Meet the 2026 FOSS United Governing Board

The elections for the 2026 Governing Board took place alongside IndiaFOSS 2026. Three members of the inaugural board were stepping down. For the three open spots, we had 10 excellent candidates from the community who put their names in the hat. (You can check out all the candidates here.)

About 1131 people participated in the voting process, 985 cast their votes, and about 146 people abstained. With no further delays, meet the 2026 Governing Board!

1. Dr. Mohit P. Tahiliani is an Associate Professor at NIT Karnataka, with 18 years in FOSS. Member of the ns-3 Steering Council, GSoC mentor for 10 consecutive years. He wants to help students become long-term contributors and unlock funding for FOSS projects. Full profile.
2. Ashutosh Pandey is a compiler engineer who has spent the last 7 years building various communities, meetups, and the ecosystems to sustain them. He’s been involved in 50+ Hackathons in some or another capacity (participant, mentor, organizer, jury). Full profile.
3. Ramya Ragupathy has been involved in open source for over a decade in humanitarian tech. Starting from early roots as a backend contributor, she is currently associated with two non-profits in the FOSS4G space, supporting product management, community engagement, and operations. Full profile

They join the existing Governing Board members, Bodhish Thomas and Bowarna. We’d like to thank Shree, Nemo, and Swastik for all of their time and effort throughout their terms as part of the inaugural Governing Board.

About the Elections:

For elections this year, we followed the STAR voting method, where people rate each candidate on a scale. To conduct the elections, we used the Better Voting platform. Out of ~25k eligible voters, only 1131 participated in the voting process.

1. Results and stats
2. Announcement and logistics thread
3. Nominations thread

Stay tuned for more updates. You can always reach out to the GB at governing-board@fossunited.org.