I would suggest to have a team of full-time theme reviewers who get paid by the WordPress foundation.

Companies pay people as “5 for the future” to work fully on WP Core – why not alternatively pay/donate money to the foundation so that the foundation can pay good salaries to a team?

This would take the burden from the current team which does it in their spare time (as of my knowledge…). And then things like such a author program would no longer be needed.

The queue can then hopefully become shorter and shorter.

The current team would still be needed to make the “rules”/ guidelines.

Just a few thoughts on this.