In October, we began accepting nominations for Red Hat's first annual Women in Open Source Awards. Red Hat has long been an advocate for women in technology and open source, and we want to shine a light on women who are doing great things for the world. After reading more than 100 nominations from across the globe, we have been both humbled and awed by the tremendous impact that women are making in open source. We're thrilled to introduce our award finalists, and we invite you to cast your votes and help us determine the winners.

Our 2015 award finalists were chosen for their remarkable contributions to open source. The Academic award was open to women who contribute to open source while enrolled in college or university. Both the Community and Academic award finalists include some of the best and brightest women in our industry.

Women in Open Source Community Award finalists

• Shauna Gordon-McKeon, OpenHatch
• Elizabeth K. Joseph, HP
• Deb Nicholson, Media Goblin
• Karen Sandler, Software Freedom Conservancy
• Sarah Sharp, Intel

Women in Open Source Academic Award finalists

• Charul, Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad
• Sophia D'Antoine, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
• Emily Dunham, Oregon State University
• Netha Hussain, University of Calicut
• Kesha Shah, Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology

These nominees were selected by a panel of Red Hat judges, including Jim Whitehurst, president and CEO; Tim Burke, vice president, Cloud and Operating System Infrastructure; Denise Dumas, vice president of Operating System Platform; Rikki Endsley, senior software engineer, Open Source and Standards team (OSAS); Werner Gold, senior partner enablement manager; Jason Hibbets, project manager, opensource.com; Anisha Narang, associate software engineer; Harish Pillay, senior community relations specialist; and myself, executive vice president and chief people officer.

Visit the Women in Open Source website to vote for the finalists between now and March 6, 2015. Winners will be announced at Red Hat Summit, to be held June 23 – 26 in Boston.

Good luck to all of the nominees, and thanks for voting!