Board Member Nominations 2021

#	Nominee Name	Country	Statement	Nominated by
1	Vicky Vergara	Naucalpan, Mexico	Vicky is an inspiring supporter of OSGeo work and helping to bring new groups of people into the OSGeo world. She mentors every year for GSOC via pgRouting bringing in many young youth into the community. She works heavily on the OSGeo Live project to help showcase OSGeo projects. She is a women in code supporter. Most recently she was involved in AnitaB.org Open Source Day and conference where I had the pleasure of seeing her at work, helping young women do their first contribution to open source and navigating the complexities of git. She is multilingual - speaking Spanish, English, and Japanese to name some and embraces many cultures and brings all into the OSGeo fold to commune and learn from each other. She also talks in many conferences around the world. She is a great role model for everyone. She is an indispensable role model for many minorities and women hoping to get into tech and elated to see a familiar looking face. Although she is brilliant she is very modest when talking about her abilities. She has a vast knowledge of C++ and Economics and an infectious smile and love for exploration which energizes all around her.	Regina Obe
2	Codrina Maria Ilie	Romania	We would like to nominate Codrina Maria Ilie for a position in the OSGeo Board of directors. Codrina is a very well-known member of the OSGeo community for many years. Since 2010 she has been a volunteer trainer in the Romanian geospatial community, she is a regular participant and speaker in international FOSS4G events and she has herself been one of the main organisers of FOSS4G 2019 in Bucharest. Codrina has been an OSGeo Charter Member since 2013 and she is a strong advocate for FOSS4G. As a member of the OSGeo Board in the last two years, she has shown an incredible passion, motivation and commitment that the next board would still very much need. In her previous mandate, she has also very well represented OSGeo in the interaction and relation with other international communities such as INSPIRE and OGC.	Angelos Tzotsos and Marco Minghini
3	Marco Bernasocchi	Switzerland	I would like to nominate Marco Bernasocchi for a position in the OSGeo Board of Directors. Marco is an open source advocate, consultant, teacher and developer with a background in geography with a specialization in geographic information science. Marco is currently the chair of QGIS PSC and the director and founder of OPENGIS.ch (since 2011) where he and his team develop, train and consult clients on open source GIS. He is a long-time contributor to QGIS (and FOSS4G in general) and a charter member of OSGeo since 2018. He has a strong passion for Open Source and I feel he would be a valuable addition to the OSGeo Board of Directors.	Angelos Tzotsos
4	Rajat Shinde	India	Nomination statement from Astrid Emde: I would like to nominate Rajat Shinde for a position in the OSGeo Board of Directors. Rajat is connected to OSGeo since many years now. He started his OSGeo connection as a student for Google Summer of Code in 2017 for the MapMint project. Then he proceeded as a mentor for GSOC. And in 2020 and 2021 he was in the OSGeo's GSoC admin team and will proceed in 2022. He has contributed to OSGeo software like the ZOO-Project. He actively participates in FOSS4G events and is part of OSGeo India. He is a OSGeo Charter Member since 2017 and is very active spreading the spirit of open source geospatial to the world. Rajat is a Masters-PhD (Dual Degree) student in Geo-informatics and a Prime Ministers Research Fellow (2018) working at the Geocomputational Systems and IoT Group in Centre of Studies in Resources Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (India). Nomination statement from Vicky Vergara: I first met Rajat during FOSS4G Asia in 2017. His first approach to me was looking for advice to participate in GSoC as a student. He indeed applied to pgRouting GSoC participation, That was a difficult year, many good applications and I wanted them all, which was not going to happen, I saw so much potential in him that I told him to apply to some other OSGeo project, first and only student applicant that I've done this. He indeed made another application and was accepted in the MapMint GSoC participation, thus allowing other students to be accepted on pgRouting. He showed flexibility, consideration and teamwork by doing this. Next year he became a mentor for MapMint on the GSoC program and has been a mentor since. From my point of view with this action, he knows that for projects to grow there is a need of recruiting more developers, and one of the options is GSoC for their growth. He became PSC of MapMint. In 2020 he kindly accepted the position of GSoC administrator and has been doing a wonderful job. He has shown administrative skills to take this task to the success it has. During this year, his participation in other projects has diversified. On pgRouting he started collaborating on the "pgRouting workshop". On the other hand, he started participating in the monthly UN Open GIS meetings and at 2021's UN Challenge he participated as a mentor. With this action I think he is showing an interest on how to cooperate for the well being of humanity, nature and the world in general. In my humble opinion, since he was a "lost" student looking for advice, he has acquired the traits needed to be on the Board.	Astrid Emde and Vicky Vergara
5	Tina Cormier	United States of America	Tina's passion for open source geospatial tools is evident in her work and participation in the OSGeo community. Tina is a longtime advocate, user, and educator of open source data, software, and standards and an active participant in the OSGeo community. She has been a Charter Member since 2017 and has volunteered on the FOSS4G 2021 Argentina Local Organizing Committee's general call for papers team. She is active in OSGeo US, most recently as a member of the US Chapter leadership conference steering committee. In the broader community, she frequently gives talks at conferences and to various groups (e.g. FOSS4G talks and workshops, Harvard Center for Geographic Analysis, University of Maryland Geographical Sciences Seminar, etc.) and has taught workshops internationally using all open source software and tools. Tina would be an outstanding addition to the OSGeo Board of Directors.	Michele Tobias