From Teacher to OSPO Technologist

### Overview In this presentation at a Linux Foundation conference, Brittany Stennis recounts her professional journey transitioning from an elementary school teacher to an Open Source Program Office (OSPO) strategist at Fannie Mae. She discusses how having a non-traditional background without a formal computer science degree initially caused self-doubt and imposter syndrome, but ultimately proved advantageous as foundational skills from education translated directly into program and community management within corporate open source.

### Key Topics - **Career Path and Non-Traditional Transition:** Moving from teaching fourth- and fifth-grade students and managing educational technology training to serving as a community manager for Comcast's OSPO (hired by Nithya Ruff), and later establishing an OSPO at Fannie Mae. - **Transferable Skills from Education:** How classroom teaching translates into core OSPO competencies, including stakeholder communication, organizational routines, public speaking, empathy, and navigating community dynamics and organizational bureaucracy. - **Program Planning vs. Lesson Planning:** Connecting pedagogical planning (curriculum, quarters, lesson objectives) directly to modern project and program management frameworks like sprints, epics, stories, and KPIs/OKRs. - **Community Impact and Open Source Engagement:** Mobilizing contributors for civic tech and public health open source efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as supporting mentorship and tech fellowship initiatives. - **Mentorship and Upskilling:** Strategies for supporting individuals from non-traditional backgrounds through tangible milestone setting, clear documentation, and playing to personal strengths.

### Technical Details & Operational Practices - **OSPO Responsibilities:** The speaker highlights managing community relations, internal inner source programs, upstream open source software contributions, and coordinating across legal, intellectual property (IP), and executive stakeholders. - **Civic Tech Project (CHIME):** Stennis coordinated volunteers and community members around CHIME (COVID-19 Hospital Impact Model for Epidemics / COVID hospital epidemiology tracking app), an open source project used in Philadelphia to project hospital capacity and assist public health decision-making. - **Workforce Development:** Collaborating with Code for Philly and securing corporate sponsorship from Comcast to fund a tech fellowship program. This program helped individuals without formal degrees or prior paid technical experience build resumes through compensated civic non-profit projects. - **Technical Adaptation:** Stennis notes learning foundational technical skills on the job—ranging from working with YAML files and managing technical blogs to guiding developers with open source contributions and software projects.

### Takeaways - Formal computer science or engineering degrees are not prerequisites for impactful careers in open source program management and developer relations. - Teaching skills—specifically breaking down complex topics, structuring daily work, handling diverse learning styles, and active listening—provide an ideal framework for managing open source communities and complex corporate programs. - Supporting non-traditional talent requires organic mentorship, structured documentation, and setting achievable, incremental goals rather than overwhelming newcomers with advanced technical domains all at once.