The board of directors is the decision making body of the Foundation. It meets once per month and convenes for additional meetings when required. The board also engages with the committees and communities every month to encourage peer support and offer assistance and guidance.
The board is self-electing, and usually draws its candidates from active volunteers. It is led by the President who is appointed by the board and is typically an existing board member. The Treasurer manages financial operations.
Board members are asked to serve a two-year term which is renewed if required. They are expected to attend the monthly board meeting usually held on the third Friday of the month, be available for general communications by email and messages as well as attend the monthly community representatives meeting.
If you want to know more about how to nominate or join the board, read how to get involved.
Board members#
Stuart Mackintosh, President#
Based in Europe, Stuart has been working with free and open source software since the mid-1990s. Many of his early projects were based on Perl and delivering e-commerce, ISP and communications services.
He founded various organisations such as Open Source business integrator OpusVL and industry association OpenUK.
When Stuart began using Perl at the start of his on-line career in the mid 90’s he found he could pick it up and use with less overhead than the alternatives.
Stuart joined the Foundation because he is grateful that Perl enabled him to solve many business data challenges. “I think it is important for anyone who has built a career in digital technology to find ways to give back to the communities that enabled them, either financially, or by sharing experience and time.”
He believes non-technical roles, such as legal, marketing and community support, are important to help the Perl and Raku communities.
The President of the Foundation is free to choose their focus for activity in their role: the first President concentrated on conferences and on incorporating TPRF as a non-profit foundation; the previous President focused on stability. In his role as President, Stuart is keen to develop committees and engagement with the Perl and Raku communities, as well as sponsors and other foundations.
Held role since: 2019
Peter Krawczyk, Treasurer#
Peter Krawczyk is a Senior Software Engineer with ZipRecruiter. He has been active in the Perl community since the late 1990s, including co-organizing YAPCs in 2006 and 2008, hackathons and Chicago.pm. In his spare time, he loves to play golf and go on road trips.
Held role since: 2020
Todd Rinaldo#
Todd has been programming for 40 years and coding Perl since his first Perl programming class in 1995. He’s been a resident of Houston, TX most of his life, and has been active in the Houston Perl Mongerers since 2006. Todd is married and has one son. In addition to his volunteer work at TPRF, Todd also donates significant time to The Boy Scouts of America.
Held role since: 2022
Daniel Sockwell#
Daniel originally planned a career in law before he realised how much he enjoys programming.
Dan earned a J.D. from Columbia Law School and was a practicing attorney with a large law firm in New York City. While there, he unexpectedly ended up writing code for a JavaScript web app that the firm was building for its large banking clients.
After discovering how much he enjoys writing code, Dan made a career change and became a programmer. He has written JavaScript, Rust, and Raku professionally and enjoys exploring many other languages.
As well as being a Board member, Dan serves on the Raku Steering Council and the TPRF Legal Committee. He was also a moderator for the 2021 Perl and Raku Conference.
Held role since: 2021
Ruth Holloway, Co-Treasurer#
Over the course of her 40-plus year career, Ruth worked in six different programming languages on nearly a dozen different operating systems; for the last 20 of those, she’s been doing most of her coding in Perl. She is a Texan, transplanted to the tranquil woods of northeast Georgia with her husband and the cutest dog around. She is now semi-retired from regular work, to spend more time with her family, crafting, and on the needs of the Foundation.
Ruth joined the board in January of 2024, and currently holds the role of Co-Treasurer, taking care of many of the day-to-day financial record-keeping for the Foundation.
Bruce Gray#
Bruce joined the board in January of 2024.