Lifting Up: How we help open source maintainers thrive

Hey all! I’m Lyn, proud to be among the newest members of the Tidelift lifter ecosystem team. 

All of the members of the lifter ecosystem team here at Tidelift are collectively passionate about helping maintainers thrive, and bring deep learned knowledge from various disciplines to collaborate on an ambitious task—to improve lives. Finding and building a team of humans who each have a unique perspective on this goal and the passion to work on creating an inclusive ecosystem of open source maintainers is rare, and I’m deeply honored to bring my background and learned experiences to the task. 

I started my career in tech as a bootcamp student, attending General Assembly for web development in 2015. From there, I served as an educator teaching youth how to code, as a software engineer building UIs for enterprise products, and as a developer advocate, enlivening developer audiences with information and focused content. Through each of my experiences, I contributed to open source with the creation of small projects set to help others build from, with the intention of sharing code for beginner engineers. I learned about the power of creation and in sharing through open source, and have been passionate about teaching all about how to safely and effectively contribute to and maintain open source communities. Outside of work, I love to garden and share time harvesting and cultivating nature with my family.

My team member and the second newest addition the LE&S team, Devika Dhir, is passionate about optimizing all the things, and builds structure where it does not exist. She often likes to say she’s done a little of everything—she has worked in program management, technical sales, nonprofit management, software implementation, manufacturing, marketing, and the arts. The common thread throughout Devika’s career has been a passion for process improvement, and  as our technical program manager at Tidelift, Devika works on initiatives that seek to optimize the maintainer experience. What I find most inspiring about Devika is that she’s deeply passionate about doing work that centers maintainers, as it is so central to Tidelift’s mission to pay the maintainers. She embodies and believes that involving maintainers in the process of optimizing their experience is truly gratifying. Outside of work, Devika is a creative.  As a professional dancer, she is an avid advocate for, participant in, and lover of the arts.  

Together, Devika and I strive to create a maintainer experience that provides compensation, support, community, and enablement. Our team works diligently to create an open source community and supply chain that addresses underrepresentation and accessibility issues.  

We’re excited for the opportunity to work alongside maintainers toward building an inclusive, supportive community that truly works to benefit all in the open source community, from contributor to maintainer.