---
title: Project Director Candidate Nominations 2025
date: 2025-08-12
tags: ["directors"]
url: https://hackmd.io/Q6PxtJhmQVOgN3RjTT3xqA
---

# Project Director Candidate Nominations 2025

If you have any comments on the candidates, please add them here (or in case they're sensitive or raise a concern) to [Tomas Sedovic](https://rust-lang.zulipchat.com/#user/893815) (the PD facilitator).

## Initial Team Nominations

### Incumbents

- Jakob Degen
- Scott McMurray
- Santiago Pastorino

*None of the incumbents are seeking another term.*

### T-compiler

#### David Wood (accepted)

I've been contributing to Rust since 2017, primarily to the compiler, later becoming a team contributor in 2019, team member in 2021 and co-lead in 2023. I've always been interested in how the team and project works, getting involved in the compiler team's meta working group to help define and document our policies and processes. As co-lead, I've tried to understand and prioritise the long-term challenges to the team's sustainability, [spearheading a reorganisation of the team which recognises the varied contributions that members make and ensures the team can grow and scale with adoption of Rust](https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/3599). I've still got time left in my term as co-lead and lots that I'd like to get around to improving. I contribute to Rust professionally, leading Arm's Rust team, [now a platinum member of the Foundation](https://rustfoundation.org/media/rust-foundation-announces-arm-as-a-platinum-member/), and will be able to dedicate time in my day-to-day to the project director role.

I accepted this nomination as I think the Rust Foundation is incredibly important to the continued success of Rust and that it is crucial that there is a mutual understanding of the Foundation's needs within the project and project's needs within the Foundation. My experience as a individual contributor and co-lead of the project's largest team makes me well-suited to facilitate that mutual understanding. I have a healthy relationship with members of the Foundation staff from my interactions with them in the project and at conferences. I intend to be accessible and visible to project members and to support and bolster ongoing efforts to ensure that project members are informed of the work that project directors and all project leadership are doing (to the extent permitted by the Foundation's by-laws). Most importantly, I'd like to work with the council and other team leads to develop a shared and documented understanding of the project's needs and ensure these are communicated to the Foundation. I expect that what I'd like to achieve in the role will come into greater focus as I become more familiar with the ongoing efforts of the project directors.

##### Feedback/comments

(share here, please)

### T-devtools

### T-infra

- ~~Mark Rousskov (withdrew)~~

### T-lang

#### Travis Cross (TC) (accepted)

In serving on the council and in acting as a substitute Project Director in recent board meetings, I've been particularly focused on improving the alignment between the Project and the Foundation and the effectiveness of our collaboration. This alignment and effective collaboration will be central to our success in attracting fiscal support for the Project and its members.

The [hiring](https://github.com/rust-lang/leadership-council/issues/151) of Tomas Sedovic was and is part of my strategy for this. More sustainable and consistent program management is crucial for effectively communicating the value of our work to the stakeholders who have the needed financial resources. The Foundation has a key role to play in bringing these stakeholders to the table. It's through this partnership that we'll be able to better financially support the work of key maintainers and [that of the Project as a whole](https://github.com/rust-lang/leadership-council/issues/183).

The best way to work a problem is from both sides, and in serving on the board as a representative of the Project, that's what I'd continue to do. The outcome I want most is that we build sustainable systems that ensure the Project and Foundation continue working well long after each of us has handed off our responsibilities to others.

Philosophically, my view is that it's the role of the council to decide what the interests and priorities of the Project are. Only the council has this legitimacy due to its members being selected by each of the teams. Project Directors, therefore, in their role of representing the interests of the Project on the board, must be consulting continuously with the council and ensuring the council has the necessary context on the activities and plans of the Foundation. In this way, I see Project Directors as envoys -- direct representatives of the council to the board. It's far more important to me that the views and priorities of the council are represented effectively and diplomatically on the board than that any positions I hold myself are. This is how I would continue to serve -- as an agent and advocate for the council.

##### Feedback/comments

(share here, please)

#### Niko Matsakis (accepted)

My goal as a project director is to help create more sustainable ways for people to be employed and paid for their work on Rust. I believe the Foundation is an important part of that story and so I want to ensure the board hears the voice of experienced contributors.

My current belief is that sustainable contribution will not come from any one angle. Everyone in the Rust project is an individual and there's no one setup that will work for everyone. I believe we need teams like the ones at Amazon and Microsoft; I believe we need nonprofits and open collectives that aggregrate contributions; we need contracting; we need student outreach; etc. I'd love to hear from people about what kind of support they feel would work best for them (whether or not that involves the Foundation).

As the central legal entity that backs Rust, I think the Foundation has an important and special role to play in making that come about. It's going to be the first destination for people who want to support Rust, and we should leverage that. I'd like to help figure out the best way to do that.

The goal of sustainable contribution is what motivated me to join Amazon some time back. At that time, it was clear that Mozilla could not financially continue to serve as Rust's primary sponsor (that writing had been on the wall for some time), and we had always wanted to see more companies stepping in to organize Rust teams of their own. So when I got the chance to be involved in one such effort first hand, I took it. I'm proud of the work we've done but I've also learned a lot in the process. I think that perspective will be helpful in serving on the board. (To be clear, as a project director, I would explicitly not be representing Amazon -- I am joining as a Rust project member.)

Thanks y'all.

##### Feedback/comments

(share here, please)

### T-launching-pad

#### Bart Massey (accepted)

I am excited to serve as a Project Director if selected — I believe that my long history and leadership with open source and my deep interest and participation in Rust make me a solid candidate.

I started with computing in the 1970s, and was sharing source code by the early 1980s. I have a long history as a sysadmin and a systems and tools dev in industry and academia. After grad school (MS thesis in concurrent logic language implementation, PhD in AI) I became a CS Prof at Portland State University (Oregon USA) where I taught in the Oregon Master of Software Engineering Program as well as open source, AI, and other things. I am the architect of the XCB library for X11 and the co-designer of the truly obscure Nickle language. I am a former Secretary (presiding officer) of the X.Org Foundation, which gave me experience with open source foundation governance and administration.

I picked up Rust about nine years ago through Josh Triplett, Jim Blandy and friends, and have been teaching Rust for about seven years: Rust Full-Stack Web and Rust Embedded more recently. I have made minor contributions to the Project, and have been part of many technical discussions. My major focus has been in Embedded, where I am a member of the Embedded Working Group and editor and contributor for the Rust Embedded Discovery Book. I am the founder and lead of Rust-Edu, an organization dedicated to improving Rust education in general but especially in Universities globally.

I see the Project Director position as another opportunity for me to contribute to the future of Rust. I understand the importance of core technologies: I believe that tech enables growth while people drive it. If selected I want to pay special attention to community building, to education, and to supporting applications of Rust (including embedded, web and AI). I believe strongly in the consensus process of the Board, and will do my best not just to influence decisions but to fully support the group.

I hope that my broad experience and focus could be valuable in making and implementing policy for Rust.

##### Feedback/comments

(share here, please)

#### Jack Huey (accepted)

For background, I've been in involved in the Project since 2019, in a few various roles (types team co-lead, compiler maintainer, lang advisor, vision doc project co-lead, lang council rep for a year).

I think most people, including me, have some sentiment that the Foundation has made some missteps, and that it in general could be doing better (though we often don't know what that means). Even outside the Project, many people (from what I've heard first and second-hand) are reluctant to interact with the Foundation for various reasons. I could imagine that communication between the Foundation and the Project has gotten better (since e.g. agendas being shared with the council ahead-of-time, hiring of Lori, the monthly newsletter), but this is not to say that things are perfect, nor do they directly address concerns from people outside the Project.

As far as my thoughts on the role and my place in it, while not exactly the same sentiment, I somewhat like what Carol said in regards to the council position when she originally joined, which was essentially that she didn't expect that the crates.io team would have its own rep on the council and her goal was to help with that. Here, not quite the same, but the point I want to make is: the concept of PDs predates the council, its not clear exactly what the role of PDs is today, and it's possible that the concept of PDs itself is not the right model for the interaction between the Project and the Foundation. Sure, there are potential challenges, legal or otherwise, and it may be true that they are the right model, but what I definitely don't want to do is come into the role resigning myself to, at least in some part, the status quo. Exactly how to improve things, I don't know, but I'm committed to working on it. I want to help the Foundation succeed in its capacity of being stewards of the language, and I think a large part (but not the only part) of that is its communication with and focus on the Project.

##### Feedback/comments

(share here, please)

### T-libs

### T-mods