Rust Foundation Board Updates | October 2026

Meet Our Newest Board Members

The Rust Foundation is pleased to announce two newly elected Project Directors to our Board, Jana Dönszelmann and Nia Deckers and welcome Jess Wass, as the new representative for Meta.

We would like to give a big thanks and acknowledge outgoing PDs Carol Nichols and Ryan Levick. We have appreciated your guidance, leadership, and support of the Rust Foundation and our staff and we look forward to continuing to work with you in support of the Project. Jana and Nia join current PDs David Wood, Jack Huey, and Niko Matsakis.

Project Director: Jana Dönszelmann

Jana (she/her) is a member of the Rust Project’s compiler team, and hosts the twice-weekly compiler office hours. She’s employed as a compiler engineer at Hexcat. Before that she was a lecturer, teaching Rust to students at Delft University.

I’m honored to be elected to be a project director, and to represent the Rust project at the Foundation. In that role, it’s important to listen to all the members of the project. As such I want to say to them: if there’s something that bothers you, or something you’d like to discuss, I’m happy to talk about it, anytime <3

Project Director: Nia Deckers

Nia works full-time on Rust as a compiler engineer at Hexcat. She currently leads the library team. She is one of the main driving forces behind getting custom allocators into the language. In addition to engineering Nia has a background in union organising.

“I’ve been extremely excited to participate in Rust’s governance and facilitate the incredible work of my peers in the Rust project, and so look forward to my future work as Project Director, helping to protect the open & inclusive culture that has helped Rust succeed so far.”

Meta Board Representative: Jess Wass

Jess serves as the Member Director representing Meta on the Foundation Board of Directors. At Meta she is a software engineer on the Rust Foundations team, aiming to make using Rust at Meta an easy and delightful experience.