Derek Zimmer – President and Executive Director
Derek is a privacy activist, hacker and mathematician. He started his first business in 2000, selling hand-designed PCs to gamers, engineers, and businesses. In 2012 Derek helped found VikingVPN, a VPN service focused on speed, security, and privacy in response to the increasing problems with surveillance on the internet by marketing entities. The May 2013 disclosures by Edward Snowden motivated him to work in the privacy and infosec full-time, and to focus his work on countermeasures against advanced persistent threats.
He has personally funded the entirety of the startup costs for OSTIF. He believes in the merits of the open source movement and wants to design systems to help open source infrastructure to thrive. The ultimate goal of OSTIF is to help open source software and hardware to be a trusted de-facto standard for computing.
In his free time, Derek enjoys nature, relaxing on a nice patio, reading, cooking, dining at new restaurants, travel, art, music, movies, theater and all forms of digital entertainment.
Amir Montazery – Managing Director
Amir Montazery is the Managing Director and Cofounder of Open Source Technology Improvement Fund, Inc (OSTIF). Amir comes from a background in Finance, IT and Internal Auditing, applying years of experience to help develop OSTIF’s processes and partnerships. Furthermore, Amir is responsible for negotiating and organizing over 12,000 hours of security-focused work for organizations like Google and Amazon Web Services along with groups like Mozilla Foundation and Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF).
Helen Woeste – Project Facilitation and Communications Manager
Helen is a Hoosier who spent her youth in West Lafayette and then Bloomington, Indiana, spending time in the latter earning her undergraduate degree in History from Indiana University. A month after graduation she moved to Chicago where she worked in hospitality and food service management, running a variety of enterprises from bakeries to high-end restaurants to a pasta food truck. In 2023, she transitioned into open source by accepting a position with OSTIF. She is grateful for the opportunity to work with a global community that prioritizes sharing free knowledge for the greater good. In her free time she enjoys developing recipes, reading non-fiction books, and long walks by Lake Michigan.
Steve Donley – Community Manager
Steve grew up in south central Ohio. Raised by phone circuit designers, he learned different types of tech first hand. Currently employed as a technician for a major industrial manufacturer, he observes both sides of privacy issues, learns about and tests new forms of identity tracking.
Seeing the outrageous volume of information stored has shown him the need for OSTIF as a way for companies to secure all private information they collect. Doing so will help protect corporations large and small by protecting the privacy of citizens of the world.
Steve enjoys caring for and breeding assorted exotic animals, 3D printing, playing assorted virtual and tabletop games and keeping up with friends.
OSTIF Advisory Council
Our advisory council is a group of volunteers who offer advice in their fields of expertise to OSTIF. Their experience and wide field of knowledge help us manage our organization, problem solve, and advance our goals. These volunteers get monthly updates of OSTIF activity and offer their advice and opinions for management to consider when big decisions are being made about the organizations direction or actions.
Each advisory council member is listed below, showing their name and field of expertise or other organizations that they are members of that bring relevant experience to the council.
| NAME | POSITION | COMPANY/ORGANIZATION |
| Mike Dolan | VP of Strategic Programs | Linux Foundation |
| Leslie Hawthorn | Sr. Principal Technical Program Manager | Red Hat |
| Alon Swartz | Co-Founder | Turnkey Linux |
| Mario Heiderich | Director | Cure53 |
| Abraham Aranguren | Managing Director | 7A Security |
| Marita Markkula | Community Manager | F-Secure |
| Carrotcypher | Community Manager | Wireleap |
| Matt Caswell | Programmer and Researcher | OpenSSL |
| Samuli Seppänen | Community Manager | The OpenVPN Project |
| Daniel Davis | Community Manager | DuckDuckGo |
| Joeseph Soria | Chief Executive Officer | Flashrouters.net |
| Christel Dahlskjaer | Open Source Lead | London Trust Media |
| Markus Vervier | Chief Executive Officer | X41 D-sec |
| Fred Raynal | Chief Executive Officer | Quarkslab |
| JP Aumasson | Chief Security Officer | Kudelski Security |
| Daniel Guido | Chief Executive Officer | Trail of Bits |
| Sarang Noether | Programmer and Researcher | Monero Research Lab |
| Mounir Idrassi | Technical Lead | Veracrypt |