How have you been involved in the Magento ecosystem?

I've been part of the Magento community for well over a decade now, I believe my first proper jump into the community side of things would have been when I became one of the main Ops (Mods) on the Magento IRC under my pseudonym ""tKaizen"" back in 2013/2014. I have always had a passion for helping people learn our ecosystem or and improve themselves - I even love to help people prep and prepare for job interviews where I can. I have been active in slacks and discords across the community helping people where I can an currently sit on the Business Control Committee of Mage-OS.

Professionally I have been building Magento sites since Magento 1.7 was released and building on Magento has been my main career ever since. Every role I have had has been specialised to this community. I have worked across the field in small agencies, large agencies, in house retails, SAAS, and PAAS, and now I work in hosting that is geared  towards high scale Magento/Adobe Commerce stores.

In what ways have you contributed to the Magento Association and/or other non-profit communities?

I am currently on an new, yet to be formally announced MA committee and have actively worked with the MA to ensure our new tech project has quickly got off the ground, and has a stable deployment strategy that anyone can see work once we start accepting open contributions. I will not give away details but I hope I can say without sounding prideful that my impact within this committee has been noted -  I did get a shoutout during MMUKs keynote which should give you a small piece of confidence that I am not just making this up!

As mentioned earlier for other non-profits I am a BCC member for Mage-OS, and do like to try help out at critical junctures where I can, even if that is just being a supporting voice or rubber duck. I've a long history in the Magento community of helping people where I can, be it simple advice, or helping conqueror newly announced security issues so people don't have to panic internally alone. A big example was helping people not trip on mines back when APSB24-40 was released and we had the key rotation debacle.

What value would you add to the Board to help us advance our mission?

I'd love to contribute to the MA board's mission. Having worked closely with Magento at scale, I think I can bring some excellent perspective.

At Akoova, I work as their Ecommerce Architect, helping enterprise brands navigate complex technical challenges. What I've learned is that the real problems often aren't just technical - they're about finding solutions that work for everyone involved. I regularly work with clients' senior technical teams to solve issues they haven't been able to crack internally, which has given me exposure to a wide range of implementation challenges across different industries.

I also enjoy working with people and teams. I'm comfortable having difficult conversations when projects need course corrections, and I've found that being direct but respectful usually helps teams move forward more effectively
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As for persistence, I tackled a project in a previous role where their goal was to scale a Magento SAAS from supporting 200 total users to 200 concurrent users per tenant. The technical redesign took months of careful planning across multiple diverse teams. The final migration was complex but tens of thousands of tenants moved to new infrastructure without incident and the goal of being able to support 200 concurrent users was meet with flying colours. 

I think the MA community would benefit from having someone who's dealt with Magento at this scale across multiple industries, and who's comfortable working through both technical and interpersonal challenges.

What are the top 3 initiatives you want to see the Board accomplish in the next 6 months?

I would like to see steps forwards in regards to the following 3 areas:

Community Engagement - I would love to see the ball rolling again in getting contributions to  the Magento community (outside of events, this is getting good traction). If I could narrow this down I would most love to see improvements to the contributor on-boarding pathway so people have a defined track they can follow to get their journey started. 

Developer Relations - The MA are excellent at getting those "Big Bang" Meet Magento events swinging, I'd like to see more expansion into wider conference events such as the large PHP conferences or Ecommerce conferences. The hackathons coming back would be amazing even if we start small. I'd like to avoid contribution days as they were in their old format as contributors found it demotivating to just be assigned tickets. 

Finally, I'd like to see stronger social media presence. The MA has multiple channels but they lack consistent content. We need regular updates about MA progress and community developments that can expand our reach beyond the current mailing list audience. Having an internal heartbeat to build this social heartbeat could help to expand the MA's social sphere.

What initiatives do you want to see the Magento Association focus on in the coming years?

Building on my previous answer, I'd like to treat community engagement as an empowerment pipeline. Starting with the foundations already being put in place, we need to make current contributions more visible while simplifying the contribution onboarding pathways to increase contributor diversity. This will lead to better decision-making representation - ensuring we don't limit ourselves to only technical contributions, which would broaden our community perspectives as we will have many points of expertise to draw upon. Finally, by building on top of these, this creates a growth path where we develop contribution leaders who can shepherd new generations and help others build their own successes within our community. 

Next up, developer relations, the MA and events committee do an excellent job with large scale yearly events. I'd like to champion grassroots efforts that create more regular touch points with the community, filling gaps between big events with virtual meetups, community-driven discussions, technical showcases and deep dives. I'm particularly excited about the chance to bring back hackathons in a way that gets everyone engaged again. Building on this, I have a passion for mentorship - if we could help developers get coaching from others in the community, we can help people navigate those tricky situations that every developer faces, be it technical, people orientated, or career goal related.

My last initiative would focus on transparency and community communications. Many of the trust issues I mentioned earlier stem from people not seeing the day-to-day work the MA does, outside of the the newsletter, they only hear of major announcements or reports. I'd want to create regular, accessible updates about ongoing projects, board discussions, and community wins. Whether through social media, or community forums (slack), the goal is making MA activities visible so people can see the progress happening and feel connected to our direction. The MA has multiple social channels that could support this initiative, and consistent content would help demonstrate the active, engaged association they actually are.

What are the biggest challenges that you think the Association has faced and how would you approach them?

Some of the biggest challenges the MA has faced has been around community engagement and trust in the Magento project - there have been significant internal progress from the days of the open letter fiasco but rebuilding engagement and trust takes a lot of continued effort and a good show of face. Whether it's people claiming that Magento is on life support, that the MA doesn't have any power, or that only the "big wigs" get any face time. 

While these perceptions don't reflect current reality, I understand why they persist. I want to approach these with my noted initiatives - If we can reboot contributions by showing off just how much effort goes into the Magento project every single week we can build trust that Magento isn't simply limping along or being dragged along for the ride. 

With greater developer relations we build trust in the MA and the community as a whole. By getting buy in at the ground floor with technical teams believing in the project they build influence within their own spheres and can help guide their own organisations.

With greater social outreach we reinforce the project, the "brand", with those already using and believing in it reinforcing their choices, as well as introducing a new generation to the amazing community and possibilities found within our community.

There is also the issue that many volunteer based organisations face around governance, the MA's recent restructuring of the board and processes surrounding it show acknowledgement of this and that active steps are being taken to improve, I'd love to build on this by strengthening feedback-loops between the community and board decision-making

Hopefully by targeting these issues, this can build a stronger base of trust to build upon membership update and improve the MA's financial position, while ensuring that Adobe see just how powerful an empowered community can be in meeting our shared goals.

What else would you like to share to either the Election Committee or the membership of the Magento Association as they review your application? What makes you a great candidate to join the Board of Directors?

Thank you for taking the time to read through my application.

I'd like to share a bit about my personality since team dynamics matter so much. I'm naturally a relaxed person - under stress I don't break or snap at people, and you'll find me quite approachable. When problems arise, I don't want to know who made the mistake, I want to fix it and ensure it doesn't happen again. I like to keep things light when possible because I find teams work better when they can face challenges with a smile rather than treating everything like an arduous chore.

That said, while I'm friendly and collaborative, I will always champion what's needed even if that means having difficult conversations. I'm not aggressive and I'm always polite, but I'm not scared to stand up and speak when others might stay quiet to avoid causing ripples, as staying silent could ultimately hurt the team.

I'd love to be part of the MA to help out where I can and put my skills to use. I believe I'd be a valuable addition to the board and I'm excited about the opportunity to contribute during this important crossroads for our community.