Iqbal Abdullah | 4 MIN READ
August 14, 2026

PSF Board Elections 2026: Three From Our Community Are Running for the PSF Board

Group photo of community members at a conference on a stage with a screen reading "PythonAsia 2026".

It's the time of the year again! The 2026 PSF Board election has four open seats. Nominations closed on August 11. The election begins on September 1.

Three of the nominees are active contributors to the community from our part of the world:

All three have spent years building Python communities in Asia. They are not candidates in the abstract. They are people we have worked alongside, shared stages with, and watched grow local meetups into national conferences.

What I write here is not exhaustive, and is a short version of what each of them has done.

Georgi Ker

Georgi is running for another term after serving on the PSF Board since 2023, including taking on roles such as Treasurer and currently as Vice Chair. She is a PSF Fellow and received the PSF Community Service Award in 2020 for her work in establishing PyLadies Global.

Her community footprint is wide. She co-founded PyLadies Bangkok and has served as Chair of the PSF Diversity and Inclusion Workgroup since 2024, introducing membership processes, monthly meetings, and public office hours. She is an organizer of PyLadiesCon and a member of the EuroPython Code of Conduct team. She has also led or helped organize PyCon Thailand and PyCon APAC 2021.

Georgi is based in Amsterdam now, but much of her community work was rooted in Asia, and she has been explicit that she believes the PSF's global representation remains incomplete.

Kalyan Prasad

Kalyan is a first-time board nominee from Hyderabad, India. His Python community work began in 2019 as a room monitor at PyConf Hyderabad. From there he moved through the ranks: core volunteer, program committee member, Co-Chair in 2022, and now Chair for both the 2025 and 2026 editions. He also served as Co-Chair of PyCon India 2023.

In 2026 he received the PSF Community Service Award for this sustained conference work. He is a member of the PSF Diversity and Inclusion Working Group and has contributed to the NumFOCUS Code of Conduct Working Group and Small Development Grants program. He has also been part of the PyCon JP program team for the past three years and has reviewed for SciPy, EuroPython, and PyCon US.

Kalyan's nomination statement emphasizes a point that sounds familiar to anyone who has organized a local Python event: a healthy community cannot depend indefinitely on the same few people. He has focused on bringing newer volunteers into organizing roles at HydPy and supporting them as they grow.

Yin Lun Calvin Tsang

Calvin is a first-time board nominee from Hong Kong. He is Vice President of Open Source Hong Kong and Conference Chair of PyCon Hong Kong 2026. He has been involved in organizing PyCon Hong Kong since its start in 2015, holding roles from Marketing Lead to Vice Chairman. He also established PyLadies HK last year.

Calvin's work extends beyond Hong Kong. He has served on the PyCon APAC organizing committee and has helped build connections between Python communities in Taiwan, Korea, India, and Japan. His nomination statement focuses on a specific gap: differences in language, geography, resources, and access to international networks still make it hard for local Asia-Pacific communities to connect with the global Python ecosystem.

Professionally he works in technology governance and business development. His combination of grassroots community organizing and strategic experience is what prompted three separate nomination statements in his support.

Why This Matters

East, South, and Southeast Asia together account for a large share of the world's developers. The PSF Board has made progress in recent years, but board-level representation from our region is still not proportionate to the size and activity of our communities.

Having three nominees from Asia does not mean all three will win. There are four seats and a competitive field. But the presence of Georgi, Kalyan, and Calvin on the ballot means our region's concerns — event sustainability, volunteer pipelines, sponsorship access, language barriers, and time-zone equity — are more likely to be heard in board discussions.

What I Want You to Do

If you are a voting member of the PSF, you have a role to play.

  1. Read their nomination statements. The links are above. Take ten minutes to understand what each candidate priorities and how they think about the Foundation's future.
  2. Decide who you will vote for. This is not a popularity contest. It is a governance election. Vote for the people whose judgment you trust and whose priorities match yours. If you're unsure of how to decide who to vote for, I have written one way of doing it in my 2022 blog post: A guide to the PSF board elections 2022: How should you decide?
  3. Vote. The election begins on September 1, 2026. Voting members will receive instructions by email. If you are not sure whether you are a voting member, check your status at psfmember.org and update your communication preferences.

If you are not a voting member, you can still help. Talk about these candidates in your local user groups. Share this post. Nominate people from your community for future elections. The PSF Board is not a distant institution. It is made of people who started out doing exactly what Georgi, Kalyan, and Calvin are doing now: showing up.

Good luck to all three. We are proud you put your names forward!

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