The MariaDB Foundation Sea Lions Champions recognize individuals and organizations that strengthen the MariaDB ecosystem through technical excellence, community leadership, open-source stewardship, ecosystem impact, and real-world adoption.

This first edition’s nominees reflect the diversity and strength of the MariaDB Community: developers, educators, advocates, companies, community organizers, and partners who help MariaDB grow as an open, collaborative, and industry-relevant database platform.

Each nomination highlights a different way to strengthen the database ecosystem and help MariaDB remain open, useful, and innovative.

Technical Excellence

The Technical Excellence category highlights people who contribute deep technical expertise, engineering quality, and innovation around MariaDB and the broader database ecosystem.

The nominees are:

• Alex Padula of TidesDB [1], for his technical contributions and ongoing work in the database ecosystem.

• Sylvain Arbaudie from ArBauDie.IT [1][2], for his technical engagement and contributions supporting MariaDB-related innovation.

• The Videx team from ByteDance [1][2][3], for their work and technical involvement in advancing MariaDB use cases.

• Mark Callaghan [1][2], for his long-standing technical expertise, performance insights, benchmarks, and contributions to the open source database community.

• Fariha Shaikh from Amazon [1][2], for her technical work and contributions connected to MariaDB and its ecosystem.

Community Leadership

The Community Leadership category celebrates people who bring others together, create learning opportunities, and help grow the MariaDB community across regions and disciplines.

The nominees are:

• Jyothi Muthuraj of the BangPypers [1][2] community in Bangalore, India, for helping organize the MariaDB India Hackathon, which engaged over 4,000 registrants, nearly 600 idea submissions, and more than 150 final submissions.

• Jerry Pussinen of the Helsinki Python [1][2] group in Finland for helping organize the MariaDB Helsinki Hackathon, engaging hundreds of developers, and helping drive high-quality AI RAG hackathon submissions across both the integration and innovation tracks.

• Andy Pavlo of Carnegie Mellon University [1] for spreading database insights through his interview with MariaDB founder Monty Widenius, helping bring MariaDB’s story and ideas to a wider technical audience.

• Professor Peter Baumann of Constructor University in Bremen [1], Germany, for driving academic database innovation and for teaching MariaDB in university courses, helping to introduce the next generation of developers and researchers to open-source database technology.

Ecosystem Impact

The Ecosystem Impact category recognizes work that expands MariaDB’s reach, integration, and relevance across the wider technology landscape.

The nominees are:

• David Ramos [1][2] for his winning submission to the Helsinki Hackathon integration track: the MariaDB MCP Server. This work became an important starting point for the broader solution at github.com/MariaDB/mcp, helping support MariaDB adoption and openness in AI solutions.

• Michal Schorm of Red Hat [1] for ensuring a strong Linux distribution perspective in MariaDB Server release management and in the broader communication around MariaDB Server.

Open Source Stewardship

The Open Source Stewardship category recognizes people who advocate for openness, continuity, cooperation, and long-term health in the open source database world.

The nominees are:

• Oli Sennhauser of FromDual [1][2] for his long-standing work in the MariaDB and MySQL ecosystems and his commitment to open-source database expertise. Also, for his critical thinking and his ongoing commitment to keeping the foundation on track and pursuing its goals.

• Tarus Balog [1], until May 2026 with AWS, for his thoughtful public advocacy for openness, continuity, and ecosystem stewardship, and for promoting constructive cooperation across the MySQL, MariaDB, and broader open-source database communities.

• Federico Razzoli of Vettabase [1][2] for his continued advocacy, education, and practical contributions to the MariaDB ecosystem.

Adoption & Industry Impact

The Adoption & Industry Impact category celebrates organizations and individuals who help bring MariaDB into real-world production environments, proving its value across industries and large-scale use cases. This category also highlights those organizations and individuals helping MariaDB reach more users and more workloads.

The nominees are:

• AWS, represented by Jignesh Shah [1], for their work supporting MariaDB adoption and visibility in the cloud ecosystem.

• Tayana, represented by Sumit Srivastava [1], for their championing of MariaDB adoption in the telecommunications industry and demonstrating how open-source databases can deliver performance, scalability, and business impact in mission-critical systems.

• Automattic, represented by Barry Abrahamson [1][2], for their sustained support of MariaDB through Automattic and the WordPress ecosystem, and for helping strengthen the connection between MariaDB’s governance and its real-world users.

• WebPros, represented by Pratik Jagdishwala [1][2], for their role in supporting MariaDB adoption across hosting and web infrastructure environments.

• DBS, represented by Ashish Bhan [1], for their work supporting MariaDB adoption and demonstrating its relevance in enterprise and industry settings.

Thank You to All Nominees

The Sea Lions Champions nominees show how broad and vibrant the MariaDB ecosystem is. Some contribute code, some teach, some organize communities, some build integrations, and some demonstrate MariaDB’s value in large-scale production environments.

Together, they help make MariaDB stronger, more open, and more useful for developers, users, and organizations around the world.

Congratulations to all nominees, and thank you for helping move the MariaDB ecosystem forward.