At JSConf 2025, the OpenJS Foundation proudly celebrated six incredible community leaders with the fourth annual JavaScriptLandia Awards. These awards shine a light on people who go above and beyond to support open source, whether through education, standards, security, or community building. Winners were recognized on stage Thursday, October 16.

About the Awards

• Unsung Hero honors those who take on essential but often invisible work. These contributors keep projects healthy and thriving, usually without fanfare, and always with a positive spirit.
• Leading by Example celebrates individuals whose leadership reflects OpenJS Foundation values: humble, helpful, and hopeful. They show what open source looks like at its best and inspire others to do the same.
• Outstanding Contribution from a New Arrival recognizes fresh energy in our project spaces. These rising stars bring new ideas, step into leadership, and strengthen communities with their enthusiasm.
• Pathfinder Awards spotlight people across the JavaScript ecosystem who have made a big impact in Education, Standards, and Security. Pathfinders move the field forward while lifting others up along the way.
  

2025 JavaScriptLandia Award Winners

Unsung Hero: Xiaoji Chen, Technical Steering Committee Chair of vis.gl

Xiaoji is an incredible engineer and mentor. She has a knack for solving problems in ways that improve both the code and its long-term maintainability, and her code reviews always reveal smarter, simpler approaches. Over the years, she’s supported countless deck.gl users, quietly doing the crucial work that keeps the project thriving. She rewrote react-map-gl to handle diverging mapbox and maplibre versions, automated and secured our package releases, written more documentation than anyone, squashed countless bugs, and kept releases running smoothly. 

Leading by Example: Ethan Arrowood, Senior Software Engineer at Harper

Ethan has been a rockstar on the OpenJS Program Committee and the Package Metadata Working Group, always jumping in with ideas and making things happen. Ethan has been a strong voice in Node.js and Undici, contributed to WinterCG, and helped strengthen the OpenJS Foundation’s collaboration spaces. On top of all that, he’s played a key role in bringing companies like Harper into the foundation, making the community stronger, more collaborative, and better connected. Simply put, Ethan leads by example, and we’re lucky to have him.

Outstanding Contribution from a New Arrival: Aviv Keller, webpack and Node.js Contributor

Aviv has made a huge impact on Node.js since joining last year. He’s tackled everything from triage and nodejs/help to core, the website, and API docs, always sweating the details and helping others get their PRs across the finish line. He’s fearless with complex challenges, thoughtful in collaboration, and quick to course-correct when needed. Aviv balances contributor and project needs with honesty, humility, and a proactive attitude, making him a trusted and respected role model in the community.

Pathfinder Award for Education: Rafael Gonzaga, Principal Open Source Engineer at NodeSource

Rafael Gonzaga has been making waves in the Node.js community by launching a mentorship channel and weekly live Node.js mentoring sessions dedicated to helping new contributors get started. He’s all about breaking down barriers, sharing knowledge, and guiding folks through the process of contributing to Node. Thanks to his efforts, more people are learning the ropes, gaining confidence, and actually making meaningful contributions. Rafael’s dedication to lifting others up is exactly the kind of energy that keeps the Node.js community thriving.

Pathfinder Award for Standards: Lea Verou, Product, Usability, and Web Architecture Consultant

Lea is a rare person who has strong academic credentials, has helped create rigorous industry standards, but always focuses on the needs of real world users who have little patience with the underlying theory and mind-numbing detail. Furthermore she has spent much of her career in open source communities building products and services that make those theories and standards truly available to the web community.  During Lea's tenure on the W3C TAG, she not only contributed to the day to day work of design reviews and liaison with the JS standards community, but initiated new work to improve and explain the web's Design Principles to web developers.

Pathfinder Award for Security: Sarah Gooding, Head of Content Marketing at Socket

Sarah is unstoppable. She dives into the deepest corners of GitHub and obscure mailing lists to surface the stories that really matter in open source and security. Her output is prolific, her insight unmatched. She helps even the most plugged-in developers stay current on the fast-moving intersection of JavaScript, open source, and software supply chain security. She brings the precision of an investigative journalist and the heart of someone who truly understands and cares about the open source community.

We’re grateful to all the nominees and winners who remind us what makes this community so special. Congratulations to this year’s honorees and thank you for continuing to make the JavaScript ecosystem stronger, kinder, and more connected.