Keynote Speakers

We are excited to announce our Keynote Speakers for PyTexas 2022, Lorena Mesa and Kojo Idrissa!

Lorena Mesa - Saturday Keynote

Lorena Mesa working at a computer

Political scientist turned coder, Lorena Mesa is a GitHub data engineer, Director & Chair of the Python Software Foundation, JOSS editor, and PyLadies Chicago co-organizer. Lorena's time at Obama for America and her subsequent graduate research required her to learn how to transform messy, incomplete data into intelligible analysis on topics like predicting Latinx voter behavior. It's this unique background in research and applied mathematics that drove Lorena to pursue a career in engineering and data science. One part activist, one part Star Wars fanatic, and another part Trekkie, Lorena abides by the motto to "live long and prosper"

Kojo Idrissa - Sunday Keynote

Kojo Idrissa Headshot

Kojo Idrissa was an accountant who got an MBA and taught at university in two different countries. He's now a parent, software engineer, intercontinental keynote speaker, DjangoCon US organizer and the DEFNA North American Ambassador #NorAmGT. He's spoken at tech conferences 2022/about software engineering practices, spreadsheets, contributing to tech communities, Dungeons & Dragons, inclusion, and privilege.

He’s made a few small FLOSS contributions to CPython & Jinja, as well as Drupal (a LONG time ago). He’s also made contributions to Codecombat, where he helped others make their first OSS contributions, and PyVideo, where he updated the Tags section of the Contribution guide for their Data repo.

He is quite proud to have been awarded the 2018 Malcolm Tredinnick Memorial Prize and continues to try to be worthy of it. You can find him online at http://kojoidrissa.com/ or as @transitionswpz on Twitter. His Twitter handle makes NO sense because his account was hacked on 2019-12-09. While he REMAINS bitter 2022/about this, KPop and Overwatch help him feel better.