The Team

PyCascades is organized by members of the Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland Python communities. Our goal is to host a diverse, accessible, and memorable conference.

Feel free to reach out to anyone of us with suggestions, concerns or even just to say that you're excited for PyCascades 2021.

Nina Zakharenko

Conference Chair

Nina is a Software Engineer with a passion for speaking and teaching, and over a decade of experience writing software for companies like Reddit, Meetup, and HBO. She currently focus on Python at Microsoft on the Cloud Developer Advocacy team.

In her spare time, she enjoys snowboarding, hiking, and tinkering with wearable electronics.

Seb Vetter

Conference Chair

Seb has been moving around Western Canada for the last few years. He's explored the Canadian Rockies and recently settled back on the West Coast of British Columbia. He loves contributing to community building in different aspects of life. He's an avid mountain biker and works part-time as an outdoor guide.

Ashia Zawaduk

Program Chair

Ashia is a Lead Engineer at Muck Rack, she's also been involved in community organizing at PyCon Canada, EdmontonPy, and Dev Edmonton Society. She loves colliding ideas, tech communities, leadership, books, math, art, candy.

Britt Gresham

Volunteer Chair

Britt is a Release Engineer at CircleCI living in Portland. He has spent most of his career focusing on infrastructure automation and uses Python daily in his life. In his free time he enjoys cycling, board games, and cooking.

Caito Scherr

Grants Chair

Catherine Nelson

Speaker Coordinator

Eliza Sarobhasa

Sponsorship Chair

Esti Shay

Communications Chair

Esti is a PyLadies PDX event organizer and former PyCascades chair. She works as a software engineer for a nonprofit that is trying to save the world.

Madison Swain-Bowden

Diversity Chair

Madison is a data engineer out of Seattle and an avid Python user. She currently works at Ookla (Speedtest.net), and has worked at and with the Allen Institute for Cell Science and the Broad Institute. In her spare time she can be found baking, building digital tools to help those battling oppression, contributing to open source, petting her cats, or playing video games.

Tania Allard

Sprints Coordinator

Tania is a software engineer based in Manchester, UK. She's obsessed with all things data and automation - especially if they are combined! She is also a massive open source advocate and serial community builder.

Eric Holscher

Emeritus

Eric is co-founder of Read the Docs and

Write the Docs, a director of the Python Software

Foundation, and a proud member of the Portland Python community.

Stargirl Flowers

Emeritus

Stargirl is a Python Software Foundation Fellow, a creator of Python-powered synthesizers, and an advocate for open source software and hardware.