Congratulations to Our New PSF Fellows: Takanori Suzuki and Sayantika Banik
When the Python Software Foundation announces a new batch of Fellows, our habit is the same as everyone else's. We scroll through the list looking for names I recognise. Most quarters we find one. Sometimes none.
The Q2 2026 batch had two from our region!
The PSF announced the latest cohort of Fellows in July, and two of the people on that list are from our part of the world:
- Takanori Suzuki from Japan
- Sayantika Banik from India
That makes five PSF Fellows from East, South, and Southeast Asia in a single year. If you have been counting (and on this site, we count), you know that is still not a normal distribution. But it is starting to look like a pattern.
Congratulations to both. The recognition is earned.
Takanori Suzuki
Takanori Suzuki is the Chair of the PyCon JP Association and has been organising PyCon JP events since the very first PyCon mini JP in January 2011. He served as Chair of PyCon JP from 2014 to 2016 and as Co-Chair of PyCon JP 2024. He is also a Director at BeProud Inc., where his title is "Python Climber."
Takanori's footprint in the Japanese Python community is everywhere. He runs the Python Boot Camp programme, teaching Python to beginners in cities across Japan. He organises the Python mini Hack-a-thon and founded the Python Bouldering Club, because apparently one community is not enough. He is a frequent speaker at international conferences, including PyCon US 2025.
This is not his first PSF recognition. In 2021, Takanori was part of the PyCon JP Association team that received the PSF Community Service Award for raising more than $25,000 USD for the PSF through charity talks. The Fellowship is a natural next step for someone whose work has been sustained, specific, and deeply local for well over a decade.
Sayantika Banik
Sayantika Banik is an organizer for PyLadies Bangalore and a member of the PSF Diversity and Inclusion Work Group. She has served on the board of the Django Software Foundation and contributes to the global R-Ladies team. Her review work spans the Journal of Open Source Software, EuroPython, and PyLadiesCon.
Sayantika's community work is grounded in mentorship. She has been a mentor at PyConUS, PyLadiesCon, DigitalBoost, and Learn IT Girl. She has spoken at Google Women Techmakers and Global Diversity CFP meetups. She helps people — particularly early-career developers and underrepresented groups — find their way into open source and into Python.
India has one of the largest developer populations in the world. Sayantika has been one of the people making sure that population is not just large but also welcoming.
What This Means
Five Fellows from the region in one year is not an accident. It is the result of more people in our communities learning how the nomination process works, and then actually doing it.
As I wrote in April, East, South, and Southeast Asia together account for roughly 4% of all PSF Fellows against a developer population that is dramatically larger than that share. The gap is not a diversity problem in the abstract. It is an opportunity problem. The committees are not gatekeeping. They are working with the inboxes they have.
Takanori and Sayantika are proof that the mechanism works. Now the rest of us need to make sure they are not the last.
What I Want You To Do After Reading This
Three things, in this order.
- Send a congratulations to Takanori or Sayantika if you know them, or even if you only recognise their work from a distance. The recognition lands harder when it comes from peers.
- Write down the name of one person in your local Python community whose work has been overlooked. Just one.
- Nominate them via the PSF Fellows page before the end of this year.
That is how the percentage moves. Through a few hundred of us, scattered across the region, each writing down one name and submitting it.
Congratulations again to our two new Fellows. We are proud of you, and we are watching to see who you bring up next.