Board of Directors Candidacy - Felipe Borges

[Felipe Borges <felipeborges gnome org>]

Name: Felipe Borges
Email: felipeborges gnome org
Nick: feborges
Company affiliation: Red Hat

Dear Foundation,

I am announcing my candidacy for the GNOME Foundation board of
directors election. I have been involved with GNOME since 2009,
contributing translations, code, and outreach. I summarized my GNOME
journey in my "Ten Years Contributing to GNOME" blog post [0].

The GNOME project has been a constant in my personal growth in the
past decade, not only professionally but also personally. It has
enabled me to get to know other cultures and the challenges of
building and nurturing a healthy community over time.

My involvement in Google Summer of Code [1], Outreachy, the Newcomers
initiatives [2], and the Code of Conduct Committee, has been essential
for my realization that we can only sustain a prosperous community by
continuing investing in diversity and outreach. Therefore whether a
director in the board or a foundation member, I am passionate and
committed to furthering our diversity and inclusion efforts.

Wearing my downstream hat as a Fedora developer, I have learned the
challenges of reaching out to other communities and conciliating the
agendas between different projects. Therefore whether a director in
the board or a foundation member, I am interested in improving and
advancing our relationship with downstream communities and with other
projects, to promote software freedom and make FOSS technologies
prosper.

In the modern world of increased mass surveillance, I believe we must
continue and further our positioning as a community that produces safe
and privacy-oriented software. I consider it a civic duty to advocate
that our freedom must be shared among all human beings, and we must
use our privilege to help those living under oppression and
censorship. In a world where software controls more and more aspects
of daily life, we have the means and knowledge to achieve that.

Thanks for your consideration! I am sure we will have an excellent
board of directors regardless of the results of this election.

Cheers,
Felipe Borges.

[0] https://feborg.es/ten-years-contributing-to-gnome/ AND
https://feborg.es/about
[1] https://feborg.es/gsoc2020-welcome/
[2] https://feborg.es/newcomers-workshop-guadec-2019/