Nell Shamrell-Harrington Elected as Rust Foundation Board of Directors Chair
The Rust Foundation is pleased to announce that Nell Shamrell-Harrington has been elected as our new Board of Directors Chair. Nell takes over from former Chair, Dr. Lars Bergstrom whose board term ended this past January.
Nell was elected to the Chair position via a live vote of the Rust Foundation’s Board of Directors during its first meeting of 2025 on January 14th.
As Chair of the Rust Foundation Board of Directors, Nell’s primary duty is to ensure that the Board is effective in governing the Rust Foundation’s strategy and delivery. She will preside over all board meetings, manage the agenda, facilitate important decisions amongst our directors, and serve as liaison between our senior management team and the board. More details on the Rust Foundation Board of Directors Chairperson role can be found in Section 6.5 of our bylaws.
We are thrilled to have another experienced and dedicated advocate of Rust serving as our newest Chair. Congratulations, Nell!
More about Nell Shamrell-Harrington
Nell Shamrell-Harrington is a Principal Engineer at Microsoft working in Azure. She has served on the Rust Foundation board as Microsoft’s member director since 2021. Prior to joining Microsoft she was on the Rust team at Mozilla, focusing on project cloud infrastructure, Open Source governance, and async Rust. Since 2020, she has been honored to serve as Lead Editor for This Week in Rust, keeping the entire Rustacean community up to date with happenings in the Rust project and within the larger Rust ecosystem. Additionally, she co-leads the Memory Safety Special Interest Group within the OpenSSF. Outside of work, she enjoys raising pet bunnies and fostering a variety of critters!
About her new role as Rust Foundation Board of Directors Chair, Nell said:
“I started using Rust because of its power in distributed system software. I kept using Rust because of its outstanding and empathetic community. Serving on the board as the Foundation has grown has been a joy. Stepping into the role of Chair and playing a larger role in ensuring the Foundation delivers on its mission is a tremendous honor. I look forward to continuing to work with the Board, the Foundation staff, Project leadership, and our amazing community of Rustaceans across the world.”
On Nells’ new Chair role, Rust Foundation Executive Director & CEO Rebecca Rumbul said:
“Nell has been a passionate advocate for the Rust programming language for many years. Through her service on our Board of Directors as Member Director for Microsoft and as Vice-Chair, I have had the pleasure of getting a front-row seat to witness Nell’s energy and passion for Rust since joining the Foundation myself. Furthermore, she is a true Rustacean and community member, having committed countless hours to serving as Lead Editor for This Week In Rust, emceeing Rust events like RustConf, and much more. The Rust Foundation is delighted to have her as our newest Chair”
We look forward to a productive and collaborative period ahead under their leadership.
