Empowering New Maintainers: Inside the OpenSSF Mentorship Program

Empowering New Maintainers: Inside the OpenSSF Mentorship Program

From What's in the SOSS? An OpenSSF Podcast by OpenSSF

March 17, 2026 · 23 min · Season 3 · Episode 8

About this episode

This episode discusses the success of the OpenSSF Mentorship Program and its impact on underrepresented voices in software security.

In this episode of What’s in the SOSS? host Sally Cooper sits down with Yesenia Yser, co-lead of the OpenSSF Mentorship Program and the BEAR Working Group, and Kairo De Araujo, Open Source Software Engineer and mentor for rstuf. They dive into the success of the OpenSSF Mentorship Program, which focuses on bringing underrepresented voices into software security. Kairo shares an incredible outcome from the last cycle – where two out of three mentees became project maintainers – while Yesenia d...

People in this episode

Host: Sally Cooper

Guests: Yesenia Yser, Kairo De Araujo

Topics covered

  • mentorship
  • software security
  • open source
  • underrepresented voices
  • project maintainers

Keywords

  • mentorship program
  • software security
  • open source
  • project maintainers
  • underrepresented voices

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: OpenSSF, BEAR Working Group, rstuf

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