 All right, so good afternoon everybody. My name is Brittany Stennis. I am the Ospo strategist for the open source program office at Fannie Mae, so pretty cool. I focus heavily on the community of open source software, inner source, upstream contributions, and then all of the gray areas in between that we all know lives in open source. So I'm really excited to be here today closing it out. We made it through Austin. Woo, that was a rough go, but we did it. And so I just really wanna thank the Linux Foundation for having me. This is just super great. And so the story that I'm gonna tell today is a little different than what we're used to have been hearing this entire talk. It's more of kind of a story about how somebody that didn't go the traditional computer science degree path ended up being an Ospo strategist at a big company. So it's pretty cool. So I'm gonna talk about where I was in my career and how I got to be here, so it's pretty cool. So yeah, so let's just go ahead and get started. So a little bit about me. I was born and raised in the city of Cleveland. When I was 18, I could have went to college right away, but I was accepted to the University of Akron. And despite what everybody loves about LeBron James, I am just not a big fan of the city of Akron. And honestly, I just wanted to get out. And true story, I love the Grateful Dead growing up. I did. And I waited tables all throughout my teenage years. I took all my money and I saved it all up. And then I just took off and traveled to the country and followed the dead. Crazy, right? So I just, I know my mom was mad and a lot of people were upset with my life decisions, but I just needed to get out there. I needed to see what else was out there. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I just wasn't ready for college. Just felt like it would have been a waste of money at that current time. So fast forward two years later, I traveled across the country and gutted out LA transit bus, a 1959 crown bus that was converted into vegetable oil. And I decided, I'm like, okay, I'm done. I went back home. I went back to Cleveland. I went to community college and decided to explore. I had grand dreams of becoming a musician. And then I got into classes and I realized I'm not that talented and it is what it is, but I needed to pivot. And so I knew there was one thing that I needed to do and I wasn't ready to stop traveling. So I decided to enroll in Temple University in Philadelphia and take up education. And this enabled me to move once again back away from Cleveland and continue to explore the career as I was growing up. And now the funny thing is I'm back in Cleveland now and I really couldn't be happier. There's just like a really strange thing about being in your hometown. You're just like, oh, this is great. And so like I said, a little bit, my past experiences are really interesting and lots of shifts, pivots and taking lots of chances. I bartended for years, you know, and I was truly lucky. I graduated in 2011 and within two weeks of graduation I ended up landing a job at Philadelphia Montessori Charter School teaching fourth and fifth grade children. It was fantastic. Quickly I got promoted to lead teacher and then we did amazing things at this school. You know, my first year of teaching through mutual hard work and a lot of fun, these children and I, we were able to bring their state test scores up from this below basic level by 55%. We were able to also not only do that, but we were able to nationally be recognized for closing the achievement gap in science. And that was amazing because we upped the science levels of these children by 75%. And it was so awesome. And honestly, they did most of the hard work. I didn't do, you know, I taught them, but they did all the work. And what's really interesting is I had a student reach out to me this past week on LinkedIn, he's a junior at Penn State and he is currently taking up computer science, which I mean, yeah, I felt a little bit old but I'm like, I started young, it's fine. So that was really cool. And so, you know, when I was at the school, I became the head technology trainer. You know, I didn't really know too much about tech at the time, but I know that we were gifted a grant of like 100 iPods or iPads and a couple MacBooks and some smart TVs and nobody knew how to use it. And I was like, all right, I'll try it. And so then I became the head technology trainer. And so that kind of led me to my second path. I decided I kind of reached where I needed to go in the school. And I decided to work in educational technology. You know, there's just such a gap in the space, obviously, nobody knows how to use these tools, especially teachers in the field, to help their students. So I got this job at this place called American Reading Company, great program for children's reading. And I actually just became a help desk technician for their online metrics gathering tool. And then quickly I just realized what teachers could do and what they couldn't do. And I just decided to take it upon myself to start training these folks on this tool. And then it basically started training internal salespeople as well. And then kind of rose through the ranks or teaching the phonics program to all of these folks. And then it started led me to work with superintendents and beyond, which was really cool. And then so I became a director, you know, and I came to realize I plateaued. There was no more for me to go. Like I just, there was nothing else to do. And I just had to start looking for another path. And so I met somebody that worked at Comcast knowing my background. And they're like, you know, why don't you apply? I was like, okay, I don't know. I thought about it and I could see the tower from my West Philly house. And, you know, I never thought about it. Like, you know, what would they want with me? Right? You know, I don't have a traditional background in engineering. I did not feel good about my own skills. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I don't know how this would match. Do I have to work dress pads? Do I have to put a button up shirt? Blazer, bow tie? I don't know, you know, that's not my style. It's like, would they be interested in someone like me? So I took a leap of faith and I applied and I got hired to be a community manager for their open source program office. So shout out to Nithya Ruff. Ospo, what is it? Ospo, award winner of the year. She's the best. And so she took a chance on me and she hired me. So I jumped off the cliff into the unknown once again. You know, I was insanely nervous about making that jump. Like, I was a teacher. I was working in education. Now I'm a full-time worker. You know, what does that mean? I don't know anything about what I'm doing. You know, but I had to try because everything's moving so rapidly towards this digital age. And you know, I'm realizing that there's so many different opportunities in that field. And you don't have to be a traditional engineer to branch into it. And that was my initial trepidation. But then I learned about the great world of program management means a lot. You can do so much. There's so many great things that you can do that's not directly tied to coding. And it's amazing to be a woman in tech. And we're making waves and great strides. But as we've all heard throughout this entire time, there's still a lot of work to do. So I took the chance. I made the leap of faith. And thank goodness I did. You know, fast forward two years later, I'm now working at Fannie Mae, establishing an open source program office. Just like what we heard earlier in the week about Goldman Sachs. Like, that's where we're going. And that's super, super exciting. And it's like, I'm working with this great group of individuals with shared common goals, shared interests. And like, we're really trying to transition the whole concept of financial tech. And it's gonna be really cool. So just keep your eyes out on that one. And so I get to work with some of the greatest people. Some are in this room. And it's just like, immediately I was welcome. Open source allows you to be welcome, understood. And like, I'm a very goofy person. And so I didn't feel like I had to put on errors. Which I think is so important to feel comfortable. So this, you know, as we move forward, I'm just saying, like, if anybody ever feels nervous about making a jump towards something unknown, I say, don't be. Take that chance. Because what's the worst thing that could happen? You could always go back. My grandma said, well, if you don't wanna move there and you don't like it, just move home. You know, you could always do that. But so I just say, keep going. So I took the chance on open source. You know, like, open source, like software and the concepts of an OSPO, it's changed my entire life. I'm sitting here, I'm talking to you. Like this is super cool. And like, you know, if you would have asked me five years ago, if I would be doing this, I would have called you mad. It's wild. And so there's so many facets to open source software, which are all incredibly interesting. And so like I said, I work on this fantastic team. I'm a strategist, I'm a manager. I'm leading a team in open source program office at a huge financial company. It's crazy. And so I get to wake up every morning and I'm actually legitimately, no joke, ready to go to work. Except for on Mondays, but I'm Garfield on Mondays, it's fine. And so I know like we're making a great impact and it's really, really, really exciting. So it's like in the future, I'll be managing once again open source software projects. I'm helping engineers from all across really the world to contribute back to projects, which is awesome. You know, I'm gonna be creating, we'll be creating and owning impactful projects that will be taking next level steps. So that's a lot. So how do I manage with this workload? Honestly, you know, how does this all tie in to the purpose of what we're chatting about today? So a lot of my day-to-day practices came from being a teacher. You know, a lot of times you think your past skills will not carry over, but they do. I thought it wouldn't, but it was an incorrect thought. You know, all of my past experiences just like in life just make you who you are, which is awesome. And I was worried I wouldn't be able to apply these skills, but I did have legitimate imposter syndrome. I don't know anybody in this room who has not had it, who has not had imposter syndrome, right, right? And so I was so nervous, but with these skills, as I progressed in my career, I realized that I had everything I needed, community. It's super similar to a school environment. You know, there's lots of different players, as we all know. You know, there's a hierarchy alongside the bureaucracy that we do have to navigate. And navigating an open-source community sometimes reminds me of navigating a hallway in a high school, you know, so it's pretty wild. And organization, with any career, it seems so straightforward, but you have to be organized. So dealing with children, you need to be organized. So why not apply these same principles? So just keep cool. So if you're having a day or not ready, I realize that the students would notice. If you have six and a half hours a day with these kids, five days a week, and not only do you have to keep them busy and engaged, you actually have to teach them and keep distractions low so they can teach others. And then you're working with all different types of folks, because I was a special educator as well, so you have all these different learning dynamics and different types of learning styles in a room, and it was wild. So it's like, I take the same mindset with me like my day to day. I'm not teaching polynomials or fractions or verbs or adverbs anymore, but I approach the day the same way. Every morning I have my notebooks ready. I have my meetings organized. I make sure that I take 15 minutes at the end of each day to prepare for the next, because as we are working from home, I know I've been guilty of this. At the end of my work day, sometimes I'm still working, and I need to stop that because you just can keep going and going and going because you don't have to leave your house. So I make sure that I just break, stop, reset, plan for the next. And so lesson plans to program plans, I found this to be really interesting. When I was creating this presentation, I was thinking about it and I'm like, okay, how can I tie this in? It's like a super similar process, right? So you do need superior planning for streamlined processes and automation. So my life was consumed with lesson plans. I was Friday, like Fridays, Sunday nights, planning out the week, planning everything out. Little did I know that I was actually creating sprints. I was creating stories. I was creating issues. I was creating epics. I was actually creating KPIs or OKRs, setting myself up for success for these kids every quarter. And I was able to take that and apply it to what I'm doing now, which is super cool. And a lot of these things take patience and understanding. And I like to look at lesson planning and program planning like a chess game, right? Every move needs to be calculated, mapped out, be able to shift on a dime to achieve the goal. So yeah. So just like in the classroom, I need to work with stakeholders all across the country. I work with high-level superintendents, executives, budgetaries. And I was able to carry all of this over to the current workspace. Now I have to conference work with lawyers, strategic IP, executives, my peers, other teams, so many different projects, and external community members. So I get to work with so many folks. So it's like a very nice balancing act. And then public speaking, right? So like many others, the idea of public speaking is a daunting, daunting task. And I'm naturally a gregarious person, and I love talking to people. And you would think that that would have carried over from college. It didn't. It did not at all. I was like very nervous in college just like to talk. I'm like, ooh. So it wasn't until I got into the classroom where I started to kind of loosen up that's one thing about these little kids. They listen, and they hear everything you say. I have been guilty of saying certain things, and they have been repeated. Sorry, kids. But it's just like the same thing. In presentations to adults, many of us do have the bad habit of multitasking and not paying attention. I see that you all are paying attention, so thank you. And so I learned that you have to capitulate your audience and not be nervous, right? I'm not gonna lie and say that I'm not a little nervous right now, but it is what it is. But it's OK, you're right? I look at public speaking like I do with education. The people that are in this room, thank you, want to learn. And that's awesome, right? And I want to share that information and my information that I know to the best of my ability, right? And so it's the most confidence that I can. And it's all about knowing your content. And sometimes even if you don't know it, you can definitely fake it just about delivery. Like, oh yeah, that makes sense, right? OK. And so now I've been at this for almost four years, and I've been lucky enough to speak at numerous conferences. I've been able to speak with GitHub. I've been able to speak at the Open Source Summit North America now twice. This is cool, thank you. Inner Source Commons, and then all of these internal other types of conferences, which is pretty neat. And so like I said, jumping off the cliff into the unknown has really never been so rewarding. And so I just lived by these skills. Teaching brought me places I never thought were possible. I learned so much from my students. I learned so much from all of you. And I apply these into my day to day, but not just within my career, but in my life. I realized that I was tested many times, and I still get tested to this day, especially in a high pressure work environment. And so I would get short. And I think we're all, we can all be guilty of it just like not listening, not understanding, getting frustrated because we just didn't take a pause or a breath to listen. And so I realized that through reflecting and being kind that you can bring these skills into your everyday life to make not only your life better, but all of your teammates and stakeholders around you. And so kind of going back, I really care about community. I really care about giving back. I think it's one of the most important things we can do. And so I was really concerned, like leaving the education field, I wouldn't be able to give back to my community. But that turned out to be nothing farther from the truth. With open source, you can just reach so many people. And not more of that can be true of what just happened with this pandemic. I was approached by an engineer knowing my past and my skill set and how I could talk to folks and hopefully get some things done. And he asked me if I could rally people to work on a project called CHIME, an open source project. It was called the COVID Hospital Epidemiology Tracking App. And this app was directly correlated in keeping the curve lower in Philadelphia at the height of the pandemic. Because the doctors were able to track it and see when the curve was going to bounce. And then we're able to designate different sorts of, they call them guidelines, based off of this open source application. And so that was really exciting. And so what this nonprofit code for Philly did, we were able to also get a very nice donation to them based off of the work that we do on the company of Comcast that I worked for at the time. And they took that money and they were able to create a tech fellowship program. And this tech fellowship program was established in order for folks that didn't have the ability to go to college, didn't have the ability to get a job or write out of college. They needed help building their resumes. They needed help doing all these things. And many times we see if you do not have paid technical service or technical experience on your resume, you do get overlooked. And so what this tech fellowship program did is they established a way for folks to continue to work with nonprofits in the communities that they care about and were able to get paid so they could put that on the resumes in order to get hired, which was very, very, very cool. I was super excited. I'm working with the working group at Fannie Mae, the women's working group at Fannie Mae. We're going to be establishing some really good STEM stuff for our communities, which I'm really excited. And pretty soon we'll be at Grace Hopper doing some mentorship sessions and more to come on that. So that'll be pretty cool. So as we're wrapping here, I just say, honestly, just never stop learning. Since I started my career teaching and now I'm at Fannie Mae, I've legitimately learned so much. I've worked with code in the past. But now I'm coding on a day-to-day basis. I've never done that before. It was crazy. I'm like, ooh, camel files, ooh. I know that's way below what everybody else in this room knows, but whatever. It's fine. And so I created my own website. I've created technical blogs. I was able to speak about these high technical projects, which is so huge. And I'm guiding engineers in their technical projects and learning more and more every single day. And it's just imperative that into any role, you go in with a growth mindset so you can succeed. And with that, I think I went a little fast. But thank you. I think we have some time for questions. But I don't know if anybody's going to have any or the people. So thanks for sharing your story. That was really great. I'm wondering, you came from a non-technical area into this very technical area. What was helpful to you as you made that transition? What did people do around you? Did you have mentors that did things? I think about people in my own organization that we want to upskill or improve their ability, some of which come a very nontraditional path as well. And I want to know, what can I do to support those people in a better way? I love that question. It is absolutely true. So I had organic mentors. I did. They were folks that were just there building me up. I was provided strong documentation. I was provided clear guidelines. I was able to be given a clear path. Some folks, they learn certain things and they just want to keep going, go, go, go, go, go, and then you're getting very high level bits of deep content information that's not going to serve and build, if that, you know what I mean. So it's really good when you have folks starting out, play to their strengths, ask them what they enjoy doing the most, and then start nurturing that. So let's say, for example, inner source, or no, let's do open source, right? Open source contributions. And they're like, I'm really excited about this, but I'm thinking about espons. I'm thinking about this. Say, well, why don't we focus this right now? And then when we take that skill set, we'll build into the next thing. And so setting that career path for them, don't make them write pages and things like that. Let them just reflect and think about it. And that's what I was able to do. I was given tangible goals to meet, and each one of those goals turned into a building block in order to get to where I'm at right now. And that's my best advice. You're welcome. Anybody else? Talked really slow. But yeah, I think that that's it. If there's nothing virtually, I want to just once again thank the Linux Foundation. You all are fantastic. This was a fantastic conference and thanks for taking the chance on me. All right.