DSF Member of the Month: Katherine Michel on Django and Community

Michel suggests targeted enhancements for Django to better serve developers aiming for frameworks like FastAPI or JavaScript frameworks, while maintaining its stability. She proposes clear starter guides and code examples for modern use cases such as classic ML applications, LLM chatbots, async workflows, and framework integrations to improve developer discoverability.

Katherine "Kati" Michel is recognized as the July 2026 DSF Member of the Month for her long-standing contributions to the Django community, including her roles as DEFNA Director and DjangoCon US Website Chair. Her journey into tech began while working for government contracts supporting USCIS and the Department of Education, leading to a master's degree in England and an internship at Co-operative Financial Services.

Michel's interest in programming was sparked during an IT Change Management internship at Co-operative Financial Services/Britannia Building Society amidst the subprime mortgage crisis. She discovered Django at the Lawrence Public Library and has been using it since, now working as a software engineer at JPMorganChase in Infrastructure Platforms, Databases Department.

Michel is currently involved in building an on-premises caching service, designing distributed system topology, and developing a React UI and Django control plane. She favors libraries like django-silk for profiling, htmx and django-template-partials for UI functionality, and django-ninja for its Pydantic, type hinting, and OpenAPI integrations.

Michel highlights Django's ORM and admin interface as killer features, enabling rapid data structuring and management. She praises Django's "batteries included" philosophy, its rich library ecosystem, and its strong out-of-the-box security protections, which allow developers to focus on application building.

Michel reflects on the evolution of DjangoCon US, noting advancements in talk trends and a significant improvement in diversity and inclusion, with initiatives like PyLadies, Django Girls, and the Black Python Devs organization playing key roles. The Djangonaut Space mentorship program is highlighted as a game-changer for fostering inclusion and contributor development.