Welcome, Neil McGovern, GNOME Foundation Executive Director!

[Nuritzi Sanchez <nuritzi gnome org>]

Dear Foundation Members, 

After a long period of being without an Executive Director, I'm pleased to announce on behalf of the GNOME Foundation Board the appointment of Neil McGovern.

Neil will officially begin to work for the GNOME Foundation on February 15, 2017 and will operate from the United Kingdom. Please join us in welcoming him! 

For those of you who don't know him, Neil is an experienced leader in Free Software projects and is best known for his role as Debian Project Leader from 2014-15. He has been on the Boards of numerous organizations, including Software in the Public Interest, Inc. and the Open Rights Group. 

Neil has a strong technical background and has contributed to Debian as a developer for over twelve years. He comes most recently from Collabora, a respected open source consultancy, where we worked as an Engineering Manager and received a glowing recommendation from Collabora CEO, Philippe Kalaf. 

The Board believes that Neil is in a good position to foster greater collaboration between GNOME and other Free Software projects. He joins GNOME at an exciting time, with the emergence of new technologies such as Flatpak, Builder, and GTK+4. Neil's experience working with the Debian project will no doubt help us forge closer relations between our two projects, and his experience at Collabora, coupled with his technological expertise, means that he has the knowledge to promote our technologies further.

While not yet directly involved as a contributor, Neil's interest in GNOME began in 2002 when he first tried the GNOME desktop as a user, and he has been following the GNOME project ever since. He attended first GUADEC in A Coruña in 2012, and is looking forward to attending this year's GUADEC in Manchester. 

It has been three years since the GNOME Foundation has had an Executive Director, Karen Sandler. Neil's job will be to support the GNOME project, particularly in terms of fundraising, outreach, and strategy. The Board thanks members of the Executive Director Search Committee, as well as past Board members, for their help finding Neil and other strong candidates for this hiring round.

Neil will be attending FOSDEM in Brussels this weekend (February 4 - 5). The Board encourages Foundation members to speak to Neil at the event and offer him a warm welcome.

In just a few minutes, we will be announcing Neil's joining us to the wider community via a news item on gnome.org, and on social media. Please help us spread the word.

Get ready for an exciting year ahead!

Best, 

Nuritzi 

-- 

Nuritzi Sanchez 

GNOME Foundation 

President, Board of Directors