Celebrating the Recipients of the Outstanding PyLady Awards 2025!
Marie-Louise Annan
November 26, 2025 | Tag: » Global, Outstanding PyLady Awards
We are proud to announce the recipients of the Outstanding PyLady Awards 2025 !!
As I’m sure many of us know and have experienced ourselves - the PyLadies community is made up of many remarkable members and volunteers that make significant contributions to bettering the Python community. The Outstanding PyLady award is meant to elevate diverse Pythonistas doing amazing things, to highlight their achievements, and to thank them for all the work they’ve contributed.
Each year, the PyLadies Global Council selects a handful of folks from nominations from the Python community at large. Award winners are recognized at PyCon US and receive their choice of either free registration & travel assistance to PyCon, or a similarly sized cash award. They also get a cute little pin to wear on their lanyards for all PyCons to come, if they wish.
This is the second year of the Outstanding PyLady awards, and we received over 50 nominations.
Unfortunately, we do not have the capacity to award all the nominees - although all of them are very clearly deserving. This year, the PyLadies Global Council selected 4 members to receive this award, and we are so very excited to celebrate them:
Anwesha Das
Anwesha Das (X, LinkedIn, Mastodon) is influential across multiple countries - first with PyLadies Pune in India 🇮🇳 and with inspiring 8 other chapters across the country. She brought PyLadies to PyCon India by organizing many of the activities we have at PyCon US, including a PyLadies booth and the PyLadies lunch. Her nominators label her as a strong role model of resilience and persistence paired with empathy and grit. Anwesha’s transformative leadership, cross-cultural impact, and commitment to empowering underrepresented groups make her a very deserving candidate for this award.
Katie McLaughlin
Katie McLaughlin (Mastodon , LinkedIn) from Australia 🇦🇺 has been a vital part of the Python and Django communities for many years. They have served both on the Django Software Foundation and the Python Software Foundation boards. They were our keynote speaker for the second iteration of PyLadiesCon. Katie has drawn attention to the importance of recognizing all forms of open source contributions, not just code, and is themselves a regular contributor to sprints, with code, with documentation, and with helping onboard new contributors.
Karolina Surma
Karolina Surma (Mastodon, LinkedIn) is one of two people in Brno, Czech Republic 🇨🇿 who has kept the local PyLadies chapter alive and thriving for years. She organises chapter events like programming courses and workshops, creating new and fresh teaching materials, and even leading the lectures herself. Her nominators say that the local community would not be where it is now without her continual, long-term contributions. And that she is one of the most inspiring, positive, “walking-the-talk” persons they know.
CecÃlia Tivir
While from Senegal 🇸🇳, CecÃlia Tivir (LinkedIn) “basically created the Python Community in Mozambique 🇲🇿 ”, first bringing DjangoGirls to her area, then the Python community itself, and of course she couldn’t stop there - she started PyLadies Maputo in 2023. From afar, CecÃlia keeps actively involved in the Mozambique Python and PyLadies community to help it grow and thrive.
Nominate Someone! or Yourself!
To read more information about the award, have a look over at our award docs. If you would like to nominate someone or yourself for an Outstanding PyLady Award, head over to the nomination form. Nominations are accepted year-round, and award winners will be recognised at the nearest upcoming PyCon US.