We're excited to announce that two Red Hat associates, Máirín Duffy, a principal interaction designer, and Rikki Endsley, an Opensource.com community manager, received 2016 O'Reilly Open Source Awards yesterday at OSCON. The O’Reilly Open Source Awards recognize five individual contributors annually who have demonstrated exceptional leadership, creativity, and collaboration in the development of open source software.

Máirín joined Red Hat in 2005 as an interaction designer. As design team lead for 11+ years with the Fedora Project, "mizmo" has not only made "exceptional contributions to the core Red Hat Enterprise Linux product," writes Jim Whitehurst, president and CEO of Red Hat, in The Open Organization, "she has also earned a stellar reputation throughout the company for her reasoned and intelligent contributions to memo-list conversations on everything from the creation of the mission statement to the adoption of certain controversial proprietary software programs." She has helped create and teach courses in open source design and software in area schools, and continues to publish her work in open formats for reuse and remixing worldwide. She has also served as admin and mentor for Outreachy, a mentorship and internship program that helps people from underrepresented groups get involved in free and open source software.

Rikki joined Red Hat in 2014 as a community evangelist on the Open Source and Standards (OSAS) team at Red Hat. She is currently a community manager and editor for Opensource.com, helping build out their community of moderators, contributors, and participants, and breaking the one million monthly views milestone this year under her watch. She was previously a tech journalist, serving as associate publisher of Linux Pro Magazine, ADMIN, and Ubuntu User, and also as the managing editor of Sys Admin magazine and UnixReview.com, in addition to working as a freelance writer. Rikki was also a community manager for the USENIX Association.

And special congratulations to Sarah Sharp, recipient of the Red Hat Women in Open Source Award of 2015, who was also named an award winner at the ceremony.

On behalf of Red Hatters around the globe, congratulations Máirín and Rikki!