Program Committee

Rabi Abdel is a Senior Practice Manager at AWS and leads their Global Telecom Automation and Security Practice. He Helps Service Providers and Enterprises transform their 5G networks using AWS services. Prior to joining AWS, Rabi was Senior Manager at Vodafone Group where he led their transformational programs for deploying telco workloads into cloud including 5G Core and Open RAN deployments. Rabi chaired many industry standards and open source organizations’ projects within ETSI, GSMA, LFN, CNCF and TIP.

Wenjing is a Senior Director of Technology Strategy in Futurewei Technologies where he drives the strategy development of Metaverse and Web3 for the future of the internet. In nearly three decades, he had been a technology and thought leader in diverse areas of internet development including internet routing, security, operating systems, wireless networks, and cloud and virtualization technologies. He is also a long time champion and leader of open source projects including Linux Foundation’s OPNFV (now Anuket), LF Networking, Akraino, LF Edge, and Trust over IP (ToIP). He is currently a ToIP Steering Committee member,  a primary contributor to ToIP’s Technology Architecture Specification and a co-chair of the AI and Metaverse (AIM) Task Force. 

Roy Chua, an entrepreneurial executive with 20+ years of IT experience, is the principal and founder of AvidThink, an independent analyst firm covering infrastructure technologies for carriers and enterprises. AvidThink’s clients include Fortune 500 technology companies,  early-stage startups, upstart unicorns, and private equity and venture firms. Roy and AvidThink have been featured on major publications including WSJ, FierceTelecom/Wireless, The New Stack, and Light Reading. Roy is a graduate of MIT Sloan (MBA) and UC Berkeley (BS, MS EECS).

In her role at Verizon, Beth develops Software Defined Network and Edge products by leveraging the Verizon global network. She has been responsible for the launch of several successful products including Secure Cloud Interconnect, which allows companies to connect to public cloud services over private networks, and Virtual Network Services, which is a market leading SDN product. She is also an active participant in the Open Source community, holding several leadership roles in LFN and the OpenInfra Foundation projects. Currently co-chair of the LF Networking Anuket project TSC and chair of the LFN End User Advisory Group (EUAG). Also a founder and co-lead of the OpenInfra Foundation Edge Working Group. 

Trishan provides technical, program management and open source leadership to various security and distributed cloud initiatives, at F5, bringing a wealth of experience as a technologist with over 17 years of experience, building successful multi-organizational, international open-source software programs. He previously served as a Principal Technical Program Manager for the Office of the CTO at Equinix and Senior Technical Community Architect – Networking & Edge at the Linux Foundation, leading and operationalizing projects at the cutting edge of Open Source Networking.

Ranny is in charge of driving further technical innovation, creating opportunities for synergies among open source projects, and identifying emerging trends and projects.

Ranny is a software veteran who has been focusing on pushing the envelope in open source innovation in recent years. Prior to joining the Linux Foundation Ranny was a director at Samsung Research America, leading the open source group. He provided leadership and guidance for engineering teams across Samsung who were actively contributing to open source projects such as ONAP, CNCF, ROS, and Matter (CHIP). 

Prior to that Ranny served as a Principal System Architect in the Nokia CloudBand product group where he led the design of network automation systems serving the telecom industry. His previous positions include technology leadership roles in the domains of cloud computing, networking, and multimedia broadcasting. In addition to his corporate roles, Ranny has been elected by LF open source communities to the role of technical committee member and technical advisory council vice-chair.

Daniel Havey is a Product Manager at Microsoft in Core Networking for Windows and Linux. He is responsible for eBPF, MsQuic, TCP, IPv4/6, w32time, XDP and DPDK. Daniel graduated from UC Santa Barbara with Ph.D. and a Master’s degree in Computer Science in 2015. He also completed a Baccalaureate in Computer Systems at Cal State San Bernadino in 2006.

Kandan Kathirvel is a Product Management executive with over 20 years of experience in Cloud Automation, Edge, and AI infrastructure for telecommunications and various industries. Kandan currently leads his product management team at Google Cloud, where he and his product management team focus on developing and innovating edge automation products and edge platform capabilities. Prior to Google, Kandan held leadership roles in various initiatives at AT&T, including Domain 2.0, Cloud, O-RAN, and CDN.

An open-source enthusiast, Kandan has a long history of involvement in open-source projects. He played a key role in founding and growing influential projects like Nephio and the LF Edge. His contributions to O-RAN, ONAP, ONF, and OpenStack showcase his significance in the open-source community.

Catherine Lefèvre is in charge of 140+ unique applications, to support key AT&T business initiatives (5G RAN/Access Automation, 5G Core/Network Cloud, Accelerated C-Band Deployment, SD-WAN, Fiber, ROADM, FirstNet, NetBond, Win@Home). She serves as ONAP TSC Chair since September 25th, 2018.

She is building an operating model that engages with industry and aligns with partners to drive innovation and streamlined processes, incorporating security, resiliency, agility and speed.

She is driving AT&T Network Common Platform & Services Cloud Native Target State Architecture and ONAP/O-RAN (vRAN) strategic alignment.

She is also fostering an inclusive culture that challenges the status quo, embraces diverse ideas and perspectives, empowering and celebrating our ability to try, grow and succeed.

Catherine received a master’s degree in computer science as well as a qualified teaching degree in computer science in 1996 from the University Of Namur (FUNDP).

She joined AT&T in 2013. During her time with AT&T, she focused on software development best practices and early prototypes and proof of concepts of AT&T’s SDN technology, accelerating AT&T’s ability to move from concept to scaled production development, integrating the DevOps Culture for increased collaboration between the development and operations teams. In 2017, she co-led with AT&T Labs the open sourcing of the ECOMP Platform. She received several awards for her technical depth that provided a unique and significant contribution to AT&T (AT&T Science and Technology Medal; Technology Development President Award in 2016 and 2017).

Catherine is part of AT&T’s EMEA Women’s Network, mentoring young women about careers in STEM.

Tom is a Fellow and Vice President at Spirent Communications where he is The Chief Architect of Cloud.  Tom works across Spirent’s products and business units. He is responsible for Spirent’s Open Source strategy and approach, as well as working on new and emerging technologies. Tom has served on the Linux Foundation Edge Boards, TAC and Networking Technical Advisory Council (TAC) and Board and held similar roles in the Akraino, OPNFV and OpenDaylight projects. Tom is an Apache Software Foundation Committer where he was a committer on the AriaTosca project, and is co-Maintainer of The Public Yang Repository on GitHub.

Tom is a very well established engineer / engineering leader, he is an architect and industry visionary having worked in both startups and large company environments, within equipment vendors and service providers. He has attentively focused on the details of developing successful products. Strong communication skills have allowed him to participate and share his experiences and knowledge in public presentations, as well as internal communications.

Before joining Spirent, Tom was a Senior Technical Director at Red Hat. He also spent time at Brocade as Chief Architect of Open Source, Software Business Unit and worked in as a Distinguished Engineer at Juniper Networks.

As a member of the CTO Office at MATRIXX Software, Olivier is responsible for identifying emerging trends, driving technology strategy, and delivering thought leadership.  As part of those responsibilities, Olivier is actively engaged in open source communities including the Linux Foundation where he helps advance and promote cloud-native best practices for the telecom industry. Olivier is also currently the Chair for LF Networking’s Anuket Assured Program.

Olivier has over 25 years of international telecom experience gained from a variety of leadership roles.  He has served as Head of IT for Three Scandinavia, Senior Manager for consulting firm Northstream (part of Accenture), and Executive Consultant for CGI where he led strategy development and large-scale BSS implementations throughout Europe.

Jim St. Leger is the director of open ecosystem strategy in Intel’s Software and Advanced Technology Group.  His work spans open source software for networking, edge computing, and cloud native technologies.  Jim chairs the governing board of the Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK), a project that earned him an Intel Achievement Award. He also chairs the LF Edge Technical Advisory Council (TAC). Jim was on the teams that created the FD.io and Tungsten Fabric open source networking projects, now both part of LF Networking (LFN.) He co-chairs the Intel Disability Leadership Council, a group he co-founded in 2018 to promote disability inclusion. In a 2021 he was recognized by Intel with a Global Diversity, Inclusion, and Social Impact Achievement Award. Jim is also helping to build and expand the Inclusive Naming Initiative.  Prior to Intel Jim worked in various manufacturing, product engineering, and marketing roles in the automotive, aerospace, and semiconductor equipment industries.  He chairs the Arizona PBS Community Advisory Board. He spends his off-hours focused on his family, the outdoors, lifelong learning, skiing, motorcycles, and a myriad of other random pursuits.

Cedric Thienot, CTO and Co-founder of Firecell,  is an IT professional with 20+ years of experience in the telecommunications industry. He is Skilled in Streaming Media, Mobile Communications, DVB, Interactive TV, and VOD. Cedric has filed 25 telecom patents in his career and is an active contributor of 4G and 5G specifications at 3GPP. Cedric holds a PhD in AI from Pierre and Marie Curie University.

Amy Zwarico is a Director of Cybersecurity in AT&T’s Chief Security office, specializing in software, open source and emerging product security. She has been actively involved ONAP (Open Network Automation Platform) security since the Amsterdam release and is currently serving as vice chair of the ONAP Security Subcommittee. Amy has worked in the telco industry for over 25 years where she developed web based integrations to BSS/OSS systems, architected Mobility systems, and for the past 20 years focused on application security, cloud security, open RAN, applied cryptography and policy. Amy received her PhD in Computer and Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania.