Become your own favorite leader

Keynote talk presented at PyCon Colombia 2026 in Medellin, July 2026

When thinking of who my favorite leader was, I realized I didn't have one. Just pieces, collected from many people over the years. This keynote is about turning those pieces into your own process: learn deliberately, fix what's broken, inspire others so they grow. Told through data teams, Python communities, art restoration (with dinosaurs), and getting a skeptical team into agentic engineering. Nobody can teach you leadership. You can build your own journey, find your own way.

Transcript

1. BECOME YOUR OWN FAVORITE LEADER A Course in Agency TEREZA IOFCIU P YC O N C O L O M B I A · M E D E L L I N · 2 4 - 2 6 J U LY 2 0 2 6
2. HI, I’M TEREZA S H E / H E R · D ATA , P Y T H O N , L E A D E R S H I P → Built & led several data teams IMG: headshot → Led communities: PyLadies Hamburg, PSF CoC workgroup → Organize conferences: Python Pizza Hamburg & PyConDE → Now: freelance coach + agentic engineering 01 02 03 04 Bucharest to Hamburg data, ML, teaching community builder coach + agentic eng
3. A QUESTION I’VE BEEN STRUGGLING WITH WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE LEADER?
4. SOME LEADERSHIP TRAITS THAT I LIKE 1 Supportive Vulnerable & Human Being strategic Good context manager Honest Sponsoring others Good Communicator Shares knowledge Saying Yes, and vs No. Good facilitator skills Having some technical skills Knowing what they don’t know
5. BERLIN, 2019 → An explicit invitation to pay attention to good ideas in the Python Community NAOMI CEDER, “Innovation & Community” @ Python Pizza Berlin 2019
6. I CAN’T TEACH YOU LEADERSHIP.
7. Leadership advice is usually written somewhere else. CONTEXT Leadership is a journey. It needs to be experienced, reflected upon and learned from. EXPERIENCE Leadership advice is not about you. FOR OTHERS
8. BERLIN, 2018. → Women Who Code - We Rise - Leadership event → The turning point IMG: photo or doodle of the event worksheet Natasha Hendrick: Leadership is "a person's ability to use their knowledge to inspire and create brilliance in others"
9. 8 MINDSETS OF LEADERSHIP source: Women Who Code - We rise , Berlin
10. How good are you at making others good at it?
11. I CAN’T TEACH YOU LEADERSHIP BUT I CAN TEACH YOU HOW TO DEVELOP YOUR PROCESS
12. MY PROCESS Discovered in LEARN, deliberately. FIX, have a problem to solve. INSPIRE, so others grow.
13. There is no such thing as work life balance… there is only life hobbies journey to leadership AI journey
14. UPCYCLING OLD PAINTINGS → Buying old paintings → Cleaning & restoring them
15. INFORMAL LEARNING → I learned restoration from videos. → People transitioning into leadership learn from online resources IMG: restoration video still
16. ITALY, TWO WEEKS OF ART RESTORATION → Learning Art Restoration properly would take a whole new university degree → Doing a 2 weeks intensive course was a compromise → Maybe you do a leadership course
17. THE INTENTIONAL AMATEUR → Good resources cover the main situations. → For the rest, you research. → I don’t want to be an art restorer. Same with leadership: intention and good resources, when you need to learn on the go. my standing recommendation for every new lead
18. DINOVANDALISM → And then I add dinosaurs → Of course, I do share this on insta and on my vibe coded art gallery site www.tiyepyep.com
19. DINOVANDALISM → And sometimes I participate in art exhibitions → Last year I did a mural in an art house and chose to paint one of my older data visualization on global warning ( with dinosaurs acting as “sports” commenters )
20. There is no such thing as work life balance… there is only life hobbies journey to leadership AI journey
21. 2016 → After a career break I joined a new company in the mobility sector → DS was not there yet due to lack of mature data infrastructure → So I had to switch to data engineering → And do informal leadership Goal: once there’s a data infrastructure to start with data science
22. “ “They are planning a data science team.” 2 0 1 7 : W H AT I H E A R D F R O M A C O L L E AG U E Without me!?!?
23. I COULD’VE ASKED TO BE INCLUDED.. BUT 1 Ran a real experiment on our data NYC demand prediction, rebuilt for Hamburg data 2 Presented it at a public meetup 3 Made sure the office heard about it SOMETIMES YOU NEED TO WORK AROUND THE SYSTEM
24. COMMUNITY WORK HELPS YOU BACK 1 2 Community work PyLadies & Python Groups, Street Art, Knitting, Book clubs, anything Open source Contribute to code or join PSF workgroups 3 Building in public Blogs, books, videos, .. participate in events 4 Organizing events Python Pizza, PyCon “You qualify as a Contributing Member if you dedicate at least five hours per month volunteering on projects …” - https:// www.python.org/psf/membership/
25. THE HIGHER YOU GO, THE MORE DIFFERENT YOU ARE, THE F E W E R C O L L E AG U E S U N D E R S TA N D YO U R P R O B L E M S LEADERSHIP IS A LONELY PLANET IN COMMUNITIES YOU CAN FIND YOUR PEOPLE
26. “ “Please don’t make her the manager.” A COLLEAGUE, TO MY BOSS, 2018
27. Resistance comes on the path to leadership. Sometimes from people who mean well. RESILIENCE family, friends, sometimes your manager.
28. WHAT I DID FOR STEPPING INTO LEADERSHIP 1 Treated leading as a new skill 2 Courses, books, deliberate practice 3 Tried to run as few human experiments as possible REWINDING LEADERSHIP MISTAKES CAN BE QUITE HARD
29. Years later my colleague told me: he had changed his mind. Changing your mind and admitting it .. is a super power
30. The fun part of leading: watching people change their minds. Mostly about themselves. INSPIRE Fighting our internal criticism
31. T H E S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y T E S T WHAT STILL STANDS A YEAR AFTER YOU LEAVE?
32. 2025 WHAT ABOUT AI? HOW DO WORK & LEADING CHANGE? AI journey https://www.pragmaticcoders.com/blog/gartner-ai-hype-cycle
33. 2025, THE HYPE 1 2 3 Last year I was not interested about all the LLM stuff Claude as autocomplete The agentic & AI meetups were all hype and did not look like me few women, no women speakers
34. AI IN THE LOOP Got myself in by submitting a workshop at a local conf on building your own Nemesis agent .. and forced myself to do it agentic Got a concrete problem to fix while interim leading a team .. from AI skeptic to AI user Turn it into opportunity: Say AI, get budget. We used it to make space to ideate. Teaching others how to do agentic stuff.. one workflow at a time
35. I did not get my team into AI for efficiency. I did it for options. OPTIONS this may or may not be where the world is going. either way: more options for their career.
36. AI & LEADERSHIP https://www.mindstudio.ai/blog/ai-adoption-gap-ceos-demand-tech-fluent-leaders TECH LEADERS NEED AGENT & AGENTIC ENGINEERING LITERACY
37. When it comes to AI… The more you experiment the more ideas you get GET YOUR OWN INFORMED OPINION ON AI Instead of only listening to social media opinions
38. I HEAR PEOPLE COMPLAINING THERE’S NO PLAYBOOK TO WORKING WITH AI “Not having a clear playbook to follow opens up a world of possibility.” Anne-Laure Le Cunff, Tiny Experiments
39. WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR AGENTS ARE WORKING We are told that we should use AI so we can do more faster.. I recommend you do your work faster so you can win free time Tricia Hersey - The Nap Ministry Community
40. SOMETIMES YOU NEED TO LEAD YOURSELF WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN SOMETHING ISN’T WORKING FOR YOU? Accept it Leave it Change it
41. Reflect and identify what your personal loop looks like. WHAT MOTIVATES YOU TO LEARN? And find or build your community!
42. GRACIAS! ALL GOOD LOOPS COME TO AN END Feedback FOR ME, GOOD LEADERSHIP CONVERGES TO A PLACE WHERE A TEAM DOESN’T NEED ME ANYMORE.