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What’s in the SOSS? Podcast #29 – S2E06 Showing Up Fully: Meet OpenSSF’s new Community Manager, Stacey Potter

By May 6, 2025Podcast

Summary

In this special episode of What’s in the SoSS?, we welcome Stacey Potter, the new Community Manager at the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF). Stacey shares her winding journey from managing operations at a vitamin company to becoming a powerful advocate and connector in the open source world. We explore her community-first mindset, her work with CNCF and Platform Engineering Day, and her passion for inclusion and authenticity. Whether you’re curious about how to get started in open source or want insight into how community shapes security, this episode is for you.

Conversation Highlights

00:00 – Welcome + Introduction
01:34 – Stacey’s Origin Story in Open Source
03:18 – Discovering Community Management at Weaveworks
04:19 – Projects and Evolution Across CNCF and Beyond
06:13 – Co-Chairing Platform Engineering Day
10:15 – Being Openly Queer in Open Source
13:38 – What Stacey Hopes to Bring to OpenSSF
16:23 – Rapid Fire Round
17:53 – Final Thoughts

Transcript

Intro music (00:00)

Stacey (00:02): “It’s given me a deep understanding and appreciation for inclusiveness and being a welcoming community – I have always felt embraced here, these spaces have empowered me to show up fully as myself”

Yesenia (00:021)
Hello and welcome to What’s in the SoSS? Open SSF’s podcast where we talk to interesting people throughout the open source ecosystem, sharing their journey, experiences and wisdom. So Yessenia, I’m one of our hosts and today we have a special announcement and introduction. I am talking to OpenSSF’s Community Manager, Stacey Potter. Welcome to the open source community. Stacey, please introduce yourself to the audience.

Stacey Potter (00:48)
Hey, everyone. Thanks, Yesenia. So I’m super happy to be here. I just joined and think this is week four that we’re recording this right now. So by the time this gets posted, I might have been here for a little bit longer. But I am the new community manager here at OpenSSF. So I am here to facilitate events. I’ll be managing budgets in the background. And in general, just promoting the foundation and all of our technical initiatives. So super stoked to be here. Can’t wait to meet everybody either in person, online, in Slack, et cetera. So super happy.

Yesenia (01:25)
Super, super happy to have you and we’ll kick it off with our first question. Tell us about your journey in the open source world and just what sparked your curiosity.

Stacey Potter (01:34)
Yeah, so honestly, my path into software was more a result of circumstance than intention. I transitioned into the industry a little bit later in my career. Before that, I was working as an operations manager at a small family-run vitamin company based out of Oakland, California. And after I left that role, I applied for an office manager position at a San Francisco startup focused on what we now call Software Composition Analysis or SCA. Though I don’t even know if it was called that back then in 2009. And at the time, our tagline was something like open source software security for enterprises or something like that. I think a lot of people will know our main competitor, which was Black Duck Software. But we were just a tiny little startup having fun in San Francisco.

And that role was really like my first exposure to the world of open source, but not in a really direct way because I wasn’t working with it. And I almost felt like we were kind of pulling open source out of enterprises or making it more restrictive in certain ways. Cause it was like we were bringing to light all the open source licenses and if you should or shouldn’t use them in an enterprise, right? So it felt a little ambiguous, right?

But I spent seven years there working with the CEO and gradually kind of moved through different roles at that company. I was great about working at a startup. I was the sales operations manager. And then later I transitioned into marketing. And then that company got acquired and I stayed on for a couple more years doing marketing things. And then I transitioned out of there in 2019 and went to Weaveworks where I feel like my true journey with open source really began. I started working at Weaveworks and as a community manager at that point, transition from marketing went into community management. Thanks to general good faith in my boss at the time, which was Tama Nakahara. She’s amazing and an amazing mentor. And she was like, I have marketing, you’re fine. You’re personable. You’ll be great as a community manager and really took me under her wing and taught me everything I needed to know. And learning all about Flux and Flagger in that CNCF ecosystem and really being embraced within those communities was where I feel like it really truly began.

Yesenia (04:09)
Nice. It’s nice little journey to start and then just what brought you here now to OpenSSF? Did you come from there or have you explored other open source projects that you would like to mention?

Stacey Potter (04:19)
Yeah. So Flux and Flyer were my true introduction. Been in and around the CNCF for a while. After Weaveworks, I went to Dynatrace and worked on the Open Feature project and the Kept project, which are both CNCF projects as well. Super great communities there as well. And then after Dynatrace, I went to Stacklok, which is another startup. And they had a project called Minder, which we donated to the OpenSSF. And I had kind of heard musings of the OpenSSF when I was kind of in that CNCF ecosystem before, but didn’t really know a whole lot about it. And when I worked at StackLock, kind of became more familiar with the community. We donated that project. I went through the entire process of like what donating a project looks like within the OpenSSF ecosystem. So that was fun and interesting.

Yesenia (05:11)
Interesting.

Stacey Potter (05:18)
And yeah, that’s StackLock like switched positions. It kind of is going a different route now. And so I came to OpenSSF just almost a month ago, not quite a month ago, so three weeks ago now. And yeah, that’s how I got here.

Yesenia (05:31)
That’s amazing. Here you are. Perfect. Yeah, it sounds like a good experience exposure with community building and open source projects for CNCF and OpenSSF, which are big, big organizations when it comes to open source. So very interesting, very interesting indeed. So we’ll move on to the next question. This is during my online recon, we’ll say, consented recon. I discovered you are the co-chair of Platform Engineering Day. Can you share with the audience what this is, what the event is, and what excites you the most about working with this community?

Stacey Potter (06:13)
Yeah, absolutely. So Platform Engineering Day, mean, well, as internal developer platforms, IDPs, really help dev teams move faster by giving them tools and frameworks that they need, right? So Platform Engineering Day is all about sharing real world tips on building great internal platforms, not just the tech, but the people and the processes as well, right? So it’s a chance for platform folks from all different job titles and job roles to trade stories, lessons, and ideas on making the dev experience awesome. So what excites me about working in this community? I think there’s just so many passionate people involved in this space. I know Platform Engineering Day has become kind of this buzzy word of late, right?

Yesenia (07:11)
Marketing.

Stacey (07:13)
Exactly. But I mean, to the people who are in it, they, from my perspective, as I’ve gotten involved in it, they’re super passionate folks, right? And they really want to make this experience, you know, as good as they can. But after chatting with Paula Kennedy, who is my co chair, and Abby Bangser, whom I got to know through an old Weavework’s colleague, we felt the need for not just a bunch of tech talks on the topic. But really, we wanted to provide, as I said before, a place where platform engineers, product managers, solutions architects, and other folks could come together and share lessons learned in building and managing internal platforms, measuring platform maturity and improving these golden paths and the developer experience as a whole.

Yesenia (08:04)
Nice, do you want to do a quick plug on when the next platform engineering day is?

Stacey Potter (08:08)
Well, it’s a colo with KubeCons. So if you’re going to the next KubeCon, which I believe is North America in Atlanta, Georgia, for all those folks who are outside of the States, I’m sorry, that you may or may not be able to come here based on a number of different things. But we’re trying to do it co-located in general with KubeCons, because it kind of fits there and makes sense. And we’ve had a great response so far, right? The first one, we got more CFPs than any other co-located event had ever gotten at any KubeCon, colo event before. And I think we had hundreds and hundreds of folks in the seats listening to all these great talks. And I’ll also just highlight the platform’s working group within the CNCF too. This is a great team of people working on all things platform related. And if you’re interested in learning more about platform engineering in general, the platforms working group within the CNC app is really a great place to go.

Yesenia (09:15)
Yeah, I didn’t know that it was in KubeCon. I’m hoping to go my first year this year in Atlanta.

Stacey Potter (09:21)
Yeah. Yeah. I think Paris was our debut. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Not bad. And we just had our last one in London. Yeah.

Yesenia (09:24)
Hmm, that’s a good debut. Fashion debuted there. there you go.

Stacey Potter (9:31)
We’re so fashionable. Who knew?

Yesenia (09:36)
Talking about fashionable. During my cyber roots, I found your GitHub profile, which I loved and made me giggle and smile in several locations. But you noted you’re queer and for recording purposes, AF. I’d love to hear your perspective on how this has transformed your journey and influenced you being involved in these open source communities and anything you want to share with the audience.

Stacey Potter (10:15)
Sure. So being openly queer in tech and the open source space has been a pretty powerful part of my journey, I guess, in retrospect. It’s given me a deep understanding and appreciation for inclusiveness and being a welcoming community, regardless of what the, I guess, we’re going to call it difference is for whomever is coming into your community.

I think something I’ve been lucky to experience in the Kubernetes and cloud native and broader open source ecosystems is that welcomeness, that feeling of belonging. I’ve never felt like I didn’t belong here, right?

Yesenia (10:45)
Yeah.

Stacey Potter (10:48)
Which I think is pretty special. I mean, it’s a privileged place to be, I think in certain ways too, right? Like I am a cis white woman, right? But I present as butch and I’m you know, that’s my that’s what I call myself, right? That’s how I identify. And some people could be put off by that. But I have always felt embraced here. And, you know, like these spaces have empowered me to show up fully as myself, which has not only boosted my confidence, but also allowed me to connect with and, you know, mentor, I guess, others navigating similar paths, whether that’s being queer or being a woman or whatever.

I think visibility matters and I found that authenticity can be a bridge, right? Whether it’s in a code review, which I don’t do by the way, community calls or just, you know, contributing to projects that reflect shared values that you have, right?

Yesenia (11:48)
Yeah, it’s great because that’s the underlying foundation of open source. It’s just a community of anyone that can come in and contribute and make a project, move a project and make it successful and gave me a little bit of goosebumps there as you were speaking on that one. But because I feel the same when it comes to like the open source space is just they’re very welcoming. Every time folks are like, I’m just so scared. I’m like, trust me, don’t just go ask the questions. Like this is the place to ask the technical quote unquote “this is a dumb question…”

Stacey Potter (12:15)
Yeah, and I mean, they’re just so happy. What I have found is everyone in these communities is just so happy for people to notice them to want to get involved in the first place, right? Like they’re so stoked that you’re there. Like whatever your skill set is, they’re willing to bring you into the fold, right? They’ll make it work.

Yesenia (12:22)
Yeah.

Yesenia (12:41)
We’ll figure it out.

Stacey Potter (12:41)
You don’t need to know how to code, right? Work on docs, work on…community management, promote our events, like make us a poster or a cool logo or I mean, there’s so many different ways you can contribute if you don’t write code. I don’t write code and this is my job now. I would have never thought, right? Yeah.

Yesenia (13:00)
Yeah. Who would have thunk it? Yeah, I haven’t written code in such a long time. I write for my own like fun, so I don’t lose the skill. You know, it’s like riding a bike. I’m hoping it’s like riding a bike that you never forget, but I forgot because once again, short term memory issues.

Stacey Potter (13:12)
Yeah, right, right.

Yesenia (13:17)
Ah, this is great. Moving on to the next. You are the newest member of OpenSSF. I’m sure other folks have been hired, so I’m sorry if there’s anybody that’s newer, but as far as his recording, this is what I know. And now the Community Manager, what would you like to see in the upcoming months with the impact you plan to ripple through this ecosystem?

Stacey Potter (13:38)
Wow, that’s a big question. So as the newest member of the OpenSSF team and like you said, the community manager here, I’m really excited to help grow and connect this vibrant ecosystem. In the coming months, I think I want to focus on making it easier and more inviting for people to get involved. Whether you’re seasoned security pro or just a curious first timer, I think a lot of people don’t even know that we exist maybe – the OpenSSF. So I think just awareness in general is also something that I’d like to help promote. But know, like smoothing out the onboarding journey, launching programs like the Ambassador Initiative. I think there’s been a lot of talk internally about trying to ramp that up and get that going and supporting mentorships that help contributors thrive. I’d love to see more stories, more collaboration across projects within the OpenSSF and externally within other communities like maybe CNCF, since that’s where my prior history is, right? And more representation from folks who may not traditionally see themselves in the security space. OpenSSF already has amazing technical initiatives. My goal is to amplify the voices behind them, create inclusive pathways into our work and build bridges to other communities who share our mission. So whether it’s through meetups, events, or even just a warm welcome in Slack, I want everyone to feel like there’s a place for them here.

Yesenia (15:15)
I love it. You’re full of the goose bumps today. I love that warm welcome on Slack. You had mentioned the ambassador program. I personally haven’t heard of it. Is there any, I know you guys are just, it’s in the works. Anything you want to share about it.

Stacey Potter (15:29)
Well, it’s gonna be a top priority for me as soon as I sort of get my feet, find my feet here, right? It’s only week four. But it’s definitely a priority that we want to get this out as soon as possible. And there’s already been so much work done before I came. So it’s getting me up to speed and then, yeah, I’m just super excited. think it encourages more people to join sort of.

Yesenia (15:37)
Yeah

Stacey Potter (15:56)
Also celebrating those who have made us who we are so far as well. But then, you know, lots of people would love to become an ambassador that don’t know how to get started or things like that, right? And bringing more people into the fold.

Yesenia (16:09)
Love it, love it. Well, I look forward to seeing the announcement news and learning more about that. So for those folks listening, hopefully it’s released. Hopefully it’s in the works by the time you listen to this. All right, cool. We’re going to move over to the rapid fire. I just make noises because I don’t get, Krobe’s a fancy noise maker. So we’ll go with the flow with whatever my ADHD brain decides to do. And our first question, Disney or Pixar?

Stacey Potter (16:40)
Pixar for sure. I used to live like around the corner from Pixar, so, and I’ve always been a huge Pixar fan, but this is an acquired Pixar, so they’re one and the same now,

Yesenia (16:52)
In my heart, are they really?

Stacey Potter (16:55)
Yeah, no, in our hearts we know the truth, but Pixar, yeah.

Yesenia (17:02)
Dark or light mode?

Stacey Potter (17:05)
Dark.

Yesenia (17:06)
Dark as my soul.

Stacey Potter (17:09)
Black is the night.

Yesenia (17:11)
Cats or dogs? as she takes a sip of coffee.

Stacey Potter (17:15)
Both. I have two cats and a dog, and they’re all amazing. I love them both for very different reasons.

Yesenia (17:22)
Yeah, I can’t choose between my five, so.

Stacey Potter (17:26)
Oh wow. That’s a lot.

Yesenia (17:29)
Alright, this next question and it may cause chaos to our listeners, alright? Linux Mac or Windows?

Stacey Potter (17:38)
Well, I’m a non-coder, so, and I’m a Mac gal.

Yesenia (17:44)
Mac, there it is. Well, there you have it folks. It’s another rapid fire. Any last minute advice or thoughts for the audience you’d like to share?

Stacey Potter (17:53)
Well, I’ll do some shameless plugging of our upcoming events because I’d love to connect with you all in real life and these events are great places for our community to get together and share ideas and progress on the capabilities that make it easier to sustainably secure the open source software on which we all depend. You can find all of these listed on our website at openssf.org/events

So, we’re going to be hosting some upcoming events:

  • We’ve got Community Day Japan (in Tokyo) on June 18 – which is a colo event after KubeCon’s main event
  • CD North America will be in Denver on June 26 (as a colo event after Open Source Summit, which we are sponsoring so we’ll also have a booth at Open Source Summit)
  • CD India is August 4 in Hyderabad Co-located with KubeCon + CloudNativeCon India
  • CD Europe will be in Amsterdam on August 28 (Open Source Summit, which we are sponsoring so we’ll also have a booth at Open Source Summit)
  • And Open Source SecurityCon is November 10 (colo event pre-KubeCon NA) which is a new event that fosters collaboration and shares innovation in cloud native security and open source software security. The Call for Proposals for this one opens mid May – so be on the lookout for that.

We’ll also be attending & sponsoring events for the remainder of the year as well:

  • We’re sponsoring, and thus have a booth at Open Source Summit North America in June (Colorado) Europe August 25-27
  • Blackhat & DefCon in Vegas in early August
  • We’re sponsoring, and thus have a booth at Open Source Summit Europe August 25-27
  • Sponsoring Open Source in Finance Forum in NYC October 21-22

I can’t wait to meet you all. I’m super excited to be here. And if you join us in Slack, please say hi. If you have any interest in any of our projects, I just encourage you to just jump in, right? Say hello. And usually that’s all it takes to get a really warm welcome from anyone in this community. And I look forward to working with all of you.

Yesenia (20:16)
There you have it from Stacey Potter. Thank you for your impact and contributions to our open source communities. I’m looking forward to the impact that you’ll have and how your ripple effects the open SSF being a part of it. Stacey, I appreciate your time and thank you.

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