OpenSearchCon North America

Tia White is the General Manager of OpenSearch, leading the teams behind AWS’s search, analytics, vector database, and observability services used by hundreds of thousands of customers worldwide. Over four years as a proud Amazonian, Tia has held leadership roles spanning AI and infrastructure, including serving as Technical Advisor to SVP Peter DeSantis and as General Manager of AI for Advertising and Marketing Technology. Before joining AWS, she was an engineering and applied AI executive at Capital One, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo, where she drove enterprise-scale technology transformations and launched AI-powered products from zero to one.

As a seasoned executive, Tia has led global engineering, science, and product organizations with operating budgets exceeding $500M annually. She brings a rare combination of deep technical fluency and business acumen, bridging the gap between technical depth and business strategy with ease.

A lifelong learner, Tia holds degrees and certificates from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Georgia Southern University, the University of Virginia, and MIT. Outside of work, she’s a devoted mom to Dylan (7), Ali II (6), and an avid traveler.

With a rich and diverse product & engineering experience spanning over 25 years, Bill has delivered tailored solutions for customers spanning devices, edge, and cloud. His focus has ranged from creating developer software tools to engaging developers globally within the Intel portfolio.

At Intel, Bill leads Data Center Ecosystem and cross-Intel compiler and tools engineering teams dedicated to advancing compute and AI solutions and fostering thriving partner and developer communities across ISVs, hyperscalers and enterprise customers. This involves developing AI-powered reference kits and solutions, creating developer-friendly tools and APIs, and simplifying enterprise AI deployments. Prior to his current role, Bill led solutions engineering for networking and edge as well as developer engagements for the Internet of Things Group enabling AI solutions, vertical applications, architecture conversions, porting and performance optimizations to drive reach of Intel products from edge-to-cloud through ecosystem solutions scale programs. Prior to Intel, Bill worked as a systems engineer at Northrop Grumman.

Bill earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from UC Santa Barbara and his master’s degree in systems management from the University of Southern California. He serves as a member of the board of directors of the American Red Cross Cascades Region and is the chair of the biomedical committee. He has taught classes at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and at Portland State University.

Sokratis is a DevOps engineer at CERN, leading the OpenSearch service offering for the various teams within the organisation. He is interested in all there is to deploying OpenSearch and keeping it up and running. He is an active member of the OpenSearch community, participating in various channels within the OpenSearch project.

Pushkala Pattabhiraman is a technology leader at IBM, focused on shaping the next generation of enterprise AI platforms. Her recent work spans OpenSearch, AI context and retrieval, RAG, NoSQL, and agentic AI infrastructure, with a particular focus on turning emerging technologies into scalable enterprise products.

Pushkala has spent her career at the intersection of security, compliance, data infrastructure, cloud, AI, and product strategy, working across both startups and large enterprises. She is passionate about open technologies and the evolving role of search and retrieval as AI systems move beyond finding information to delivering trusted, governed context for intelligent agents.

Since 2010, Dmitry has specialized in search (Lucene, Solr, Elasticsearch), previously co-owning TomTom’s planet-scale map search and building the technology behind AlphaSense. At Silo.AI, he led NLP and web-scale search teams. A PhD in Applied Mathematics and CS Master’s holder, Dmitry has co-founded several startups, contributed to open-source projects like Quepid and Luke, and hosts the Vector Podcast.

Tony has spent his entire 40-year career building software systems. He has written production code in more than a dozen languages and led teams responsible for data architecture, stream processing, and analytics on AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, and Databricks. He holds active certifications from AWS, Google Cloud, and Databricks, and that multi-cloud range shapes how he thinks about running search and observability in production. As a Senior Solutions Architect at Aiven, he takes customers from proof of concept to production on OpenSearch for observability and AI/ML use cases, and he contributes to the OpenSearch project across multiple repositories. He holds an M.S. in Computer Science and lives in Austin, Texas.

Karthik Mariappan is a seasoned technology executive, entrepreneur, and engineering leader with more than two decades of experience building high-scale data, security, and enterprise software platforms. As Co-founder and VP of Engineering at Portal26, Karthik leads the engineering vision behind the company’s AI governance, security, and data protection technologies. Prior to founding the company, he spent 15 years at Yahoo, where he spearheaded large-scale data analytics solutions—experience that shaped his deep expertise in distributed systems, information retrieval, data platforms, and engineering at internet scale.

Karthik is also an inventor behind Portal26’s groundbreaking data-security technology, including patented approaches that enable organizations to search, aggregate, and analyze information while it remains encrypted. His work helped establish the technical foundation for Titaniam’s FIPS 140-2 validated cryptographic platform and advanced approaches to protecting sensitive enterprise data even in the event of credential compromise or infrastructure breach. Today, he brings that same security-first engineering philosophy to the rapidly evolving world of enterprise AI, building technology that enables organizations to embrace generative and agentic AI with visibility, control, and trust.

Carl Meadows is Director of Product at AWS for Amazon OpenSearch Service and is the board chair for the OpenSearch Software Foundation at the Linux Foundation.

Carl has over twenty-five years in product management developing enterprise software and cloud services. Prior to joining AWS, Carl held product management leadership roles at Engine Yard, SunGard Availability Services, SoftLayer/IBM and Symantec. He holds a BA from Berklee College of Music in Boston and an MBA from McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin.

Bianca Lewis is the Executive Director of the OpenSearch Software Foundation. As the Foundation’s inaugural executive director, she spearheads community engagement, member support, and overall strategic direction. Her work focuses on scaling the Foundation’s impact and fostering a vibrant, community-driven ecosystem around AI-powered search, analytics, and observability.

Bianca has more than two decades of experience in technology and business strategy. Prior to leading the Foundation, she held executive leadership positions driving the growth of search and analytics technologies at companies like Opster and Logz.io.

Bianca also serves on the board of LGBTWork where she champions diversity and inclusion across the industry. Bianca was recognized as a winner of the Innovative Women in Tech Leadership award in the SiliconANGLE Media’s 2026 Tech Innovation CUBEd Awards.

Mingmin is Director of Engineering at Uber, leading the Online Data Platform engineering organization. His team operates large-scale distributed online databases, streaming, and search engines that power Uber’s core ride-sharing, delivery, and other businesses. In particular, his team leverages OpenSearch and builds innovative in-house search solutions to enable core search use cases within Uber, like delivery, matching, and Maps.

Wolfgang heads the development of various observability services within SAP BTP. Within that scope he leverages a long history of scientific research but also more than 10 years of development and operational experience. Tight collaboration and engagement with Open Source initiatives became a major theme for driving open and innovative solutions rooted in strong standards and backed by communities. Wolfgang and his team engaged in OpenSearch from the very beginning and were part of the founding premium members of OpenSearch Foundation.

Kris Freedain is the Senior Community Manager for the OpenSearch Project & OpenSearch Software Foundation technical steering committee. He has experience in community engagement, digital marketing, support, and release management throughout his career, contributing to various initiatives and events within the tech community. He has decades of experience in tech, but finds connecting people to be the most fulfilling part of being a community professional.

Patti Juric is Senior Marketing Content Manager for the OpenSearch Project, where she leads content, events, and partner strategy. She serves on the OpenSearch Software Foundation Marketing Committee and chairs the Program Committee for the Linux Foundation’s Observability Summit. Outside of work, she’s a wife, mom to three mostly-grown kids, and dog mom of two very fluffy Goldendoodles—all of whom keep her busy with soccer, volleyball, and walks.

James McIntyre is senior product marketing manager for the OpenSearch Project, supporting product messaging and communications, digital marketing, and developer relations for the open source project. Prior to joining the OpenSearch team, he managed product marketing for category solutions as part of Amazon Business. James previously led marketing communications for the AWS Elemental portfolio of streaming video technologies. Prior to Amazon, James led client services teams for advertising and PR agencies, serving technology clients from startups to global leaders. He holds a Bachelor’s in psychology and philosophy from San Diego State University.