As a Community Architect at Red Hat, Laura Santamaria bridges engineering disciplines by breaking down complex systems to foster open-source collaboration. She serves as a global core member for DevOpsDays, a steering committee member for Cloud Native Rejekts, and a long-standing program committee member for Open Source Summit. In addition, she organizes DevOpsDays Austin, PyTexas, and Cloud Austin to serve the Austin community. With a background in technical education, she spent years teaching Python for Women Who Code ATX, helping to lower the barrier to entry for engineering disciplines. While she is a veteran podcaster (currently heard on Technically Leadership from Packet Pushers and Cloud Native Compass with David Flanagan (rawkode) and previously on things like Quick Bites of Cloud Engineering), her primary focus remains building sustainable, contributor-driven ecosystems. Outside of tech, Laura runs, reads, and watches clouds—the real kind.



