About OSMH :: Open Sourcing Mental Health - Changing how we talk about mental health in the tech community

Ayumi Bennett

Ayumi is a UX strategist at Reax, a Nashville-based custom dev shop. She is also the founder of Startup Southerner, a media platform on a mission to make actionable information accessible for anyone with a startup mindset. Thanks to Ed, her recent public talks have involved being more open with her own journey in mental health.

Ayumi enjoys finding new adventures with her two cats and a husband.

Emily Carter

Emily is the swiss-army knife of digital storytelling. She loves crafting infographics, video vignettes, and social media sketches. With a career path meandering from computer animator to video engineer to community curator, she's easily excitable and eager to learn as much as possible about everything.

Emily plays ukulele and can often be found strumming occasionally in tune (though mostly not) to a rhythm not readily apparent...but always with a smile. She adores her children Jack and Rook, and is accompanied in life by her incredible husband Ian.

Arthur Doler

Arthur (or Art, take your pick) has been a software engineer for 13 years and has been a mental health consumer for more than 20. He currently works for Aviture, an Omaha-based software development company, and he serves on the Consumer Advisory Team for Nebraska's DHHS Region 6. He is an advocate for talking openly about mental health and psychology in the technical world, and he has started talking at technical conferences about the tools, structures, cultures, and mental processes that either help or hinder us from our personal goals.

Kara Ferguson

After growing up with her nose in a book, Kara Ferguson graduated from the University of Memphis in 2008 with a Bachelor’s of Liberal Studies (with concentrations in Art History and English). She served as Editor-in-Chief for the quarterly dark fiction magazine, Midnight Screaming, which produced sixteen issues during the four years of its operation. This coincided with her volunteer work as the Literary Track and Writers’ Conference Coordinator—and eventually the Programming Director—of Memphis’ largest and longest running Science Fiction and Fantasy convention, MidSouthCon. Kara currently works within the PHP community as a freelance copy editor for php[architect] and Laravel News. She’s also worked on individual projects with well-known members of the PHP community, including Cal Evans and Chris Hartjes. She lives in the Memphis suburbs with her husband and their two cats.

Find her on twitter @karaferguson

Gabi D'Avila Ferrera

Software & Data Engineer who likes help and teach people. Speaker at conferences, mostly talking about databases in the point of a view of a developer, not a DBA. Likes Lego (own more than 30,000 bricks), cross stitching, coloring and tries everyday to go to gym. Gabi got involved with OSMI because of the analysis on the annual survey the organization does. She believes in work-life balance and tries to create an environment for empowerment and learning.

Find her on twitter @gabidavila

Amanda Folson

From humble beginnings as a PHP4 web developer in grade school, Amanda now works as a Developer Advocate at GitLab where she gets to share her passion for technology with others. When she's not speaking, writing, or shooing cats off her keyboard, you'll find her consuming APIs and IPAs.

Nara Kasbergen

Nara Kasbergen is a full-stack developer in National Public Radio (NPR)’s Digital Media group, where she's worked on a variety of projects, most notably the developer platform for NPR One. She began speaking at tech conferences in 2016 and is on a mission to get NPR more actively involved in the developer community at large. Though she has no noticeable accent, she hails from The Netherlands and lived in Munich, Houston, Pittsburgh, and New York City prior to settling down in Washington, DC. In her spare time, she satisfies her foodie habits by trying out all of the best restaurants in the city, collects board games, and watches too much Netflix.

Nara became involved in OSMI after one of her best friends, a fellow web developer who had battled depression and bipolar disorder for years, took her own life in September 2016. She's interested in using her budding tech speaking career to start more conversations with fellow engineers about how to be better allies in the tech workplace.

Elizabeth Naramore

Elizabeth is an author, speaker, mentor, and recovering web developer. She currently works as the Patchwork Community Manager at GitHub, and she’s all about looking at new ways to solve old problems. In her free time, she writes sci-fi and runs an etsy shop. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio with her husband, their 3 children, and a dog named Raisin.

Tanya Ruth Selvog

As a front-end developer with a background in customer service and education in religious studies and counseling, I love solving problems and putting people first.

Allison Tarr

Allison is a front-end developer who enjoys solving puzzles and knowledge sharing. Originally from Southern California, she currently lives in Toronto. Her mental health advocacy is a result of her own lived experience; she wants to create a more open conversation to combat existing stigma and provide additional resources. She loves burritos, hula hoops, and Dolly Parton (not necessarily in that order) and her favourite flightless bird is the kakapo.

Find her on twitter @allisonplus

Matthew Trask

Matt is all about helping and volunteering. He helps out with mentoring and helping developers grow. When he isnt doing that, he is biking around nashville or hanging out with his dog at the park.

Find him on twitter @matthewtrask

JD Flynn

JD is a Drupal developer based in the Chicago area. He has been giving talks on mental health in tech at conferences, camps, and other events around the country for several years, telling his own story of how he overcame the stigma associated with mental illness to become a better human.

JD also plays numerous instruments and can often be found singing karaoke when on the road.

Find him on twitter @jddoesdev

About OSMH

Board Members

Jennifer Akullian, PhD.

Joe Ferguson

Ed Finkler

Johanna Merritt Wu, PhD.

Volunteers