Featured Speakers

A 25-year veteran of the Silicon Valley and Seattle technology scenes, Sam Ramji led Kubernetes and DevOps product management for Google Cloud, founded the Cloud Foundry foundation, has helped build two multi-billion dollar markets (API Management at Apigee and Enterprise Service Bus at BEA Systems) and redefined Microsoft’s open source and Linux strategy from “extinguish” to “embrace”.

He is nerdy about open source, platform economics, middleware, and cloud computing with emphasis on developer experience and enterprise software. He is an advisor to multiple companies including Dell Technologies, Accenture, Observable, Insight Engines, and the Linux Foundation.

Sam received his B.S. in Cognitive Science from UCSD in 1994 and is still excited about artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and cognitive psychology. 

Angela Benton is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Streamlytics, a next generation data intelligence ecosystem which helps everyday people and companies ethically access consumer data streams. Prior to her role at Streamlytics she founded the first accelerator for minorities globally in 2011, NewME was acquired in December 2018.

To date, Ms. Benton has received numerous accolades, some of which include Goldman Sachs’ 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs, Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business and their Most Influential Women In Technology, Business Insiders’ 25 Most Influential African-Americans in Technology, ADWEEK’s 2020 Women Trailblazers, and many more.  She’s been featured in numerous national and international media outlets including CNN, MSNBC, Bloomberg, Inc, Forbes, Good Morning America, and the Wall Street Journal where she was a featured essayist for the paper’s 125th Anniversary edition on The Future of Entrepreneurship.

At the helm of Streamlytics, Angela continues to uncover untapped spaces in technology and innovation.

Neil McGovern has been involved with open source software for over 20 years, both personally and professionally. Starting in the Debian project, he held various roles, cumulating in him becoming Debian Project Leader from 2014-2015. He has also served on the boards of numerous organizations, including Software in the Public Interest, Inc. and the Open Rights Group.

Professionally, Neil has run the engineering team of a large open source software consultancy and is currently the Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation.

My background and core competence is systems software engineering, but I love the whole process of building products. I’ve been in startups that have succeeded and others that have failed. I enjoy writing code, and understanding how other people will use it.

I’m Chief Open Source Officer with eBPF pioneers Isovalent, creators of the Cilium project, which provides cloud native networking, observability and security. Prior to that I was VP Open Source Engineering with security specialists Aqua Security. I’m chair of the CNCF’s Technical Oversight Committee, and I co-chaired the KubeCon / CloudNativeCon 2018 events in Copenhagen, Shanghai and Seattle. I’m also an Ambassador for Open UK.

Thomas Gleixner is a long-time Linux kernel developer with an embedded background and a strong affinity to impossible missions. Aside of his role as CTO of Linutronix GmbH, a Germany based FOSS consultancy and service provider, he’s an active maintainer in the Linux kernel project and appointed fellow of the Linux Foundation.

Nithya A. Ruff is the Head of Amazon’s Open Source Program Office. Open Source has proven
to be one of the world’s most prolific enablers of innovation and collaboration and Amazon’s
customers increasingly value open source innovation and the and cloud’s role in helping them
adopt and run important open source services. She drives open source culture and
coordination inside of Amazon and engagement with external communities. Prior to Amazon,
she started and grew Comcast and Western Digital’s Open Source Program Offices. Open
Source Program Offices are a critical part of a company’s digital transformation and innovation
journey.

Nithya has been director-at-large on the Linux Foundation Board for the last 5 years and in
2019 was elected to be Chair of the influential Linux Foundation Board. She works actively to
advance the mission of the Linux Foundation around building sustainable ecosystems that are
built on open collaboration. She is a passionate advocate and a speaker for opening doors to
new and diverse people in technology and can often be seen speaking and writing on this topic.
Nithya graduated with an M.S. in Computer Science from NDSU and an MBA from the
University of Rochester, Simon Business School and is an aspiring corporate board director and
governance enthusiast. You can follow her on twitter @nithyaruff and you can find her
on https://www.linkedin.com/in/nithyaruff/

Prof. Jesús Labarta received his Ph.D. in Telecommunications Engineering from UPC in 1983, where he has been a full professor of Computer Architecture since 1990. He was Director of European Center of Parallelism at Barcelona from 1996 to the creation of BSC in 2005, where he is the Director of the Computer Sciences Dept. His research team has developed performance analysis and prediction tools and pioneering research on how to increase the intelligence embedded in these performance tools. He has also led the development of OmpSs and influenced the task based extension in the OpenMP standard. He has led the BSC cooperation with many IT companies. He is now responsible of the POP center of excellence providing performance assessments to parallel code developers throughout the EU and leads the RISC-V vector accelerator within the EPI project. He was awarded the 2017 Ken Kennedy Award for his seminal contributions to programming models and performance analysis tools for high performance computing, being the First Non US Researcher receiving it.

Ali Fenn is the President at ITRenew, where she oversees all revenue and leads the Company’s circular data center initiatives, including market development and business model innovation. Open hardware platforms and open source software innovation are the critical foundation underpinning the transformation to a circular global IT hardware industry, and Ali has extensive experience leveraging open innovation to catalyze and accelerate new markets. She has been building enterprise and cloud technology companies for 20 years; previous to ITRenew, she was the CEO of Impact Atlas, a real-time analytics SaaS platform company in the global development sector, led WW market development for cloud systems and solutions at Seagate, and held executive leadership positions at Wyse Technology, BEA Systems, and several SaaS companies in the enterprise space.

Prior to joining the Federal government, Friedman was a noted cybersecurity and technology policy researcher. Wearing the hats of both a technologist and a policy scholar, his work spans computer science, public policy and the social sciences, and has addressed a wide range of policy issues, from privacy to telecommunications. Friedman has over a decade of experience in cybersecurity research, with a particular focus on economic, market, and trade issues. He is the coauthor of Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2014).

His work has taken him between the technical and policy research world.  From 2014-215, he was a Research Scientist at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at George Washington University based in the Cyber Security Policy Research Institute. Before that, Friedman was a Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and the research director for the Center for Technology Innovation. Prior to moving to Washington, he was Postdoctoral Fellow in the Harvard University Computer Science department, where he worked on cyber security policy, privacy-enhancing technologies and the economics of information security. Friedman was also a Fellow at the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, where he worked on the Minerva Project for Cyber International Relations. He has also received fellowships from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and the Harvard Program on Networked Governance. He has a degree in Computer Science from Swarthmore College, and a PhD in Public Policy from Harvard University.

Shuli Goodman is the founder and Executive Director of LF Energy, a new Linux Foundation project that supports open source innovation in the energy and electricity sectors. LF Energy’s ambition is to accelerate the energy transition and the decarbonization of the world’s economies. Having spent the early part of her career enabling some of the world’s largest companies in the world to become Internet-ready, she has brought her digital-first, cross-industry background to the electricity sector. With a doctorate in Organizational Systems focused on innovation and the energy transition, Shuli has a uniquely multi-disciplinary approach to solving complex, interdependent problems. She has nearly three decades experience in the startup and ongoing support of governance and multi-stakeholder engagement bodies that have been convened to enable decision-making and provide steering capacity for high-visibility and/or high-risk initiatives. Her goal is to inspire, train, and enable 10,000 developers, in the next 10 years, to digitally transform the world’s power systems.

Andrew leads Arm’s Open Source Office, encompassing internal and external open source engagements. As a member of Arm’s Open Source Software leadership team, he is responsible for building the relationships between Arm engineering and open source projects. Andrew is the current Chair of the Yocto Project, and sits on the Xen Advisory Board, the FreeBSD Foundation Board and has served on the openSUSE Board. With nearly 20 years of experience in the Open Source arena working for the likes of Fujitsu, EMC, Sun  Microsystems as well as local government. Prior to immersing himself in open source he spent nearly a decade in the aviation space and is slowly returning to it as a private pilot.

Jim’s career spans three of the largest technology trends to rise over the last decade: mobile computing, cloud computing and open source software. Today, as executive director of The Linux Foundation, he uses this experience to accelerate innovation in technology through the use of open source and Linux.

At The Linux Foundation, Jim works with the world’s largest technology companies, including IBM, Intel, Google, Samsung, Qualcomm, and others to help define the future of computing on the server, in the cloud, and on a variety of new mobile computing devices. His work at the vendor-neutral Linux Foundation gives him a unique and aggregate perspective on the global technology industry.

Jim has been recognized for his insights on the changing economics of the technology industry. His writing has appeared in Businessweek, Wired, and other top technology journals, and he is a regular keynote speaker at industry events. He advises a variety of startups, including Splashtop, and sits on the boards of the Global Economic Symposium, Open Source For America, and Chinese Open Source Promotion Union.

Katelin is the Business Development Manager at Cloud Native Computing Foundation. She is responsible for driving growth globally for the foundation in the form of partnerships with the member community and gaining support for CNCF global events. 

Katelin has a background in sales from Dell Technologies and a passion for helping businesses transform to leverage cloud native and open source technology. She has worked with clients in high tech, oil and gas, manufacturing, state and local government, the DOD, finance, and healthcare. Katelin holds a Bachelor of Science in Apparel Design and Production from Colorado State University.

When she’s not traveling, Katelin enjoys baking, playing tennis, snowboarding, and all things Colorado with her husband, Justin, and Australian Shepherd, Rocky.

Cheryl Hung is the Director of Ecosystem at the CNCF. Her mission is to increase the adoption of Kubernetes and cloud native by growing the community and advocating for end users. She founded and runs the Cloud Native London meetup.

Previously Cheryl spent five years as a C++ engineer on Google Maps, before moving to a storage startup to lead Product and DevOps. She holds a Masters in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge.

Cheryl has spoken at many conferences including KubeCon + CloudNativeCon and Red Hat Summit. See oicheryl.com for past talks, podcasts and articles.

Sachiko Muto is Chairman and former Chief Executive Officer of OFE. She is also a senior research fellow at RISE Research Institutes of Sweden. Prior to OFE, Sachiko worked for several years in public affairs, first in London and then in Brussels. With degrees in Political Science from the University of Toronto and the London School of Economics, she has been a guest researcher at UC Berkeley and at TU Delft. She is a regular speaker at international conferences and has published on the topic of regulation and ICT standards.