Project Jupyter’s 2025 Executive Council Elections
Project Jupyter recently completed its 2025 Executive Council (EC) election, marking an important transition in its leadership. The newly elected members — Afshin Darian, Chris Holdgraf, and Rick Wagner — will serve two-year terms, helping guide strategic and operational direction for Project Jupyter.
- Rick Wagner, San Diego Supercomputer Center (2025–2027)
- Afshin Darian, QuantStack (2025–2027)
- Chris Holdgraf, 2i2c (2025–2027)
- Ana Ruvalcaba, Cal Poly State University San Luis Obispo (2024–2026)
- Jason Grout, Databricks (2024–2026)
- Zach Sailer, Apple (2024–2026)
Who Are the Newly Elected EC Members?
The three elected members bring deep expertise and long-standing contributions to Jupyter:
- Afshin Darian was part of the inaugural Executive Council in 2023 and is continuing in his role as an EC member. He has contributed to Jupyter’s transition to the Linux Foundation, alongside his work on the architecture of Jupyter and accessibility.
- Chris Holdgraf has played a key role in JupyterHub, Binder, and Jupyter Book, helping to sustain and grow these vital subprojects. He is also the executive director of a non-profit called 2i2c that manages JupyterHub infrastructure for communities in research and education.
- Rick Wagner has been active in Jupyter’s Security Subproject, advocating for secure development practices and leading major security initiatives.
Their collective experience spans technical innovation, community governance, security, and sustainability, ensuring that Jupyter continues to evolve in a way that serves users, contributors, and the broader ecosystem. Darian, Chris, and Rick will join the members serving in their current two-year terms, Jason Grout, Ana Ruvalcaba, and Zach Sailer. Together, the EC members represent industry, academic, and non-profit organizations.
Creating Open, Sustainable, Leadership
When Jupyter was created, it followed a “Benevolent Dictator for Life” (BDFL) style of governance that was popular in open source communities at the time. Throughout the 2010s, the project learned (along with many others in the open source ecosystem) that BDFL models for complex projects are not sustainable for both the project and for its contributors. As a result Jupyter began a long-term initiative to move away from its BDFL decision-making structure. It began by adopting a Steering Council model, where a group of peers made consensus-based decisions across the entire project. This distributed Jupyter’s decision-making authority, but did not efficiently represent the breadth and complexity of Jupyter’s ecosystem.
In 2022, Project Jupyter took the next step towards formalizing and decentralizing its governance. It adopted a more dynamic, distributed, and community-driven structure. Jupyter’s governance model guides the development of over a dozen distinct software components and several groups focused on specific activities, including accessibility and security. Software design and development is handled by individual Subprojects, with each Subproject typically responsible for one or more software components or packages. Subprojects elect representatives to the Software Steering Council which has jurisdiction over software-related decisions across Project Jupyter. The Executive Council is chosen via elections and has the ultimate responsibility for all aspects of Project Jupyter, including its software, finances, trademark, operations, etc. In 2024, this extended to the creation of the Jupyter Foundation, a directed fund of the Linux Foundation 501(c)(6) whose purpose is to raise, budget and spend funds in support of Project Jupyter and its mission. The Foundation Governing Board controls the resources of the Foundation, and works to build a healthy collaboration between the Jupyter community, Jupyter leadership, and members of the Jupyter Foundation.
Jupyter recently completed its 2025 election for the Executive Council. This election is especially significant because it marks the first time that Fernando Pérez and Brian Granger, two of Jupyter’s founding figures, will not serve in the executive leadership body of the project. Their voluntary departure from the EC reflects their confidence in the governance model established in 2022 and is an indication that the new model is progressing toward its goal: creating a self-sustaining leadership structure where contributors from across the Jupyter ecosystem can contribute their talents. Going forward, Brian will continue to be involved in Jupyter’s software and will serve on the Governing Board of the Jupyter Foundation. Fernando will remain actively involved with various parts of the Jupyter ecosystem, including JupyterHealth, MyST, Jupyter uses in science and education through 2i2c, Jupyter-AI, and the nascent GeoJupyter (independent) community effort.
What This Means for Jupyter’s Future
The success of this election signals a healthy, evolving open-source project, where leadership is dynamic, inclusive, and community-driven. It shows that Jupyter’s governance changes have not only ensured continuity but have also empowered new voices to take on leadership roles to serve the community.
The departure of Fernando and Brian from official leadership positions is not an end, but a milestone — a testament to our vision for an open, thriving, and community-led project.
The Jupyter community now looks ahead to the next era of innovation, collaboration, and sustainability with support from all of its contributors.
