Meet the first-ever elected Governing Board @FOSS United

The spring of 2025 was quite eventful here at FOSS United, marking FIVE years of the community, and boy, these have been some solid years. But that’s not it all, this season also saw the first community election for a Governance Board at FOSS United. Over nine months in making, dozens of community calls led by Ram and Rahul, about 15 candidates in the fray, with five to be elected. We are excited to have you meet the FOSS United Community Governance Board:

Bodhish Thomas

Bodhish is a Senior Fullstack Engineer, a startup founder and currently leads the Digital Public Goods team at Pupilfirst. He created the Open Healthcare Network, and has contributed to several open-source projects, including Care, MediSpeak, and AfterFlood. A recipient of GitHub’s Open Source Grant, Bodhish is passionate about using AI and open tech to drive systemic change in healthcare and education.

Bowrna

Bowrna is a backend developer and open-source contributor to projects like Apache Airflow and Listmonk. Her journey began during a career break, and through Outreachy and hands-on contributions, she found purpose and growth in open source. With 12 years of experience in companies like Zoho and Unravel Data, she now advocates for open source as a powerful learning and equalising space, engaging with various FOSS communities across the country.

Nemo

Nemo is a semi-retired open-source developer and founding engineer at Razorpay. He now focuses on open-data and tech-policy projects like endoflife.date, blr.today, and the Open Justice India initiative. With deep roots in campus tech communities and a passion for civic tech, Nemo envisions a more resilient, community-driven FOSS ecosystem in India. A strong believer of all tech being political, Nemo helped build SpeakforMe, a campaign against disproportionate Aadhaar Linkages, a satire website campaigning against Electoral Bonds, among other things. Graduate of the first FOSS United x Takshashila GCPP batch, Nemo regularly engages with public consultations on tech policy.

Shree Kumar

Shree is an embedded software architect and FOSS advocate with over two decades of experience. From building India’s first 3G tablet to creating the KitePhone concept, his work spans HPC, electronics, and public policy. A longtime Barcamp Bangalore organiser and a GCPP graduate, Shree is committed to strengthening FOSS communities and promoting sustainable funding models. Shree is also co-chairing IndiaFOSS 2025. Shree is keen on exploring community-based decentralised fundraising models among other things at FOSS United.

Swastik Baranwal

Swastik is an open-source developer and core contributor to the V Programming Language. He actively contributes to Selenium, Appium, and WebDriverIO, while maintaining several open projects. Through his work, he helps onboard new developers into the open-source ecosystem and supports communities around the globe. Swastik has been a long-time part of the core organising team of the Delhi chapter of FOSS United.

What next?

First things first, gathering feedback on the elections process. If you have any reflections, suggestions or thoughts, please leave them on the thread here. The Board will be meeting once every month to discuss and decide on issues affecting the community. We will actively be seeking questions from the community, and minutes of the Board meeting will be out on the forum after every meeting.

One of the first things we are keen on hashing out with the Board is the draft Governance charter, among other Board housekeeping stuff. But wait, where do I reach out to the Board, you ask? At the freshly minted group address at governingboard@fossunited.org.