As Black Python Devs continues to grow globally, we’re excited to announce the appointment of Regional Executors for North America and Africa. These roles are designed to better serve our expanding community while fostering sustainable leadership development.
Goals for this change
Our new model is designed to:
- Establish a consistent leadership pipeline that offers valuable experience to emerging leaders
- Create clear transition paths for leaders ready to pursue larger opportunities
- Distribute responsibilities more effectively by region, ensuring regional needs are met by those who understand local contexts
- Reduce centralized workload on the primary Executor role
The New Leadership Structure
We’re implementing a two-tier regional leadership system that operates under the Black Python Devs Executor Role, comprising Regional Executors who serve as primary leaders for their geographic regions and Vice Regional Executors (to be named later) who act as supporting partners. This structure creates a leadership pipeline while fostering mentorship and succession planning within each region, with Regional Executors taking point on strategic initiatives and Vice Regional Executors providing crucial operational support and continuity for their respective territories.
Regional leaders will focus on:
- Establishing new BPD user groups in areas lacking meetup support
- Appointing local leaders to assist with local initiatives
- Identifying and coordinating with user groups and regional conferences for sponsorship opportunities
- Developing and maintaining relationships with regional sponsors
- Managing region-specific initiatives and community needs
Term Limits and Succession
To ensure fresh perspectives while maintaining continuity:
- Leaders serve one-year terms
- Maximum of 3 consecutive years in either role
- Vice Regional Executors naturally transition to Regional Executor roles (unless they opt out)
- New Vice Regional Executors are appointed by incoming Regional Executors
This creates a natural two-year leadership cycle, providing clarity and stability in succession planning.
Initial Leadership Appointments
We’re excited to announce our first set of regional leaders:
Africa Regional Executor: Abigail Afi Gbadago
Afi has shown considerable dedication to Black Python Devs. One of its early members, she quickly worked to develop a local community in Ghana, helping launch our first in-person community.
She also launched our Open Source Mentorship Program in which she coordinated with package maintainers, first-time contributors, and mentors to help folks get their first contributions.
Afi is also a director for the Django Software Foundation, and a Microsoft MVP.
North America Regional Executor: Lazouich Ford
Laz has shown over the last year the power of helping where he can. He has jumped deeper and deeper into leadership over the last year and is one of the community’s most reliable members. Laz is one of the organizers for the Black Python Devs Book Club and an active participant of our leadership council conversations. When a decision is made Laz has often given much thought and concern and shared those consideration with the other leaders.
Both leaders have plans for their region that will be published in the near future.
Pilot Implementation
We’re initially launching this model for the Africa and North America continents. We understand that culture is not monolithic and we hope placing concerted leadership will help to find similarities and also identify gaps that we hope to fill with smaller region leadership roles.
The BPD Executor’s role
These regional executor roles will report to the Black Python Devs Executor which will remain a permanent, global leadership position with no term limit. In the coming years, the Executor role should transition to a more traditional Executive Director role.
By delegating regional operations to our new Regional Executors, the Executor role can focus on long-term community health, sustainability, and growth initiatives. This restructuring enables the Executor to dedicate more attention to fostering cross-regional collaboration, develop global partnerships, secure sustainable funding streams, and ensuring Black Python Devs continues to evolve in service of our community’s mission and values.
This new leadership structure represents a significant step forward in Black Python Devs’ organizational maturity. By creating clear pathways for leadership development and ensuring sustainable succession planning, we’re building a foundation for long-term community growth and impact.
We believe this model will enable us to better serve our community while providing valuable leadership opportunities for members across all regions. As we implement these changes, we welcome feedback from our community to help refine and improve the system.