Kris Borchers Joins the OpenJS Foundation Board as First Community Director

The OpenJS Foundation is pleased to welcome Kris Borchers as the board’s representative from the Cross Project Council (CPC). 

Kris is an experienced leader and advisor who works to build and strengthen relationships with and between some of the largest corporations and most creative individuals that are using, creating and sharing open-source technology. He is now leveraging those skills to help drive adoption of an inner source culture within Azure and across all of Microsoft.

Kris is no stranger to open source communities or JavaScript and has held many leadership positions including the executive director of the JS Foundation and jQuery Foundation, as well as advising organizations such as Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on the Mojaloop project and OASIS as part of their Open Projects Advisory Council. His experience spans a broad coverage area including managing websites and web applications early in his career to leading engineering teams developing enterprise open source mobile tools, to running a successful consulting business to leading nonprofit organizations supporting some of the most widely used open source projects in the world. 

Along the way, Kris earned a Master of Applied Computer Science and an MBA. In conjunction with his hands-on experience, these help him view things with a strategic eye while building relationships and empowering technical leadership to drive an organization’s open source strategy.

As the Board of Directors’ CPC representative, Kris says his goal is to serve the community to the best of his abilities. He’s looking forward to being a conduit between the board of directors and the project community and intends to be the projects’ voice in all board discussions while bringing the board’s thoughts and guidance back to the community.

Kris says, “Having run an open source foundation for a number of years gives me an understanding of the business, legal, and strategic processes involved in operating the OpenJS Foundation,” said Kris. “I’ve also worked closely with many of the current board members and Linux Foundation staff who support the foundation. I’m excited to jump right in and be a productive member of the board right away.”

Kris’ fascination with the JavaScript language began from his very his first exposure to it, and it was through JavaScript that he was introduced to open source. When asked what draws him to JavaScript and open source, Kris says, “I think the thing that really draws me in is the people side of the open source community and specifically the people in the open source JavaScript community. I have made some of my best friends through this community and that welcoming nature is something I want others to experience.” Ultimately, Kris wants the OpenJS Foundation to be the place people think of when they hear “open source JavaScript projects”. He feels it should be the clear place JavaScript projects go when they have reached the point where they need the support that a foundation can provide.