Adacats are champions of marginalized genders in tech, including transgender, genderqueer, gender fluid, non-binary, two spirit, intersex, agender, bigender, third gender, neutrois, transsexual, woman, and/or anyone otherwise marginalized in terms of gender identity. This includes people who are questioning or only identify with these labels some of the time.

Adacats aims to enrich the lives of marginalized genders both at GitHub and beyond. In 2024, Adacats hosted unconscious bias training, virtual hangouts, and a Women’s History Month celebration featuring a painting class, career workshops, and a book club.

Blacktocats provide a supportive space for Black employees to share experiences, celebrate culture, and address unique challenges in the workplace. Through mentorship, professional development programs, and networking opportunities, the CoB aims to enhance career growth and visibility for our members.

Founded in 2019, Blacktocats promote cultural awareness by organizing educational initiatives, like bringing in external speakers for Black History Month and Juneteenth. These sessions encourage dialogue and allyship within GitHub by covering topics like racial equity, unconscious bias, and cultural competence.

Additionally, Blacktocats support numerous causes through the Blacktocats Giving Fund, having raised and distributed over $253k since 2020. For FY24, Blacktocats selected the following focus causes: Hack the Hood, OHub Foundation, My Block My Hood My City, Resilient Coders, and Shelby Farms Park Conservancy.

Neurocats is a welcoming space for individuals with unique cognitive styles, including autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and more. The CoB celebrates what makes each mind tick and aims to create a community where neurodivergent individuals can connect, share, and grow together, embracing their strengths and authenticity.

In 2024, Neurocats marked Neurodiversity Awareness Month with events like the "Neurodiversity to Neuroinclusivity" presentation and a workshop on neurodiversity cultural responsiveness, featuring Sara Sanders Gardner. The CoB also shared a blog post on how GitHub supports neurodiverse employees, offering practical tips for companies to enhance their neuroinclusivity.

This past year as well, Neurocats launched the Neurocats Giving Fund, raising nearly $1,500 for causes like the Autism Research Institute and the International Dyslexia Association, alongside countless volunteer hours from members. Through meetups and surveys, Neurocats gathered valuable insights to highlight successes and suggest improvements. Internally, the CoB kept the momentum going with the Neurocats Collection on Rewatch.tv and communication guide templates, empowering members to express themselves with confidence.

OctoAsians provides a safe and inclusive space for Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) employees. Through cultural exchange, hosting events, and providing opportunities for learning, OctoAsians aims to foster a sense of belonging and celebrate the diversity within the AAPI community. By increasing our overall understanding and appreciation via our educational efforts on AAPI cultures, the CoB aspires to help cultivate a more inclusive and culturally rich working environment.

In the past year, OctoAsians made an impact by organizing events that strengthened community connections and fueled professional growth. Highlights included a Boba Tea and Mochinut gathering at Revenue Kickoff (RKO) in San Diego with 40+ international employees; the Asian Alliance in Tech event in San Francisco where GitHub co-hosted 300+ attendees from companies including Microsoft, Google, and LinkedIn; and celebrating cultural heritage through AAPI Heritage Month events in May and recognizing AAPI holidays such as Lunar New Year. The CoB will continue focusing on growing connections inside and outside of GitHub, spreading cultural awareness, and supporting professional development.

Octogatos is dedicated to celebrating and amplifying Latinx culture and contributions within the tech industry. Through a variety of events and initiatives, Octogatos creates an inclusive space for members to connect, share, and thrive.

Throughout 2024, Octogatos hosted a range of virtual events to underscore the diverse employee culture at GitHub. A highlight was the “Take Me With You” series, where community members shared presentations about Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Colombia, and Brazil, offering a virtual journey through the rich landscapes of Latin America. Additional cultural experiences included cooking classes featuring Brazilian, Peruvian, and Mexican cuisines, as well as engaging presentations on Lucha Libre and the origins of Mezcal.

Building on the success of the virtual community coffee hour, Café & Chisme, Octogatos members from the Revenue organization connected in person at RKO in San Diego. Cinco de Mayo celebrations also brought Octogatos together for happy hour events at the San Francisco and Bellevue offices.

Octogatos extended its impact by supporting tech communities across LATAM, delivering tech talks at major conferences like .NET Dominicana Meetup, GDG DevFest SDQ, CodeCamp SDQ in the Dominican Republic, DevOps Days Medellin in Colombia, and GitCommit in Uruguay. Through these efforts, the CoB continues to foster a sense of community and highlight the cultural and technical contributions of the Latin American region.

Octoqueer is dedicated to creating an inclusive space for LGBTQ+ employees at GitHub. Through advocacy and collaboration, the CoB aims to uplift and empower its members while fostering a culture of acceptance and understanding.

In 2024, Octoqueer focused on initiatives that provide access to essential benefits for the LGBTQ+ community at GitHub, including partnering with GitHub’s global benefits team to identify and prioritize benefits that address community needs. This partnership strengthened and expanded GitHub’s comprehensive benefits offerings, supporting a more inclusive environment for all.

OctoSeven is GitHub's Global Indigenous CoB, dedicated to nurturing the next generation of developers from HBCUs, Indigenous youth programs, and community colleges. Guided by a commitment to revitalizing our shared home—Planet Earth—OctoSeven connects technology with environmental conservation, empowering climate tech innovators to address the planet's most pressing challenges.

In partnership with ProgramEarth, the CoB hosted 18 events this past year that brought together Hubbers from Engineering, Product, Talent, Field Services, and DevRel to share their expertise. Members and allies contributed over $20,000 in volunteer hours, providing fellows from 14 countries with pairing sessions, resume reviews, and hands-on workshops. These workshops focused on Indigenous-led tech initiatives, with mentors and fellows collaborating on open source projects that directly impact local communities. Together, these projects aim to protect over 80 species across 2,223,100 square acres, ensuring that GitHub's technology serves both people and the planet.

The Octovets CoB brings together veterans, military family members, and advocates to create a supportive space for those connected to military service at GitHub. Focused on fostering fellowship, mentorship, and career growth, Octovets honors the unbreakable bond shared by veterans and supports their transition into civilian life.

Established in 2020, Octovets is dedicated to assisting GitHub in hiring qualified veterans by translating military experience into valuable skills for the tech industry. The CoB also partnered with nonprofits and attended events focused on upskilling and supporting veterans' transitions to civilian careers.

This year, Octovets collaborated with GitHub’s global benefits team to enhance benefits for the veteran community, ensuring they receive world-class support. Through these efforts, Octovets continues to make a meaningful impact both within GitHub and in the broader veteran community.

Parentocats creates an environment where employees who are parents and caregivers can thrive both personally and professionally. With a focus on supporting the community of “octokittens,” Parentocats drives initiatives that address key aspects of caregiver and career harmony: day-to-day operational support, long-term career development, and the parental leave lifecycle.

Parentocats hosts a Slack channel and runs parent training in partnership with the Parent Encouragement Program (PEP). Members consistently highlight PEP as one of the most valuable benefits of being a Parentocat, with monthly webinars on topics like communication with kids, setting limits, and managing technology at home. Parentocats also offer PEP office hours, enabling members to seek expert and peer support.

Additionally, Parentocats collaborates with HR to enhance resources for managers on supporting caregivers and to ensure members have clear information about relevant benefits, including parental leave, backup care, and fertility support. Through these efforts, Parentocats builds a supportive culture that empowers caregivers to excel at GitHub.

In 2024, GitHub continued investing in all four pillars of our accessibility vision to empower people with disabilities to shape the technologies that drive human progress. We prioritized accessibility as an engineering fundamental, leading to significant product improvements that make our platform more accessible and inclusive.

Our new Accessibility Design Bootcamp, completed by over 50% of our design team so far, provided exercises and discussions to raise awareness of web accessibility best practices and to empower designers to create more accessible products. We also expanded our Accessibility Champions program, giving participants practical ways to lead accessibility initiatives and drive inclusive digital experiences across GitHub.

We launched company-wide accessibility training, covering topics like disability types, assistive technologies, and our accessibility policy, to deepen understanding and advocacy among all employees. Our global accessible interview process was further scaled to ensure that every candidate can request accommodations and fully engage in the interview experience.

To amplify the voices of disabled developers, we published four new installments of the Coding Accessibility series on the ReadME Project and expanded our accessibility playlist on YouTube. This includes the inspiring story of Paul Chiou, a developer paralyzed from the neck down who is pursuing a Ph.D. in computer science at USC, where his research focuses on improving keyboard accessibility in web and Android apps.

Our Social Impact team at GitHub focuses on deploying products and tools for social good, building partnerships between the private and social sectors, and empowering employees to contribute to causes that align with their values. As part of this mission, GitHub champions diversity and inclusion in tech by providing resources and training to underrepresented groups, aiming to skill 5,000 individuals in open source development over three years. In FY24 alone, we skilled over 1,700 learners through initiatives like open source curriculum, hackathons, virtual leadership, and mentorship programs. We also partnered with Major League Hacking to distribute $20,000 in grants, funding over 30 events that supported 2,500 learners in gaining hands-on experience in open source software.

A highlight of FY24 was the launch of our All In Africa initiative, designed to skill African developers and make open source education accessible across the continent. This program aims to bridge the diversity gap in tech by empowering Africans not only to consume but also to create open source solutions, driving innovation and supporting economic growth. All In Africa's structured three-month cohorts, held twice annually, provide participants with a curated curriculum, mentorship, and a certificate of completion, positioning them at the forefront of open source innovation.

Through these efforts, our Social Impact team continues to broaden access, foster innovation, and create opportunities for all in the tech community. Learn more about how we empower developers and employees to make a lasting impact here.

At GitHub, we believe that policy shapes not only the opportunities developers have but also the very opportunity to become a developer. Our commitment to equal opportunity is one of the three pillars driving our policy advocacy, ensuring that all developers can do their best work.

Developers are key stakeholders in societal resilience, innovation, and opportunity worldwide. The global developer community plays a crucial role in sustaining the open source software that underpins digital infrastructure across industries, public services, and international organizations like the United Nations. This year, GitHub attended the UN OSPOs for Good Summit to advocate for treating open source software as a public good and supporting its sustainability.

Amid the largest global election year in history, GitHub is focusing on the stakes for developers and how they strengthen democratic processes by contributing to open source projects like VotingWorks, the only open source voting system used in U.S. elections. We also joined the AI Elections Accord, a cross-industry initiative to combat deceptive AI use in elections, and updated our acceptable use policies to address synthetic and manipulated media tools that create non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII) and disinformation.

We launched the GitHub Innovation Graph to provide researchers, policymakers, and developers with accessible metrics on software development worldwide. This tool offers insights into the diversity and resilience of global code collaboration, highlighting moments like the rise of the Mulan License—the first open source license in both Chinese and English approved by the Open Source Initiative—into the top licenses chart. The Innovation Graph also features new visualizations that reveal the surge in developer contributions to Ukraine repositories following the Russian invasion, showcasing the community's role in strengthening digital resilience during conflict. We believe that AI-powered developer tools will further empower the global software community, enabling anyone, anywhere, to become a developer and contribute to their communities. As we advocate for AI's potential for open source developers, we're also committed to advancing responsible practices for open source AI and engaging with policymakers to ensure that AI continues to drive innovation while enhancing societal resilience.

Through these initiatives, GitHub is dedicated to creating policies that empower developers, foster open source sustainability, and advance digital resilience worldwide.

GitHub Campus Experts are university student leaders dedicated to creating diverse and inclusive spaces for learning, collaboration, and project-building. Found across the globe, they lead in-person and online conferences, meetups, hackathons, and maintain open-source projects. With nearly 200 Campus Experts and around 60 new trainees joining each year, this community continues to grow and thrive.

Diversity is a core strength of the Campus Experts program. Students from different backgrounds, regions, and experiences come together in a close-knit community, often traveling across borders to support each other's events. This global perspective enriches the program and fosters a culture of collaboration and learning.

Each year, Campus Experts have the opportunity to host field days in their regions. These "unconferences" allow attendees to set the agenda on the day of the event, encouraging open discussions in a flexible format. Each field day gathers around 100 students to share insights on event organizing, technology studies, internships, and more, with a strong focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). During training, Campus Experts are required to conduct a DEI analysis of their communities, identifying barriers to participation, and exploring ways to create more inclusive environments. This focus helps broaden their understanding and equips them to be more inclusive of a wide range of backgrounds, abilities, genders, and experiences.

More than just a platform, GitHub Education represents our commitment to breaking down barriers to learning. We believe that geography should never limit access to education or opportunity, and we're dedicated to empowering the next generation of developers through open source education. One way we drive this mission is through the GitHub Campus Program, which provides educational institutions worldwide with free tools like GitHub Enterprise Cloud, supporting over 2,000 schools in more than 100 countries.

One standout example is Learning Lions, a Campus Partner based in Turkana, a remote region in northwestern Kenya. For over four years, Learning Lions has been transforming lives by connecting rural youth to the global digital market. They overcome the challenges of remote education by leveraging internet and solar power, offering tech training that enables young people to build careers while remaining in their local communities. By equipping young developers with valuable, transferable skills, Learning Lions is helping to combat poverty and create sustainable solutions tailored to local needs.

GitHub's event and multimedia programs create inclusive spaces—both in-person and virtual—that amplify thought leadership and perspectives from underrepresented and historically excluded communities in technology. Our teams engage with customers and partners to provide opportunities for diverse talent to present within their organizations and serve as spokespeople for GitHub's platform.

We ensure that our speaker selection process aligns with GitHub's values by carefully considering both individual speakers and the organizations they represent. Content plans are reviewed to make sure our speaker cohorts reflect the diversity of our global community of developers, customers, and partners. To foster an inclusive environment at our events, we remind attendees and speakers of our code of conduct, offer gender-neutral restrooms, closed captioning, and personal comfort rooms, and encourage attendees to share pronouns and request accommodations during registration.

Internally, GitHub's speakers bureau focuses on elevating employees of all experience levels to represent GitHub at industry events. Experienced members from BIPOC and underrepresented gender identities mentor and guide newer speakers from diverse backgrounds, fostering growth in technical public speaking.

Beyond our own initiatives, GitHub sponsors and supports events that highlight the work of underrepresented communities in tech, including TalentLand in LATAM, BaddieCon (supporting women of color in tech), Open Source India and IndiaFOSS, as well as HackTown and RoadSec in Brazil. Through these efforts, GitHub remains dedicated to empowering voices and perspectives from all backgrounds within the tech industry.

GitHub is home to the world's largest community of developers who collaborate, share code, and build amazing projects. Among these millions of developers, the GitHub Stars program recognizes individuals who go above and beyond in supporting the developer community. These open source contributors educate, inspire, and influence both online and in-person communities, embodying patience and generosity.

The GitHub Stars program currently represents 27 countries, with Stars joining from nations like Argentina, India, Mexico, Japan, and more. Our Stars come from diverse backgrounds and roles, including CxOs, data scientists, engineers, OSS maintainers, SREs, developer advocates, and content creators. The program has seen newcomers evolve into industry leaders, gaining certifications, growing their open source projects, and making a significant impact on the global developer community.

Some standout Stars include:

• Anand Chowdhary (Netherlands): A technology entrepreneur and open source contributor, Anand is the founder of FirstQuadrant, where he combines his open source background with a focus on helping other startups scale.

• Angie Jones: As a global VP of developer relations, Angie is a renowned teacher and international keynote speaker who shares her expertise with software companies and at conferences worldwide.

• Julio Arruda (Brazil): An AI impact lead at GFT Technologies, Julio creates educational content in Portuguese and regularly speaks at community events like GitTogether Brasil.

• Ruth Ikegah (Nigeria): Ruth is a champion for open source communities in Africa, helping onboard new developers and promoting inclusivity for women in tech through organizations like She Code Africa.

• Sonya Moisset: A staff security advocate at Synk, Sonya is the founder of Epic Women in Cyber and Tech, creating open source security resources in multiple languages to elevate women in tech.

• Yani Bellini Saibene (Argentina): An educator and community builder, Yani leads initiatives in data literacy and programmatic skills through her work with rOpenSci and R-Ladies, driving science and education growth in Latin America.

These GitHub Stars make our platform a more inclusive and supportive place, nurturing the developer community in all its diversity. We also celebrate that four Stars have gone on to work at GitHub or Microsoft: Cassidy Williams (GitHub), Nick Craver (Microsoft), Tom Kerkhove (Microsoft), and Debbie O'Brien (Microsoft).

India

GitHub recognizes the immense talent within the Indian developer community and is dedicated to fostering its growth and inclusivity. Through initiatives like GitHub Constellation 2024, GitTogethers, and partnerships, we support developers in India to excel in open source projects and drive global innovation.

GitHub Constellation 2024 highlighted the thriving developer ecosystem in India, with over 1,000 participants, including 30% students and a diverse speaker lineup. The event featured a powerful panel discussion, "Breaking barriers in tech: From open source to enterprise," with industry leaders Varsha Saha, Neha Gupta, Sancheeta Kaushal, and Suman Ghosh, who shared insights on navigating the tech landscape.

An exclusive AMA session with GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke provided open source maintainers with direct access to leadership insights, reinforcing our commitment to empowering developers.

Our GitTogethers, community-led developer meetups held in cities like Bengaluru, Delhi NCR, Hyderabad, and Mumbai, offer a platform for local developers to connect and collaborate. Leaders like Chhavi Garg in Delhi NCR and Swaminathan Vetri in Bengaluru inspire and educate their communities, helping to grow the open source ecosystem.

The Open Healthcare Network (OHC) in India, featured in this video, has transformed healthcare accessibility using open source collaboration on GitHub. Their platform, CARE, is making a profound impact on millions of lives, showcasing the power of technology for social good.

Through these efforts, GitHub continues to empower the developer community in India, providing resources, mentorship, and opportunities to unlock their full potential.

LATAM

GitHub is committed to celebrating cultural diversity and fostering representation in tech across Latin America. We engage with communities in meaningful ways, supporting local developers through initiatives like GitTogethers, event sponsorships, and upskilling opportunities.

Our GitTogethers have expanded to 12 community leaders across Central and South America, hosting 16 hyper-local events in cities like CDMX, Medellin, Santiago, Villahermosa, São Paulo, San Jose dos Campos, and Florianópolis. These events empower developers to share knowledge, collaborate, and drive innovation in their local communities.

We sponsored key conferences such as Nerdearla in Santiago, Chile, and DevOps Day in Medellín, Colombia, and supported Women Techmakers' celebration for International Women's Day in Medellín, reinforcing our commitment to uplifting women in tech.

In collaboration with Microsoft, we launched an upskilling project for Latin American developers, offering technical training and vouchers for GitHub certifications. Our Spanish language series attracted 86.1K registrations from 79 countries, primarily Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina.

Through Open Source Viernes, we elevate open source maintainers in Spanish-speaking countries by providing a platform to share their projects, fostering greater visibility and collaboration. Additionally, our Git Commit Uruguay program breaks down barriers for high school students and recent graduates in Montevideo, opening pathways to careers in tech.

GitHub's initiatives in Latin America aim to build a more inclusive and diverse tech landscape, empowering developers to create, grow, and make a lasting impact in their communities.