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Tim Bird
Sony - Gold Director
Tim Bird is a longtime Linux kernel developer, with over 25 years experience with the Linux kernel and open source community. He is a principal software engineer and general Open Source technologist at Sony Corporation. Over the last 2 decades he has been involved with many projects in the Linux Foundation and other trade associations to enhance Linux for use in embedded and consumer electronics products. Tim is the founder of the Embedded Linux Conference and the elinux wiki. He recently served on the Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board, and was previously the CTO of Lineo, an early embedded Linux company.
Erica Brescia
At-Large Director
Erica Brescia is the COO at GitHub. Prior to GitHub, she was the Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Bitnami. Erica has been a dedicated builder of diverse, globally distributed technology and business teams, and has been featured as a keynote speaker at OpenStack Summit and OSCON. To further those goals, Bitnami founded the Bitnami Bootcamp, which provides free education and training on cloud, open source, and containers, for recent college graduates and self-taught technologists living southern Spain. As a YC Founder, Erica is also an active mentor of aspiring entrepreneurs in the technology and related industries, as well as being an angel investor in a number of early stage startups.
Kimberly Craven
Red Hat
Kimberly Craven is the head of the Open Source Program Office at Red Hat, where she leads a team of open source experts focused on guiding the company, its customers and partners, and communities in which they’re engaged on open source strategy, processes, and best practices. Kimberly is a believer in the power of open source to drive positive change and is passionate about helping others get involved in the community. In her spare time, you can find her skiing and hiking with her family in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
Eileen Evans
At-Large Director
Eileen serves as SunPower’s Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer. She joined SunPower from Redaptive, an energy-as-a-service company, where she served as its Chief Legal and Corporate Affairs Officer. Prior to Redaptive, Eileen served as the Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of enterprise software provider Micro Focus International PLC. Prior to that, she was a Vice President and Deputy General Counsel in the legal departments of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Hewlett-Packard Company. Eileen also served as an Associate General counsel at Oracle Corporation and Sun Microsystems, Inc. Prior to her in-house roles, Eileen was in private practice at Gray Cary Ware & Freidenrich (now part of DLA Piper). Eileen earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the University of California, Berkeley and her law degree from the University of California, Davis.
Eileen has been actively engaged in the area of open source for more than two decades. She speaks regularly on open source topics and has led complex open source discussions with governmental bodies, such as the European Commission, various European National Competition Authorities, and members of the European Parliament. From 2012 through 2017, Eileen served as the Vice President of Hewlett-Packard Company’s Open Source Program Office, responsible for HP’s open source strategy and its implementation. During this time, Eileen represented HP on the Linux Foundation Board of Directors and the OpenStack Foundation Board of Directors.
Melissa E. Evers
Intel
Melissa E. Evers is vice president in the Intel Architecture, Graphics, and Software group and general manager of Software Business Strategy at Intel Corporation. Her responsibilities span guiding the strategy and defining software strategies across Intel collaborating with teams and business units. Her team builds tools, insights, systems and processes to ensure our software initiatives drive maximum impact to Intel’s business. Based in Portland, Oregon, Evers leads Intel’s open source software coordination, strategy and engagement in our associated communities. Outside of Intel, she is a member of the Linux Foundation board and serves as governing board chair of LF Edge, an umbrella project within the Linux Foundation.
Before assuming her current Intel role in 2019, Evers worked across the system software stack in open source communities, from device to edge to cloud. She has led development in a breadth of open source development areas, including Android, Chrome, graphics, media, OpenStack, Cloud Native Computing and StarlingX. In 2017, her contributions to Chrome OS earned her an Intel Achievement Award, the company’s highest recognition. Since joining Intel in 2004, Evers has worked across engineering, finance and product management functions. Before joining Intel, she worked at Dell Inc. and Exxon Mobil Corp.
Evers holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. She also earned an MBA degree from the university’s McCombs School of Business. An active champion of diversity and inclusion, as well as a certified coach, Evers frequently coaches leaders internally and externally. She is also a frequent keynote speaker at industry events.
Peixin Hou
Huawei
Peixin Hou is currently serving as the Chief Architect of Open Software and Systems in the Central Software Institute, Huawei. He has been working in the software industry for over 20 years and has experience in operating systems, mobile software, media processing, and cloud computing.
Peixin started his open source journey in 2000 and is now an active strategist and evangelist in the field. He is involved in defining various key strategies on open source for Huawei and leads the company’s FOSS development in areas such as Linux and containers. He also serves as a board or steering committee member in several open source projects, such as Cloud Native Computing Foundation and Core Infrastructure Initiative. Peixin has also represented Huawei on the board of Linaro.
Peixin received his Ph.D. from the University of Surrey, UK in electronic and electrical engineering.
Frank Fanzilli
At-Large Director / Treasurer
Frank Fanzilli is a seasoned software veteran and advisor to early- and late-stage software companies. Previously, he held the post of Global Chief Information Officer and Managing Director at Credit Suisse First Boston, where he grew the technology business into a $2 billion division with operations in all major financial centers.
In addition to his board seat at The Linux Foundation, Frank has served on the boards of numerous technology companies. He was a founder of nLayers, Inc., a software company acquired by EMC in 2006, and a director of PeopleSoft prior to its acquisition by Oracle.
Frank holds an M.B.A in finance from New York University and a B.S. in management from Fairfield University.
Takehisa Katayama
Renesas - Gold Director
Takehisa Katayama is a Director at Renesas Corporation, a global semiconductor supplier.
He has been with Renesas for seven years and is responsible for developing and maintaining Linux and OSS-based embedded software for RZ MPUs that Renesas' high-end Arm and RISC-V-based processors designed for the IoT and industrial markets.
Renesas, based in Tokyo, Japan, joined the Linux Foundation in 2011 and is a global semiconductor manufacturer that provides cutting-edge SoC (system-on-chip) devices for the automotive industry and infrastructure. Renesas has contributed to the kernel development from the early version 2x time and has consistently ranked among the top 20 companies in the LF Kernel Report.
Takehisa has been an open-source enthusiast for over 15 years. Now, he serves in the board of directors role at the LF CIP project.
Prior to Renesas, he was a Director at Fujitsu Semiconductor Limited (Currently known as Socionext Inc.) and was a member of the Linaro TSC from 2012 to 2015 as a representative from Fujitsu Semiconductor.
Takehisa has extensive experience in dealing with the processor business through the provision of Linux and OSS-based software and in dealing with legal issues around OSS licenses due to being in a business unit.
Ken Komiyama
Fujitsu
Ken Komiyama is a Manager in the Linux development division at Fujitsu. He has more than 10 years of experience working as a Linux engineer and supports the customers’ mission critical systems. He’s now leading a Linux technical support team which supports tens of thousands of Linux servers around the global, and his technical support team contributes to customers’ business growth and success.
Xin Liu
Tencent
Mr. Xin Liu is the General Manager of Tencent Future Network Lab and Technical Operation Department.
David Marr
Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.
David Marr is Vice President, Legal Counsel at Qualcomm Technologies, where he leads the open source practice and policy team. He has been practicing in the open source legal field since 1998, delivering strategic advice to organizations and providing guidance on community licensing practices. Dave writes and speaks regularly on FOSS-related issues, their interaction with standard-setting, technology transfer best practices, licensing business models, and other subjects at the intersection of law and high technology.
Prior to Qualcomm Technologies, Dave worked at Sun Microsystems, at various times supporting Java, OpenSPARC, and Solaris, as well as at Juniper Networks.
Ben Maurer
Meta
Ben is a software engineer at Meta focusing on privacy and security. He joined Meta in 2010 as a member of the infrastructure team where he played a key role in driving the performance and reliability of Meta’s products. Over the course of his time at the company, Ben has worked on several technologies that Meta has open sourced, including jemalloc, Folly, Thrift, and HHVM. He has also built deep partnerships with the open source community such as bringing Restartable Sequences to the Linux kernel and building a team within Meta dedicated to contributing to open source web browsers. Ben is one of the co-creators of the Diem blockchain and led Meta’s technical contributions to the project.
Ben also worked at the White House in 2014 as part of the U.S. Digital Service where he improved the communication tools used by the President and his staff.
Yuichi Nakamura
Hitachi
Yuichi Nakamura, Ph.D is a Director at Hitachi, Ltd., leading Open Source engineering team and contribution to communities.
He has been involved in R&D and solution development including OSS security technologies such as SELinux and Keycloak for 20 years. He also contributed to SELinux for embedded devices, and gave presentations at various conferences related to OSS.
Shojiro Nakao
Panasonic - Gold Director
Shojiro Nakao is a general manager of the R & D Division of the Automotive Company of Panasonic. He is responsible for the development and management of automotive software platforms. He has been working with Linux for over 15 years, in a variety of product development, including mobile, IoT, and automotive devices. Responsible for software platform development, he has been promoting Panasonic’s collaboration with various open source communities. In addition, he is a steering committee member of Automotive Grade Linux.
Daniel Park
Samsung
Dr. Daniel Park is a head of open source group in Samsung where he is responsible for open source strategy, corporate governance and compliance operation, project development and developer relationship and all kinds of open source stuffs. He has many experiences in terms of global standard and collaboration including W3C advisory board and working group chair, IETF working group chair, OCF vice president and open source work group chair, and currently his experience is being expanded to open source communities. He received his Ph.D from Kyung Hee University in Computer Engineering.
Stormy Peters
GitHub - Silver Director
Stormy Peters, VP of Communities at GitHub, is a seasoned technology executive with over 20 years of industry experience and a proven track record of driving growth and innovation in various organizations. Her expertise lies in open source software, community building, and product management. She leads the teams responsible for enabling the online creators and open source communities on GitHub, including GitHub’s community product efforts, developer relations, education, and other strategic programs. Throughout her career, Stormy has been passionate about open source software and has worked to educate companies and communities on how open source software is changing the software industry.
Prior to GitHub, Stormy was the Director of the Open Source Programs Office at Microsoft, enabling 30,000+ developers to consume and contribute to open source effectively. She has helped initiate programs such as Microsoft’s FOSS Fund and the Azure Credits for Open Source projects. She’s also held leadership positions working with the open source community at Mozilla, Red Hat, GNOME Foundation, OpenLogic, and others.
Stormy is passionate about making technology more accessible and inclusive and has been a strong advocate for diversity and inclusivity in the tech industry. She is a sought-after speaker and has presented at numerous conferences and events worldwide.
With her extensive field experience and deep understanding of the open source community, Stormy is well-equipped to lead the Linux Foundation into its next phase of growth and development.
Phil Robb
Ericsson
Phil is the Head of Ericsson Software Technology (EST), where he leads a passionate group of engineers developing open source software across a wide range of projects including Linux, OpenStack, Kubernetes, and ONAP among many others.
Prior to Ericsson, Phil was the V.P. of Operations for the Networking Projects at the Linux Foundation including ORAN, ONAP, OpenDaylight, and Anuket. In that role, Phil led a team of technical staff who oversaw community software development based on DevOps and open source best practices. Prior to the Linux Foundation, Phil spent 12 years with Hewlett Packard working on Linux and Open Source starting in 2001. There, Phil formed and led HP’s Open Source Program Office responsible for open source strategy, tools, processes, and investments as HP transitioned from Unix to Linux in the Enterprise Server market.
Nithya Ruff
Chair
Nithya A. Ruff is the Head of the Amazon Open Source Program Office. She drives open source culture and coordination inside of Amazon and engagement with external communities. Open Source has proven to be one of the world’s most prolific enabler of innovation and collaboration, and Amazon’s customers increasingly value open source innovation and the cloud’s role in helping them adopt and run important open source services. 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 and enable the intentional and systematic engagement with open source for companies.
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.
Keiichi Seki
NEC
Keiichi Seki is a leading member of the open source program office in NEC Corporation, and is responsible for NEC’s open source strategy. He leads NEC’s developer teams who are actively contributing to open source communities, such as Kubernetes and OpenStack. He also helps encourage people in the NEC group of companies to join and contribute to open source communities. He handles intellectual property issues regarding open source software patents, and has been a technical committee member of the Open Invention Network since 2019.
Dan Williams
Intel
Dan Williams is a kernel developer in Intel’s Open Source Technology center. His primary role is enabling next generation storage technologies, like persistent memory. In his more than a decade-long history of contributing to the Linux kernel, he has also had the opportunity to work on embedded system-on-a-chip enabling, memory management, and other core functionality.
Jim Wright
Oracle
James (Jim) Wright is a well known software architect and attorney who has been working in and around open source for 20 years. Jim is the author of the Universal Permissive License and has been with Oracle since 2009, where he currently serves as Chief Architect, Open Source Policy, Strategy, Compliance, and Alliances.
Prior to his time at Oracle, Jim was in private practice at Sidley Austin, where he handled a wide variety of technology transactional matters as well as patent litigation. Jim is a graduate of Harvard Law School, and in the decade before starting legal practice he worked in engineering and management capacities at a variety of different IT enterprises. When not at work, Jim enjoys traveling with his family and his service dog, Arrow, building and riding his collection of wheeled contraptions, and making, tasting, and talking about espresso.
Jim Zemlin
Linux Foundation
Jim Zemlin’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 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, 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.
Jim Zemlin
Executive Director
Jim Zemlin’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 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, 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.
Stephanie Wigle
Chief Financial Officer
Stephanie is the Chief Financial Officer at the Linux Foundation, where she manages accounting, audit, treasury, and other financial functions for the organization and our hosted projects. Stephanie brings over fifteen years of finance experience to the Linux Foundation, including time at Deloitte, and in global advertising and technology startups.
Angela Brown
SVP and GM of Events
Angela Brown manages The Linux Foundation’s global conferences, with responsibilities including market research, attendee and sponsorship acquisition, and event marketing and production. She has been producing and marketing events of all types and sizes for over 15 years, primarily in the IT sector. Angela started her career with Red Herring (fka Dasar, Inc.) in 1994, quickly taking over responsibility for the planning of their global IT conferences and C-level summits. Before coming to The Linux Foundation in 2007, she also produced conferences and events at the Sheraton LA Harbor Hotel and the Pan Pacific San Francisco, as well as for OpenDoor Events.
Mike Dolan
SVP and GM of Projects
Michael Dolan is SVP and GM of Projects supporting open source projects, research, and legal programs at The Linux Foundation. He has set up and launched hundreds of open source and open standards projects covering technology segments including networking, cloud, blockchain, Internet of Things, AI/ML, security, storage, and embedded devices. Mike also runs open source legal programs for the Linux Foundation’s members’ legal counsel community which has led to collaborations on standards such as OpenChain and SPDX.
Prior to joining The Linux Foundation, he spent eight years at IBM in roles across systems, services, and software. He received an M.B.A. from Case Western Reserve University, a J.D. from Cleveland State University, and a B.S. in economics from John Carroll University. Mike is a member of the Ohio State Bar Association.
Clyde Seepersad
SVP & GM, LF Education
Clyde Seepersad is responsible for the education arm of the Linux Foundation. The goal of the team is to provide high-quality training and skills development to the open source community. Over the past decade Clyde has held senior leadership positions in the education space, most recently as head of operations at 360training.com and before that as a senior executive of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, a global leader in education.
Prior to his involvement in education, Clyde was a Principal at the Boston Consulting Group, a global strategic consultancy known for its cutting-edge thinking and value creation for clients. He started his career in the public sector, working within the Ministry of Finance in Trinidad and Tobago. He holds an MBA and a Masters in Economics from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
Hilary Carter
SVP Research and Communications
Hilary Carter oversees the development of decision-useful research projects and content programs that support open source as a paradigm for mass collaboration at scale. Together, the Research and Communications department broadens the understanding of the impact of open source software, open hardware, open standards, and open data for people, enterprises, governments, and society at large.
Hilary’s career began in financial services with experiences in corporate finance, research and analysis, and global private banking. Her career pivoted to digital technology, where she focused on mobile communications and digital media consulting. Before joining the Linux Foundation, Hilary led a global, syndicated research institute focused on blockchain technology.
She earned an MSc in Management from the London School of Economics.
Manish Dixit
SVP and GM of Product Engineering
Manish Dixit is the SVP and GM of Product Engineering at the Linux Foundation, with over 20 years of experience in leading product strategy and engineering initiatives. He has a proven track record in building and scaling products across consumer and enterprise markets, as well as in startups, mid-sized, and large companies. Manish is passionate about driving innovation, achieving product-market fit, and fostering sustainable open-source ecosystems. His leadership and expertise have significantly contributed to advancing technology adoption and excellence in the industry.
Gabriele Columbro
ED of FINOS, GM of Linux Foundation Europe
Gabriele is an open source leader and technologist at heart, having spent more than 10 years building thriving communities and delivering business value through open source. He thrives in working with open source communities to drive disruptive innovation, whether it’s for an early stage tech startup, a Fortune 500 firm, or a non profit organization.
Gabriele brings a wealth of expertise in executive and technical leadership, ranging from FinTech to enterprise collaboration, and from developer platforms to SaaS ARR business models. Previously Director of Product Management at Alfresco, Gabriele has now built the Symphony Software Foundation from the ground up, with the vision of creating a trusted arena for Wall Street to accelerate digital transformation, engaging in a new model of open source FinTech innovation. Gabriele is a PMC Member for the Apache Software Foundation and an advisor for Bankex.com. Based in San Francisco but originally from Italy, he’s a proud SSC Napoli supporter, a reggae music connoisseur and a South Park groupie.
Mike Woster
Chief Revenue Officer
Mike Woster is the Chief Revenue Officer of The Linux Foundation and was a founding executive team member. He joined the Foundation in 2008, when it had only a handful of employees.
Mike and his team have been the engine for growth and sustainability at The Linux Foundation. He has developed a unique strategy to expand the Foundation from a membership organization exclusively focused on the kernel to a high-growth business that provides strategic advice and key networking opportunities to businesses leveraging open source; delivers Linux and open source training and certification; hosts open source projects; and builds developer ecosystems for corporations and community developers. He maintains strong relationships with a vast network of technology thought leaders and C-suite executives at startups and Fortune 100s.
Mike developed and executed the organizational growth strategy and hired the executive team to scale and grow the business. He also built and operated the projects business, the training and certification business, the IT services business, oversaw finance and operations, and served as an officer of six legal entities.
Prior to joining The Linux Foundation, Mike started at Intel in 2002, when he was chosen for a highly selective management rotation program. He thrived at Intel, achieving rapid promotions and earning numerous performance awards. He rotated from assignments in Oregon, California, and Chicago, and spent a year as the Siemens Business Development Manager in Munich, Germany.
Mike earned his M.B.A. from Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management and graduated cum laude with a B.S. in computer science and honors engineering from Texas A&M University. He is an advisor and investor in multiple startup firms and previously served as a member of the Board of Directors for the Drupal Association.
Todd Moore
SVP, Community Operations
Todd Moore is the SVP of Community Operations for the Linux Foundation family of foundations. With roots back into the early days of open source and standards, he has been a leader in developing open source into what it is today. He has served as board chairperson for both the CNCF and OpenJS boards and as a member of others. With extensive experience at IBM in both hardware and software, he has collaborated across the industry to establish many of the leading open projects and communities that serve us all today.
Nirav Patel
Chief Technology Officer
Nirav is the Chief Technology Officer at the Linux Foundation, where he manages Product and IT functions for the organization. Nirav is a passionate technology leader who brings over fifteen of experience in Open Source, Cloud, Enterprise Architecture, FinTech, Healthcare, DevOps, and IoT experience to the Linux Foundation.
Nirav has a track record of taking great technology and turning it into a scalable, global, and most importantly marketable product. He holds an MBA and a Master’s in Computer Science from the University of North Alabama.
Priyanka Sharma
General Manager, CNCF
Priyanka was previously the director of Cloud Native Alliances at GitLab Inc., where she built the developer evangelism team that participates regularly in the cloud native community.
Priyanka also serves as an advisor at Heavybit Industries, an accelerator for developer products. Priyanka has contributed to several CNCF projects such as Jaeger and Vitess and was a founding team member of the OpenTracing standard. In addition, Priyanka is a leading speaker and subject matter expert on cloud native and observability and has spoken about Kubernetes, Prometheus, Jaeger, OpenTracing, Envoy, Vitess, SPIFFE/SPIRE, and more. She was a startup founder featured at TechCrunch Disrupt and started her career at Google.
Robin Ginn
Executive Director, OpenJS Foundation
Robin Ginn is the Executive Director of the OpenJS Foundation, the neutral home for open source JavaScript projects driving broad adoption and development of key JavaScript solutions and related technologies.
As Executive Director, Robin advances the Foundation’s mission to drive adoption and ensure sustainability in the JS and web development ecosystem.
Robin brings technology, strategic marketing and business development experience to the Foundation. Over the span of her career, Robin has led major initiatives advancing open source technologies, community development, and open standards.
Robin spent more than 10 years at Microsoft where she was at the forefront of the company’s shift to openness. She co-founded @OpenAtMicrosoft and was instrumental in Microsoft’s contribution and involvement in the Node.js Project. During her tenure at Microsoft, Robin led strategic business and marketing initiatives for Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc., Microsoft Azure, and Microsoft Healthcare in AI & Research. In addition, Robin was a driving force behind go-to-market strategies that introduced AI and machine learning projects commercially.
Prior to Microsoft, Robin held leadership roles at both Edelman and WE Communications and was instrumental in campaigns focused on technology policy, data privacy, corporate citizenship, and community engagement.
Robin earned her B.A. from Washington State University.
Arpit Joshipura
General Manager, Networking and Orchestration
Arpit Joshipura is an executive leader and open source software evangelist across carriers, cloud and enterprise IT – spanning networking, orchestrations, operating systems, security, AI, edge, hardware and silicon. He was recently voted among the Top 5 Movers and Shakers in the Telecom Industry. At the Linux Foundation, Arpit leads open source networking, orchestration & edge/IOT, including LF Networking projects (ONAP, OPNFV, ODL, FDIO, OvS, DPDK, OpenSwitch, Akraino/Edge/IOT, etc.) as well as major industry disruptions including VNFs to CNFs (Cloud Native Network functions), 5G, AI, etc.
Arpit brings 30 years of networking expertise and vision to The Linux Foundation, with both technical depth and business breadth. He has orchestrated and led major industry disruptions across enterprises, carriers, and cloud architectures, including IP, broadband, optical, mobile, routing, switching, L4-7, cloud, disaggregation, SDN/NFV, and open networking, and has been an early evangelist for open source. Arpit has served in CMO, VP, and Engineering roles within both startups and larger enterprises.
Omkhar Arasaratnam
GM, Open Source Security Foundation
Omkhar Arasaratnam is the General Manager of the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF). He is a veteran cybersecurity and technical risk management executive with more than 25 years of experience leading global organizations. Omkhar began his career as a strong supporter of open source software as a PPC64 maintainer for Gentoo and contributor to the Linux kernel, and that enthusiasm for OSS continues today. Before joining the OpenSSF, he led security organizations at financial and technology institutions, such as Google, JPMorgan Chase, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, TD Bank Group, and IBM. As a seasoned technology leader, he has revolutionized the effectiveness of secure software engineering, compliance, and cybersecurity controls. He is also an accomplished author and has led contributions to many international standards. Omkhar is also a NYU Cyber Fellow Advisory Council member and a Senior Fellow with the NYU Center for Cybersecurity.
Calista Redmond
CEO, RISC-V Foundation
Calista Redmond is the CEO of the RISC-V Foundation with a mission to expand and engage RISC-V stakeholders, compel industry adoption, and increase visibility and opportunity for RISC-V within and beyond the Foundation. Prior to the RISC-V Foundation, Calista held a variety of roles at IBM, including Vice President of IBM Z Ecosystem where she led strategic relationships across software vendors, system integrators, business partners, developer communities, and broader engagement across the industry. Focus areas included execution of commercialization strategies, technical and business support for partners, and matchmaker to opportunities across the IBM Z and LinuxOne community. Calista’s background includes building and leading strategic business models within IBM’s Systems Group through open source initiatives including OpenPOWER, OpenDaylight, and Open Mainframe Project. For OpenPOWER, Calista was a leader in drafting the strategy, cultivating the foundation of partners, and nurturing strategic relationships to grow the org from zero to 300+ members. While at IBM, she also drove numerous acquisition and divestiture missions, and several strategic alliances. Prior to IBM, she was an entrepreneur in four successful start-ups in the IT industry. Calista holds degrees from the University of Michigan and Northwestern University.
Chris Aniszczyk
CTO, CNCF
Chris Aniszczyk is an open source technologist with a passion for building a better world through open collaboration. He's currently a CTO at the Linux Foundation focused on developer experience and running the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). In a previous life, he created the Twitter open source program and led their open source efforts. Also, for many years he served on the Eclipse Foundation's Board of Directors representing the maintainer community and the Java Community Process (JCP) Executive Committee. Furthermore, he's a partner at Capital Factory where he focuses on mentoring, advising and investing in open source and infrastructure focused startups.
Dan Cauchy
Executive Director, AGL
Dan is the General Manager of Automotive at The Linux Foundation and the Executive Director of Automotive Grade Linux. He is responsible for the overall management and execution of the Automotive Grade Linux collaborative project, an industry effort to build an open source automotive reference platform backed by leading car manufacturers around the world. Dan has over 22 years of experience spanning the automotive, telecom, networking, and mobile business verticals. Prior to his current position, Dan was the Vice President and General Manager of MontaVista’s Automotive Business Unit (acquired by Mentor), responsible for P&L and worldwide execution of MontaVista’s automotive software strategy, sales, marketing, products, and services. During this period, Dan served on the Board of Directors of the GENIVI Alliance and was responsible for the creation of the GENIVI Compliance Program, a group that he chaired for its first three years, which led to the release of the GENIVI Specification, a widely adopted standard in the automotive industry. While at MontaVista, Dan previously held the position of VP of Marketing and BD, where he was responsible for the development and execution of MontaVista’s global marketing strategy, which led to an acquisition by Cavium. Based in Silicon Valley, Dan has extensive startup experience. He was the Director of Product Management at Atrica (acquired by Nokia-Siemens Networks), a carrier Ethernet equipment provider startup. Prior to Atrica, Dan was the Director of Architecture and Strategy at BlueLeaf Networks, a tunable laser optical networking startup (now Picarro). He also previously held senior management positions and engineering leadership positions at Cisco Systems, Newbridge Networks (acquired by Alcatel), and Nortel. Dan earned a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering (with a Computer Engineering major) from the University of Ottawa. He holds three patents in the areas of routing and networking, with several others pending.
Daniela Barbosa
GM, Blockchain Healthcare and Identity
Daniela Barbosa serves as General Manager Blockchain, Healthcare and Identity at the Linux Foundation and as Executive Director of Hyperledger Foundation with overall strategic and operational responsibility for staff, programs, expansion and execution of Hyperledger’s mission. Daniela has more than 20 years of enterprise technology experience, including serving for four years as Hyperledger Foundation’s Vice President of Worldwide Alliances with responsibility for the member community as well as broader industry and business community outreach and overall network growth. She started her career at Dow Jones where she worked with the top global brands across various sectors, including finance, consumer and energy, to architect and deliver enterprise systems, ontologies and semantic web solutions. In the early 2000s, Daniela became involved in the early web 2.0 community helping to advance the concept of digital identity and data portability as the pathway for people to reuse their data across interoperable applications.
Alex Thornton
Executive Director, LF Energy
Alex Thornton currently serves as Executive Director of the LF Energy Foundation, where he works to cultivate open source technology and standards for rapid energy system decarbonization. Alex has nearly two decades of experience in applying technology for energy and climate impact. He previously held a diverse set of roles across the US and Europe in startups and public companies. Prior to LF Energy, Alex served in leadership positions at energy and climate innovators including Cleartrace, Sunrun, Locus Energy, and Imperfect Foods, as well as advisory roles with other climate tech companies. Before that, Alex consulted on energy policy for the European Commission and performed due diligence on utility-scale solar projects throughout the world. Alex brings his full breadth of experience to bear at LF Energy to accelerate the energy transition.
Riyaz Hyder Mohiyuddeen
VP, Growth Marketing
Riyaz Hyder Mohiyuddeen is the Vice President of Growth Marketing at The Linux Foundation. A recognized thought leader and pioneer in product-led growth, Riyaz has transformed marketing strategies at leading B2B SaaS companies like Nutanix, SingleStore, and Minjar. With extensive experience in brand and marketing management at Samsung, HP, and ING, he brings a wealth of knowledge to his role. An entrepreneur at heart, Riyaz co-founded Mobisy Technologies, driving it to become a top mobile startup. He excels in crafting GTM strategies, leading high-performing teams, and leveraging digital transformation to ensure substantial business impacts.
Kate Stewart
VP, Dependable Embedded Systems
Kate Stewart works with the safety, security and license compliance communities to advance the adoption of best practices into embedded open source projects.
Kate was one of the founders of SPDX, and is currently the specification coordinator. She is also the co-lead for the NTIA SBOM formats and tooling working group. Since joining The Linux Foundation, she has launched the ELISA and Zephyr Projects among others, as well as supporting other embedded projects.
With over 30 years of experience in the software industry, she has held a variety of roles and worked as a developer in Canada, Australia, and the US and for the last 20 years has managed software development teams in the US, Canada, UK, India, and China. She received her Master’s in computer science from University of Waterloo and Bachelor’s of computer science (co-op program) from the University of Manitoba.
Heather Kirksey
VP, Community & Ecosystem Development
Heather Kirksey works with the community to advance the adoption and implementation of open source NFV platforms.
Before joining The Linux Foundation, she led strategic technology alliances for MongoDB. Earlier in her career she held various leadership positions in the telecom industry, including running a partner program for CPE, doing solutions marketing for the IP division at Alcatel-Lucent, and working in business development and numerous standards activities.
While at Broadband Forum she helped create and launch TR-069; served as BroadbandHome Technical Working Group Chair; served on the Board; and oversaw collaborative activities with ATIS, 3GPP, OSGi, ITU-T, OMA, IETF, Small Cell Forum, UPnP Forum, Home Gateway Initiative, and other groups.
Heather received her master’s degree in English literature from the University of Texas, Austin.
Jory Burson
VP, Standards
Jory Burson is the VP of Standards for the Linux Foundation, where she helps projects identify opportunities for standardization and collaborate on specifications. She is an open source developer-turned-standards practitioner, who is passionate about bringing the best of open source and standards-making best practices to bear in open projects. With over a decade of experience in the field, Jory has worked with several private and non-profit organizations including OASIS Open, W3C, Ecma International, and the web standards consultancy Bocoup, to name a few. She is known for her expertise in web standards, open source governance, and community management.
Jory has played a role in shaping the open source ecosystem through her work with critical open source projects such as jQuery, Node.js, and MDN Content. Jory is a passionate advocate for open source software, diversity, and inclusion in the tech industry.
Stephen Hendrick
VP of Research
Steve Hendrick is VP of Linux Foundation Research. He has expertise in developing content and services to support product development, product positioning, marketing, business strategy, and messaging. Steve is a subject matter expert in application development and deployment topics, including DevOps, application management, application platforms, and middleware. He has authored comprehensive primary research publications and provided advice and support for some of the world’s most prominent software vendors and Fortune 100 enterprises.
Before joining The Linux Foundation, Steve was a Research Director and Principal Investigator at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA). Steve acquired his experience in application development at Chase Manhattan Bank, Interactive Data Corp, Dynamics Associates, and Charles River Associates.
Steve received a B.A. in economics from Hartwick College and an M.B.A. from Boston University.
Sumer Johal
Executive Director, AgStack
Sumer Johal is a global leader with over 25 years of professional experience in building and managing digital-first organizations across multiple industries and global geographies.
Mr. Johal has spent the most recent decade of his professional career addressing systemic challenges in global development, environmental stewardship and sustainability, food security, rural livelihoods and digital access equity - within agri- and rural-centric ecosystems. He currently serves as the Executive Director of AgStack - a project of The Linux Foundation (non-profit) where he leads the development of the world’s first digital infrastructure for food and agriculture. He is part of the The Linux Foundation Leadership Team addressing global sustainability goals (SDGs) through open-source technology and data.
Mr. Johal grew up in an agriculture family in Northern India (Punjab) and immigrated to the US as a teenager. He earned a BS and MS in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a minor in economics.
Joanna Lee
VP of Strategic Programs & Legal
As the Vice President of Strategic Programs & Legal at the Linux Foundation and CNCF, Joanna Lee leads policy initiatives, legal programs, and strategic programs that support the health and evolution of open source ecosystems. In addition, Joanna develops and oversees programs related to culture, governance, risk management, and code of conduct incident response for both the Linux Foundation and its affiliated project communities.
Before joining the Linux Foundation, Joanna acted as a legal and strategic advisor to open source software foundations, standard-setting organizations, and technology start-ups, as well as investors. Joanna holds a J.D. from Cornell Law School and a B.S. in Economics and Policy & Management from Carnegie Mellon University.
Robert Reeves
VP of Strategic Partnerships
Robert Reeves is the VP of Strategic Partnerships for the Linux Foundation family of foundations. An early DevOps adopter and evangelist, he founded two successful development tool startups. Phurnace, acquired by BMC Software, was an application release solution for Java Enterprise applications. Liquibase is an open-source DevOps solution for databases. Robert brings decades of experience in developer tooling and partnership to help deliver the best developer experience to project contributors, maintainers, and project leaders. Robert is as passionate about open-source developers as he is about comic books, punk rock, and backpacking. A US Army veteran, Robert holds an Economics degree from the University of Texas at Austin and an MS degree in Science and Technology Commercialization from the McCombs School of Business. He lives in Austin, Texas with his partner, Maia, and son, Rex.
Andy Updegrove
Legal Counsel
Andy Updegrove is a partner and founder of Gesmer Updegrove LLP, a Boston-based technology law firm, and has represented and helped structure more than 135 worldwide standard-setting, open source, promotional, and advocacy consortia over the past 25 years. He has also represented hundreds of both emerging and established technology companies, and is the founder and editor of the popular website http://www.consortiuminfo.org and the widely read Standards Blog.
Karen Copenhaver
Strategic Advisor
Karen Copenhaver is a strategic advisor to the Linux Foundation. She was previously a partner in Choate, Hall & Stewart LLP ‘s Business & Technology practice, focusing on technology transfer and licensing of intellectual property, with a specific emphasis on open source business models.
Greg Kroah-Hartman
Fellow
Greg Kroah-Hartman is among a distinguished group of software developers who maintain Linux at the kernel level. In his role as a Linux Foundation Fellow, he continues his work as the maintainer for the Linux stable kernel branch and a variety of subsystems while working in a fully neutral environment. He also works closely with Linux Foundation members and projects, and on key initiatives to advance Linux.
Greg created and maintains the Linux Driver Project. He is also currently the maintainer for the Linux stable kernel branch and a variety of different subsystems that include USB, staging, driver core, tty, and sysfs, among others. Most recently, he was a Fellow at SUSE.
Greg is an adviser to Oregon State University’s Open Source Lab and a member of The Linux Foundation’s Technical Advisory Board. He has delivered a variety of keynote addresses at developer and industry events, and has authored two books covering Linux device drivers and Linux kernel development.
Linus Torvalds
Fellow
Linus Torvalds was born on December 28, 1969 in Helsinki, Finland. He enrolled at the University of Helsinki in 1988, graduating with a master’s degree in computer science. His M.Sc. thesis was titled “Linux: A Portable Operating System” and was the genesis for what would become the most important collaborative software project in history.
In August 1991, Linus announced that he was developing the Linux kernel, proclaiming, “it won’t be big and professional.” In spite of his humble proclamation, Linux has become the world’s most pervasive operating system. Today the Linux kernel forms the basis of the Linux operating system and has permeated almost every industry and form factor.
In 2005, citing a lack of free and open source version control tools that met his needs for performance and scale, Linus created Git in only 10 days. Today Git is widely used in software development and for other version-control tasks such as configuration management.
In 2000, Linus was listed by Time magazine as #17 in the Time 100: Most Important People of the Century. Again, in 2004, Time named him one of the Most Influential People in the world. He was honored in 2008 with the Millennium Technology Prize by the Technology Academy Finland, “in recognition of his creation of a new open source operating system for computers leading to the widely used Linux kernel.” He is also the recipient of the 2014 IEEE Computer Society Computer Pioneer Award. A true tech titan, he was admitted to the Computer History Museum Hall of Fellows, joining the ranks of the tech elite including Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, Tim Berners-Lee, Gordon Moore, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Steve Wozniak, and others.
Linus remains the ultimate authority on the new code incorporated into the standard Linux kernel.
Richard Purdie
Fellow
Richard Purdie is a developer and maintainer of the OpenEmbedded software project, and the architect and maintainer of the Yocto Project and Poky Build System. Most recently he was an Embedded Linux Architect for Intel’s Open Source Technology Center.
From 2005 to 2008, he was a software engineer at OpenedHand, where he worked with a variety of other open source projects such as Clutter, X server, Zaurus, and Oprofile. He has also made numerous contributions to the Linux kernel, including as maintainer of the backlight and LED subsystems.
Richard received his MSci in physics from University of Durham.
Shuah Khan
Fellow
Shuah Khan is a Linux Fellow at The Linux Foundation. She is an experienced Linux Kernel developer, maintainer, and contributor. She maintains Kernel Selftest framework, USB over IP driver, and cpupower. She is an active contributor to Linux media subsystem. She has contributed to IOMMU, and DMA areas. In addition, she is helping with stable release kernel testing. She publishes blogs on Linux Kernel topics on her blog site at http://www.gonehiking.org/ShuahLinuxBlogs/.
She has presented at several Linux conferences and Linux Kernel Developer Keynote Panels. She served on the Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board. She authored Linux Kernel Testing and Debugging paper published on the Linux Journal and wrote Linux Journal kernel news articles.
Thomas Gleixner
Fellow
Thomas Gleixner is a long-time Linux kernel hacker with an embedded background and a strong affinity to impossible missions.
Till Kamppeter
Fellow
Till Kamppeter holds a Ph.D. in theoretical physics and has worked with printing under Linux and UNIX since mid-2000, when he got invited to work as a developer at MandrakeSoft (now Mandriva) in Paris. There he did the packaging of the printing-related software for the distribution, and since 2001 he was leader of the linuxprinting.org project. He also participated in the work of the OpenPrinting workgroup. In 2006, he was invited to work for the Free Standards Group (now The Linux Foundation), merging linuxprinting.org into OpenPrinting and leading the OpenPrinting project full time.
With OpenPrinting, he leads the development of new printing architectures, technologies, printing infrastructure, and interface standards for Linux and UNIX-style operating systems. For this he is in contact with leading printer manufacturers, free software projects, and distribution vendors.
Yoshiya Eto
Fellow
Yoshiya Eto is a Vice President and General Manager at Fujitsu and a Linux Foundation Fellow. He also served as Fujitsu’s representative to The Linux Foundation Board of Directors.
He has been involved in operating systems at the company, including development and management of Fujitsu’s proprietary operating systems and Linux. For more than 10 years, he led Linux community engineers in Fujitsu in working with the Linux community. Under his leadership, his team was one of the largest contributors to the Linux kernel and continuously contributed patches to improve features and the stability of Linux for enterprise use.
In addition, he led a core engineering team for enterprise customer support through collaboration with distributors and others in the community. The team provides highly reliable customer support to mission-critical customers.
Christian Brauner
Microsoft
Christian Brauner is a senior software engineer at Microsoft. He works mostly upstream on the Linux kernel maintaining various bits and pieces with a focus on security and containers.
Jonathan Corbet
LWN.net
Jonathan got his first look at the BSD Unix source back in 1981, when an instructor at the University of Colorado let him “fix” the paging algorithm. He has been digging around inside every system he could get his hands on ever since, working on drivers for VAX, Sun, Ardent, and x86 systems on the way. He got his first Linux system in 1993, and has never looked back. Jon is the Co-founder and Executive Editor of Linux Weekly News.
Dan Williams
Intel
Dan Williams is a kernel developer in Intel’s Open Source Technology center. His primary role is enabling next generation storage technologies, like persistent memory. In his more than a decade-long history of contributing to the Linux kernel, he has also had the opportunity to work on embedded system-on-a-chip enabling, memory management, and other core functionality.
Greg Kroah-Hartman
Fellow
Greg Kroah-Hartman is among a distinguished group of software developers who maintain Linux at the kernel level. In his role as a Linux Foundation Fellow, he continues his work as the maintainer for the Linux stable kernel branch and a variety of subsystems while working in a fully neutral environment. He also works closely with Linux Foundation members and projects, and on key initiatives to advance Linux.
Greg created and maintains the Linux Driver Project. He is also currently the maintainer for the Linux stable kernel branch and a variety of different subsystems that include USB, staging, driver core, tty, and sysfs, among others. Most recently, he was a Fellow at SUSE.
Greg is an adviser to Oregon State University’s Open Source Lab and a member of The Linux Foundation’s Technical Advisory Board. He has delivered a variety of keynote addresses at developer and industry events, and has authored two books covering Linux device drivers and Linux kernel development.
Kees Cook
Kees Cook has been working with Free Software since 1994, has been a Debian Developer since 2007, and has been a member of the Linux Kernel Technical Advisory Board since 2019. He is currently employed as a Linux kernel security engineer by Google, focusing on upstream kernel security defenses.
From 2006 through 2011 he worked for Canonical as the Ubuntu Security Team’s Tech Lead. Before that, he worked as the lead sysadmin at OSDL, before it was the Linux Foundation. He has written various utilities including GOPchop and Sendpage, and contributes randomly to other projects including fun chunks of code in OpenSSH, Inkscape, Wine, MPlayer, and Wireshark.
Laura Abbott
Oxide Computer
Laura Abbott thinks kernels are really cool, even when they crash. She has previously worked at Qualcomm and Red Hat working on everything from low level memory management to maintaining the Fedora kernels. She is currently an engineer at Oxide Computer.
Sasha Levin
Sasha maintains the stable/LTS kernel trees and liblockdep. He is currently employed by Google where he maintains the internal kernel tree for various products, maintain the upstream Hyper-V subsystem, support developers making the switch from Windows to Linux, and advise on various technical topics not directly related to the kernel.
Steven Rostedt
Steven Rostedt started working on the Linux kernel in 1998, when he was working on his Master’s in computer science. Since then, he has focused on making Linux kernel development into a career. His upstream work includes being one of the first main developers of the PREEMPT_RT patch set. His focus has been on making the Linux kernel into a more deterministic operating system, and he helps maintain the real-time part of the scheduler. Steven currently maintains the stable releases of the PREEMPT_RT patch set.
Steven also brought the PREEMPT_RT patch’s latency tracer into the kernel, using ideas from his own internal tracer, the end result became what is now called “ftrace.” Steven continues to be the main developer and maintainer of the tracing code of the Linux kernel.
Ted Ts'o
Ted Ts’o graduated from MIT with a degree in computer science, after which he worked in MIT’s Information Systems department. During this time he was project leader of the Kerberos V5 team.
In 1994, Ted created the /dev/random Linux device node and the corresponding kernel driver, which was the first Linux kernel interface that provided high-quality cryptographic random numbers to user programs.
After MIT, Ted went to work for VA Linux Systems for two years. In 2001, he joined IBM, where he worked on improvements in the Linux kernel’s performance and scalability. After working on the real-time kernel at IBM, he joined The Linux Foundation for a two-year fellowship. Initially he served as Chief Platform Strategist before becoming Chief Technology Officer in 2008. Ted also served as Treasurer for USENIX until 2008, and has chaired the annual Linux Kernel Summit.
He is a Debian developer and has maintained several packages, mostly filesystem-related, including e2fsprogs, since 2003. He was a member of the Security Area Directorate for the Internet Engineering Task Force, and was one of the chairs for the IPsec working group. He was one of the founding board members for the Free Standards Group.
In 2010 Ted moved to Google.