A Fond Farewell to Two Rust Foundation Colleagues

This month marks a bittersweet moment for the Rust Foundation, as we say goodbye to two of our colleagues: Paul Lenz, our Director of Finance & Funding, who is retiring, and Jan David Nose, our Infrastructure Lead, who is setting off on a new adventure after three impactful years with us.

Both have left indelible marks on the Foundation, the Rust Project, and our community. We’d like to take a moment to reflect on their contributions and celebrate their next chapters.

Celebrating Paul’s Retirement

Paul Lenz joined the Rust Foundation in early 2022 as our first Director of Finance & Funding, bringing order, expertise, and vision to the Foundation’s financial operations. Behind the scenes of every sponsorship, grant program, and budget cycle has been Paul’s steady hand, ensuring that the Foundation could grow responsibly while supporting the Rust Project and community.

His thoughtful leadership helped set the Foundation on firm financial footing in its formative years. But more than numbers, Paul brought warmth and wisdom to our team. His presence in meetings, his dedication to our grantees, his patience in guiding complex processes, and his commitment to our mission have made a lasting difference.

As Paul retires, we are deeply grateful for the foundation (both literal and figurative!) that he leaves behind. 

Jan David Nose’s Next Adventure

Jan David (“JD”) joined the Rust Foundation later in 2022 as our very first engineer, reporting to our Director of Technology, Joel Marcey, embedded in the Rust Infrastructure Team. 

From day one, JD rolled up his sleeves to tackle the challenges of a fast-growing open source ecosystem. His very first project involved migrating bandwidth from AWS CloudFront to Fastly, a move that saved resources and demonstrated the Foundation’s commitment to sustainability. Over time, his work expanded to encompass documentation, transparency, and leadership.

JD eventually became Infrastructure Lead, presenting at RustConf and RustNation UK to highlight the often-invisible but critical work of the Infrastructure Team. Under his leadership, the team not only optimized costs (most notably reducing GitHub Actions usage by 75%) but also began to plan strategically for Rust’s future in an era of global adoption and increasing security challenges.

As JD reflected in his own farewell blog:

“It truly feels to me that Rust is at an inflection point in its history… Today, Rust is everywhere. It is used to build every major operating system. It runs in cars, rockets, and airplanes. It is not just used by early adopters, but by enterprises and the Fortune 500.”

While JD is leaving the Foundation to pursue a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build a new company with a close collaborator, he’ll remain a member of the Infrastructure Team. His thoughtful stewardship, technical expertise, collaborative spirit, and vision for the future of Rust have set the team up for success. We are very grateful for his work here and can’t wait to see what he builds next!

Gratitude and Best Wishes

It isn’t every day that a small organization like ours says farewell to two colleagues of such importance at once. We feel both the weight of this change and the deep gratitude for all they’ve done.

On behalf of the Rust Foundation:

• Thank you, Paul, for ensuring the Foundation has a strong, sustainable future.
• Thank you, Jan David, for strengthening Rust’s infrastructure and community while showing us all what thoughtful leadership looks like.

Our team wishes you both joy, rest, and success and we look forward to cheering you on in your respective next chapters 🦀