Remembering and Honoring Marina Zhurakhinskaya, Founder of Outreachy

Thu Jun 16 21:19:06 UTC 2022

   Remembering and Honoring Marina Zhurakhinskaya, Founder of Outreachy

URL: https://sfconservancy.org/news/2022/jun/14/remembering-marina/

Links to social media:
  https://mastodon.technology/web/@conservancy/108478308638397905
  https://twitter.com/conservancy/status/1536845655364149248

It is with great sadness that we write about the death of one of the
most significant contributors to Free and Open Source Software, Marina
Zhurakhinskaya. Marina was a force for change and leaves a profound
legacy of diversity, inclusion, equity and justice. It is impossible to
imagine what Software Freedom Conservancy and Outreachy would be like
without Marina.

Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, Marina moved to the United States after
completing high school. She was accepted at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology after less than a year in the United States and graduated
from MIT with a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Computer Science.
After working at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory for several years, she
joined Red Hat, a company focused on open source solutions for the
enterprise market. While at Red Hat, Marina began to contribute to the
GNOME desktop, working as a developer on GNOME Shell, and then became
active in the GNOME community.

Marina tirelessly created and improved systems to help new people
contribute to GNOME and free software, generally. She created a mentors
list for GNOME as well as a newcomers' tutorial. She helped improve
GNOME's participation in Google Summer of Code. In 2009, Marina
reinvented a program to provide paid internships for women to contribute
to GNOME. That program, which Marina carefully architected and continued
to lead and collaborate on for the next decade, became GNOME's Outreach
Program for Women and ultimately grew into Outreachy, an internship
program for everyone subject to systemic bias and impacted by
underrepresentation — one of the most important programs of Software
Freedom Conservancy.

Marina always cared about getting the details right. This dedication was
consistently reflected in her meticulous efforts to document Outreachy's
processes and to keep records of the successes of the program. Marina's
caring and enthusiasm for Outreachy's participants resulted in deep
relationships with many of the program's alums. Marina celebrated every
conference presentation by former participants in the program, and any
news of their career developments. Along with Karen Sandler, Marina
refined and grew the program beyond GNOME to include more open source
communities. Since Marina ran the first round of the program in 2010,
846 people have successfully completed the program.

When Outreach Program for Women became much bigger than just including
GNOME participants, Marina stewarded the transition to Software Freedom
Conservancy, where she led the effort to rebrand the program as
Outreachy. She worked with Sage Sharp to develop the program's
operations go become the program it is today, with well over 100 interns
per year. Marina remained a critical voice and active participant (along
with Karen, Sage and Tony Sebro) on Outreachy's Leadership Committee.
Marina was active in the Leadership Committee until her last few days.

Marina diligently sought and found opportunities to create systemic
change; she was recognized for these contributions. Marina was elected
to and served on the GNOME board of Directors as well as the Ada
Initiative's Board. In 2012, Marina was awarded the "Pants Award" by the
GNOME Foundation — the community's highest honor awarded annually. She
was awarded the O'Reilly Open Source Award in 2015, and a Silver Stevie
award in the “Women Helping Women” category in 2016. Along with Karen,
she accepted the Award for Social Benefit for Free Software on behalf of
Outreachy in 2014.

Marina was proud of her more than 16 years of work for Red Hat.
Following her technical role, she transitioned to the position of Senior
Outreach Specialist, Community Diversity and Inclusion at Red Hat.
Marina's role included her work on Outreachy in addition to working on
ed Hat's own efforts to support diversity and combat bias in its
operations and in open source communities. Marina created Red Hat’s
diversity scholarships for DevConf.US and DevConf.CZ conferences, which
have supported over 40 scholarship recipients.

Marina was diagnosed with breast cancer three and a half years ago, and,
with characteristic determination, not only left no stone unturned in
her own treatment, but connected, became friends, and shared her
knowledge with many others dealing with this awful disease. She died on
June 11, 2022. Marina is survived by her husband, Owen Taylor, an
important contributor to the GNOME Desktop and fellow Red Hat employee,
and their three children. Marina encouraged people to take advantage of
available, life-saving genetic testing for mutations that cause breast
cancer and other diseases, and we elevate that message today. The family
has asked for donations in Marina's honor to Dana Farber's Metastatic
Breast Cancer Research Fund [0] or Outreachy [1].

We share the grief with everyone in the GNOME, Outreachy, and Red Hat
communities. Please support each other, and be kind to yourself. We
encourage community members to take the time they need to remember and
honor Marina. Past Outreachy interns, mentors, and community
coordinators are encouraged to contact Outreachy organizers if they wish
to participate in a private Outreachy chat thread to honor Marina.

[0] https://danafarber.jimmyfund.org/site/TR?team_id=6863&fr_id=1200&pg=team
[1] https://www.outreachy.org/sponsor/donate/