New Executive Director Selected to Lead OpenPOWER Foundation

[caption id=“attachment_5638” align=“alignleft” width=“150”] “It’s been an honour and joy to have been part of the OpenPOWER ecosystem as Executive Director of the Foundation.” - Hugh Blemings[/caption]

I had the good fortune to join the OpenPOWER Foundation as Executive Director in late 2017. Over the ensuing 2.5 years I’ve worked with some fantastic people both within our Membership and of course the broader OpenPOWER Ecosystem. Some of these folk are new to me, others ones I’ve known through the broader open technical commons for over 20 years.

I’ve also been privileged to be a part of the team that has brought about some of the most significant steps in the OpenPOWER journey, not least of which the opening of the POWER ISA in August 2019.

Over the last few months I have found it more difficult to do justice to the ED role. The root causes are personal in nature and thankfully transient and now fully behind me. These challenges provided an opportunity to reflect, and I determined that a change is in order.  This coupled with the appearance of a fantastic potential successor made the correct decision clear.

Accordingly I will step down as Executive Director of the OpenPOWER Foundation on 1 June 2020. I indicated to the Board my desire to ensure as seamless a transition as possible and am delighted to be able to stay on as an Advisor to the Board after the transition concludes.

While I have not identified a specific next step personally, I can say this: I will be staying in the Open Source space, I will not be undertaking a role that conflicts with the OpenPOWER mission and that I intend returning to people/engineering team management which is where my heart lies.

Anyways, enough about me! :)

I am delighted to advise that my successor is New York-based James Kulina. James was most recently Chief Operating Officer at Hyper.sh and comes from a background in open source enterprise software and hardware and has been interested in OpenPOWER for many years.

He is uniquely well placed, having extensive experience in both startup and enterprise settings, to guide OpenPOWER and the OpenPOWER Foundation through the many exciting opportunities before us and also happens to be a super nice chap! James will be reaching out shortly in a follow on blog post to introduce himself further.

It’s been an honour and joy to have been part of the OpenPOWER ecosystem as ED of the Foundation. We have a bright future to look forward to, and I look forward to continuing to be involved for many years to come as a member of the community.

In closing I wish all of you personally and professionally the very best.

-Hugh