Lydia Pintscher, Head of Section – Advocacy & Awareness, is the Portfolio Lead for Wikidata at Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. and a passionate advocate for free software and open knowledge. With over 18 years of experience contributing to free software projects, she studied computer science at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and serves as Vice-President of KDE e.V. In her role at Wikimedia, Lydia has been instrumental in leading Wikidata to become one of the most influential open data projects globally, working to democratise access to structured knowledge for developers, researchers, and the wider public. Her dedication to the open knowledge movement and efforts to foster inclusion and diversity have inspired a global community to embrace transparency and collaboration.
The Advocacy & Awareness Award is given to those who have demonstrated dedication in promotion, advocation and awareness raising of open source to a global community.