Leah Wasser is the Executive Director and founder of pyOpenSci, a community of 400+ researchers, engineers, and maintainers working to make developing and maintaining research software more accessible, sustainable, and human. Through open peer review — with 60+ packages reviewed to date — contributor mentorship, and accessible training, pyOpenSci helps scientists build better software and develop the technical skills to participate in open source.

Leah's work sits at the intersection of open source, open science, and open education — with inclusion at the center. She organises the Maintainers Summit at PyCon US and believes the communities behind research software matter as much as the code itself.

As GenAI reshapes how software gets built, Leah is focused on protecting the human networks and reciprocal relationships that make open source sustainable — not just technically, but socially.

She has built nationally recognised programs at the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) and the University of Colorado Boulder. Leah holds a PhD in ecology and is an active open-source maintainer. In her free time, you can find Leah on the trails with her rescue pup or at the gym lifting weights and swinging around bars and rings.