# Steering Council Nomination: Kushal Das (2020 term) **URL:** \ **Category:** Steering Council Nominations\ **Tags:** election\ **Created:** [November 15, 2019, 1:57pm UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/steering-council-nomination-kushal-das-2020-term/2662 "2019-11-15T13:57:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![kushaldas](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discuss.python.org/kushaldas/32/75_2.png) [@kushaldas](https://discuss.python.org/u/kushaldas)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2019, 1:57pm UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/steering-council-nomination-kushal-das-2020-term/2662/1 "2019-11-15T13:57:27Z")
**Nominated by:** self after encouragement by Brett. I am nominating myself to the Steering Council. I became a core developer in 2014, and worked on different aspects of the standard library, including unittest and mock. I am also the author of the draft “Local Packages Directory” PEP (PEP 582) along with many other community members. From 2008, I also maintain a free online book to help new programmers with Python. **Affiliations** I work as a public interest technologist in a non-profit called [Freedom of the Press Foundation](https://freedom.press), where we work to preserve and strengthen First and Fourth Amendment rights guaranteed to the press through a variety of avenues, including the development of encryption tools, documentation of attacks on the press, training newsrooms on digital security practices, and advocating for the public’s right to know. My main day job is to maintain [SecureDrop](https://securedrop.org) project. SecureDrop is an open source whistleblower submission system that media organizations can install to securely accept documents from anonymous sources. It is written in Python. My day job allows me to continue contributing to the various upstream communities. All the work I do are also free and open source software. **Background:** I’ve helped out many free and open source software projects as a volunteer for around 15 years. A major portion of that time I also worked on many free software projects as my day job. Back in 2004 I started a Linux Users’ Group in Durgapur, India, and through the same I am organizing an online training to get more upstream contributors for 12 years. Enabling others to contribute to larger projects and also see the viewpoints of different groups of users, are the big motivations for contributing to various projects. I am also part of the core team of the Tor Project and a long time contributor to the Fedora Project. From 2014 (except 2015 when random module decided not to choose me) I have also served as a Director of the Python Software Foundation, and helped out as a staff volunteer in PyCon US. I am also the co-chair for the PSF grants working group. There are various other conferences all across the world where I take active part. In 2017 I chaired PyCon Pune, with a special goal to increase contributor base outside of the normal US/EU zone. The dedicated devsprint served that purpose, and slowly more local Conferences are picking up the trend of focusing on actively participating in the community design & development process, rather than being passive consumers of open source technology. This is a long term process, but, it will help to increase the geographic diversity of our contributor base. **Online Presence** Blog: [https://kushaldas.in](https://kushaldas.in) Github: [https://github.com/kushaldas/](https://github.com/kushaldas/) Mastodon: [https://toots.dgplug.org/@kushaldas](https://toots.dgplug.org/@kushaldas) ---
**Author:** ![EWDurbin](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discuss.python.org/ewdurbin/32/3103_2.png) [@EWDurbin](https://discuss.python.org/u/EWDurbin)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2020, 1:11pm UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/steering-council-nomination-kushal-das-2020-term/2662/2 "2020-10-29T13:11:01Z")
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**Author:** ![EWDurbin](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discuss.python.org/ewdurbin/32/3103_2.png) [@EWDurbin](https://discuss.python.org/u/EWDurbin)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2020, 1:13pm UTC](https://discuss.python.org/t/steering-council-nomination-kushal-das-2020-term/2662/3 "2020-10-29T13:13:24Z")