My early career saw me working as a software engineer and technical leader across multiple startups. But it was my passion for education that led me to devote the last 5+ years to re-imagining how we teach people to code professionally.

Over the last half decade I have had the opportunity to work in the Non-profit space and build alternative education systems from the ground up. Along the way I have learned a lot about how to teach well, how to build organisational systems that teach well, and how traditional education systems fall short.

I lead the Guild of Educators, a community I founded to empower tech educators through shared resources, support, and evidence-based teaching practices. Additionally, I run Prelude, where I provide rigorous technical training, as well as consultation, and coaching for technical educators, and organisations with education functions (for example grad programs and similar).

I also founded Prelude.tech where I run advanced Python and "soft skills" training.

Inessa Pawson has spent much of her career designing and delivering commercial digital products across diverse industries. Discovering the transformative impact of building in the open and becoming an active contributor to the Scientific Python ecosystem have entirely reshaped her professional mission. In her current role as Open Source Program Manager and Community Architect at OpenTeams, Inessa is leading cross-organizational initiatives centered on development of sustainable collaboration models between industry, academia, and open source ecosystems. She is perpetually fascinated by incentive design, collaborative intelligence, and jazz.

I am the Founder & CEO of Sparrow, software that makes it simple for companies to provide their employees with leave, such as family leave.

Executive Director & Founder of pyOpenSci

I break down technical and social barriers to open science so scientists everywhere can spend less time struggling with tools and more time advancing discovery.