she’s usually automating something else, like her coffee machine, her lights, or (in this case) an “On Air” sign that knows when she’s in a meeting.

Constance lives in Montréal and spends her free time painting, experimenting with Python side projects, and trying (unsuccessfully) to keep her plants alive.

Dave Peck is an independent software developer based in ☀️sunny Seattle, WA. He co-authored PEP 750: Template Strings and helped write the official documentation for t-strings. His first computer was a TI-99/4A; he still thinks the speech synthesizer module was pretty cool.

I’m Ugwu Nnamdi Emmanuel, Vice Regional Executor (Africa) at Black Python Devs. My path into tech started from a background in Human Physiology, and along the way I discovered how powerful communities can be in shaping lives. I now work at the intersection of code and people. Mentoring beginners, supporting diversity, and helping Python developers across Africa find their voice. For me, the best part of Python isn’t the syntax. It’s the people you meet when you choose to grow together.

Herve Viho Aniglo was born in the capital and coastal city, Lome, Togo. His first name "Herve" (pronounced Her-vay) is French for "Army Warrior." The middle name Viho is Cheyenne for "Chief." His last name means a "Person who is tired of waiting" or a "Person who cannot stand still." These are the characteristics of a leader. Everybody knows Herve and his infectious and influential energy. Herve is a well-known networker and connector. He loves to interact with and experiment with different programming languages and technologies. He loves working with data and is considered a data-driven entity by others. He is a musical programmer who can create songs, music, beats, and sounds in a variety of programming languages. He can also draw and create art, pictures, and portraits by coding in different programming languages. He embodies the concept known as "creative coding" and he is on a mission to show the entire world that coding can be fun and that anybody can do it regardless of race, ethnicity, culture, background, etc. Herve has worked on unique projects in the past and he is looking forward to continue working on future exciting projects. Herve is very approachable and generates a warm, friendly aura. He holds his Bachelors degree in Computer Science and his MBA from the University of Memphis. He has a lot of certifications under his belt. In spare time, he enjoys mentoring young, burgeoning developers and teaching children and teenagers how to code.

Justin started his Software Engineering career as a Web Development Boot Camp Instructor where he developed a passion for exciting others with new concepts and empowering individuals with the tools needed to excel in their own right. As an Advocate at Redis, Justin created numerous videos breaking down Data Structures into easy-to-understand, relatable examples with real-world use cases. Now at Elastic, he has expanded into the realm of enhanced search and LLM integrations.

In his spare time, Justin enjoys hiking around the Pacific Northwest, building hobby electronics, and figuring out woodworking by hand.

Laura Meng is an Android developer turned Solutions Engineer who loves exploring how technology connects to real-world problems. She writes code in multiple languages to bridge the gap between engineering and the market. Recently becoming a first-time parent inspired her to find creative ways to blend tech into everyday life.

Mariatta is a Python Core Developer, open source maintainer, and community leader with over 15 years of experience in software development. She is passionate about workflow improvements and automation, as well as building inclusive developer communities.

As a serial conference organizer, Mariatta has helped kickstarted the PyCascades and PyLadiesCon conference.

For her contributions to the Python open source community, she has received the Python Software Foundation Community Service award and Google Open Source Peer Bonus award. She also appears in the official Python Documentary.

In my past lives, I've enjoyed playing guitar and bass, kicking a soccer ball, or playing an occasional video game. In my career, I've been an editor at a non-profit, taught as a pre-school teacher, managed payroll for a professional baseball team, and worked as an analyst/project manager for HR systems. More recently, I've been working as a software engineer for a company called BCM One.

I also code Python by night, which is what happens when there's not enough time during the day to poke around and break things. In the past couple of years, I've presented several talks/tutorials at PyCon US, DjangoCon US, Python Web Conference, North Bay Python, PyGotham, PyOhio, and others. Sometimes I neglect/blog on my website Python By Night, and start (or abandon) too many side projects.

Michelle is a Senior Software Engineer with 16 years of professional experience. An art school graduate, she started in engineering support and, through self-study, grew into her role at Netflix. She thrives in technical leadership positions, solving unique business challenges with diverse teams. This includes platform infrastructure for fellow engineers, pipelines for VFX artists, and ordering systems for restaurateurs. Michelle is deeply passionate about contributing to the broader tech community, having spoken at over 35 conferences worldwide, coaching engineers, founders, and VCs, and offering thought leadership through an upcoming book, podcasts, articles, classes, and videos to inspire, educate, and provide a warm welcome into a flourishing community.

Rodrigo Silva Ferreira is a QA Engineer at Posit, where he contributes to the quality and usability of open-source tools that empower data scientists working in R and Python. He focuses on both manual and automated testing strategies to ensure reliability, performance, and an excellent user experience.

Rodrigo holds a BSc. in Chemistry with minors in Applied Math and Arabic from NYU Abu Dhabi and a MSc. in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Pittsburgh. Multilingual and globally minded, he enjoys working at the intersection of data, science, and technology — especially when it means building tools that help people better understand and navigate the world through its increasingly complex data.

I help people fall in love as a senior backend engineer at Coffee Meets Bagel (it's not a cafe). I also previously did a short stint in cybersecurity, first in network security and then contributing to a new product for security/monitoring in the IoT/OT sector, which is where I first started my Python journey. Offline, I love dancing, shredding pow, and vegan pastries.

Sarah has spent most of her career developing technology in the lab, from virtual reality hardware to satellites. She got her PhD in Physics by starting plasma fires with lasers, Python, and Jupyter Notebooks. She has also written tech books for folks of all ages, including ABCs of Engineering and Learn Quantum Computing with Python and Q#. As a Cloud Developer Advocate for Python at Microsoft and a Python Software Foundation Fellow, she finds all kinds of new ways to build and break OSS tools for data science and machine learning. When not at her split ergo keyboard, she loves boating in the Seattle area, laser cutting everything, and playing with her German Shepard, Chewie.

Stefanie Molin is a software engineer at Bloomberg in New York City, where she tackles tough problems in information security, particularly those revolving around data wrangling/visualization, building tools for gathering data, and knowledge sharing. She is also a core developer of numpydoc and the author of “Hands-On Data Analysis with Pandas: A Python data science handbook for data collection, wrangling, analysis, and visualization,” which is currently in its second edition and has been translated into Korean and Chinese. She holds a bachelor’s of science degree in operations research from Columbia University's Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, as well as a master’s degree in computer science, with a specialization in machine learning, from Georgia Tech. In her free time, she enjoys traveling the world, inventing new recipes, and learning new languages spoken among both people and computers.

Stephen was a data scientist before there were data scientists. With a Masters degree in Computer Science and another in Statistics, he has spent 15 years owning the engineering and data skills required to do anything data a company needs. He has built 2 data science teams from scratch, and is currently the only Machine Learning Engineer at a small company developing and educating on best practices.

Experienced senior software engineer with a proven track record in full stack development and a strong focus on problem solving and software design. Proficient in technologies such as Typescript, Go, Python, NodeJS, and React, with a background in leading and mentoring development teams. Recognized for contributions in optimizing systems and driving innovative solutions.

Interests include technology, music, travel, photography, fitness, video games.

Trey Hunner helps Python developers level-up their skills through corporate trainings and through self-paced Python learning with Python Morsels. Get in touch with Trey to improve your (or your team's) Python skills.

Failed comedian. CPython Developer in Residence. Wannabe musician. Python 3.8 & 3.9 release manager. Co-host of the core.py podcast. Original creator of Black. Dad.