Outreachy's Sarah Sharp Wins O'Reilly Open Source Award

May 25, 2016

Congratulations to Sarah Sharp on being awarded an O'Reilly Open Source Award. Sarah received the award last week at OSCON in Austin, Texas.

Sharp, co-organizer of Conservancy member project Outreachy, is known for her work as an outspoken proponent of improving communications among kernel developers to be more courteous and friendly to diverse new contributors. She is the author and former maintainer of the Linux USB 3.0 host controller driver and was involved in Linux kernel development since 2006. Since 2015, Sarah has been a Linux graphics developer for Mesa. Prior to joining the Outreachy organizing committee in an official capacity, Sharp was instrumental in coordinating kernel internships for Outreachy (then called Outreach Program for Women). Since 2013, the program enabled 96 women become kernel contributors as applicants, and 37 of them became interns. Sarah now helps coordinate the overall Outreachy program.

Rachel Roumeliotis, Programming Chair of OSCON announced the award to Sharp, citing her many accomplishments and referring to her as a great all around person.

I'm so blown away by this award! said Sharp. It's an honor to be acknowledged for both my technical skills and my efforts to increase diversity in open source communities.

Outreachy has been the focus of a number of awards in recent years. The program won the Award for Projects of Social Benefit from the Free Software Foundation in 2014 and co-organizers Marina Zhurakhinskaya and Karen Sandler, also Conservancy's Executive Director, both received O'Reilly Open Source awards in the past. Other Conservancy-related winners of the award in previous years include Jeremy Allison (Conservancy Board member and a leader in the Samba Project), Bradley M. Kuhn (Conservancy President and Distinguished Technologist), Martin Michlmayr (Conservancy Treasurer and Board member), Deb Nicholson (Conservancy Evaluations Committee member) and Karl Fogel (Evaluations Committee member and chair).

Conservancy Supporters VM Brasseur and Rikki Endsley were also among the recipients this year. Conservancy congratulates Sharp, Brasseur, Endsley and all of the other winners.