Ambassadors

Hey, This is Abhinav from India. He is an open source enthusiast who loves to share his learnings with the community through blogs/ talks. He is also an active maintainer and contributor to open source project called Devtron (https://github.com/devtron-labs/devtron). He is passionate about exploring and working with multiple tools such as ArgoCD, Grafana, Helm, Buildpacks, Prometheus, Kubernetes, Docker, etc. When he’s not working, he must be planning his next adventure trip to the mountains. “Kubernetes Head with a Travelling Soul”

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Abhinav is super excited to be a CNCF Ambassador because he loves to meet and greet like-minded folks around the community and being associated with CNCF, it will open a lot of door for him. Additionally, it will help Abhinav to reach a wider number of audience that would help him to educate/ aware more number of people about Cloud Native ecosystem and tools & technologies used in it.

DevOps & Cloud Engineer, Public Speaker, Tech Mentor, Lead Organizer CNCG Jaipur, OpenSource & Community Contributor, AWS Community Builder, AWS Community Leader, 1 x (AWS, GCP, Azure), 6 x RedHat, CKA, KCNA certified.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: It’s been more than three years, I am being part of CNCF programs actively contributing via blogs, and public speaking on different open source DevOps/Cloud technologies at virtual and in-person events, I want to expand my learning and contribution with a wide area of peoples and uplift them with like-minded folks I can grow at the same time can share & help with my ideas to build better community bonding & culture.

Adriana Villela is a Sr. Developer Advocate at Lightstep. She helps companies achieve reliability greatness through Observability, SRE, & DevOps practices. Before Lightstep, she managed a Platform Engineering team & an Observability Practices team at Tucows. Adriana has worked at various large-scale enterprises, as an individual contributor and leader, including Bank of Montreal, Ceridian, and Accenture. Adriana has a popular technical blog on Medium (https://adri-v.medium.com), is co-host of the On-Call Me Maybe Podcast (oncallmemaybe.com), and is a HashiCorp Ambassador.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Having spent a chunk of my time in the last 10 months working with OpenTelemetry, I’m excited to use my ambassadorship to amplify my voice to promote and generate excitement about OpenTelemetry to the tech community at large. At the same time, I love digging into other CNCF projects like Kubernetes and ArgoCD, and I am looking forward to using my voice to help spread knowledge and excitement for those projects as well!

Community leader and CNCF ambassador, Alessandro has spent the last few years building cloud native infrastructures for Microsoft customers, animating the Dutch community, and training others to pass the CKx exams. He has passion for all things cloud native, he’s been around open source for 25 years and recently founded a startup that offers innovative Namespaces-as-a-service for developers. Twitter handle: @bongo

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Because I was before and it was awesome!

I am an engineering director for Kubernetes at Canonical. I participate in opensource as a Governing board member for Keptn and a founder of the Open Feature project. When I fancy taking to the camera I also run a youtube channel for advocating learning for senior engineers https://www.youtube.com/c/CloudNativeSkunkworks/featured

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I believe the ambassador programme is perfectly timed to come out of hibernation as people yearn for more day-to-day information on the CNCF and where to get started. I’ve been here a while now and I am happy to help be that guide on their cloud-native journey.

Ananda Dwi Rahmawati is a Sr. Cloud Infrastructure Engineer, specializing in system integration between cloud infrastructure, CI/CD workflows, and application modernization. She is a regular technical speaker who delivers presentations using real-world case studies at several local community meetups and conferences, such as Kubernetes and OpenInfra Days Indonesia, GNOME Asia Summit, LibreOffice Conference, and many more.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Becoming an ambassador is such a huge dream. I love to open-source and cloud-native projects, willing do more contributions and spread the spirit of open-source enthusiasts to others.

I am a freelance cloud-native engineer and trainer based in Amsterdam. When I am not coding, I enjoy helping the community by organizing meetups, Kubernetes community days, and workshops on cloud technologies.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Ambassadors are a point of reference in the cloud native community and help many initiatives come to life. I want to empower talented individuals to realize their ambitions and help the CNCF to reach a wider community through events, meetups, and mentoring. I want to make a difference by empowering others.

Been working in software since 1998 and from the early days was drawn to performance engineering, observability and more recently on DevOps, SRE, Platform Engineering. I am an active contributor to the CNCF project Keptn, I am a podcaster, I create YouTube tutorials and occasionally blog as well! Besides IT I am passionate about salsa dancing 🙂

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: The success of any community depends on the people that actively drive community activities (bringing people together, educating, making them feel comfortable ..) and the members of the community that then want to join, grow and eventually contribute back to that community. I am excited to get the chance to help grow the community with my goal to inspire many others to do the same

Angel Ramirez is a Kubernetes Certified Administrator (CKA) and curator of the Kubernetes CKA exam, with expertise in cloud computing, infrastructure, cloud and software architecture, DevOps, security, team building, leadership, and community building. With over a decade of experience in the industry, Angel is a skilled practitioner and evangelist of cloud native technologies. Angel has founded the Hispanic Foundation of Cloud Native, which aims to empower the Spanish-speaking community to adopt cloud native technologies, and currently runs two Kubernetes community chapters with over 1500 members, making him a valuable asset and true Kubernetes Ambassador. https://www.youtube.com/@fhcn https://community.cncf.io/kcd-colombia/ https://community.cncf.io/medellin/ https://community.cncf.io/south-florida/ https://www.meetup.com/lahoradekubernetes/ https://www.meetup.com/kubernetes-and-cloud-native-south-florida/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVCT1t69BF4&list=PLKR8WO9E9BlM_22CmbvsiBlWsXQK9l9R5

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: As the Kubernetes Ambassador, I am particularly excited to help the LATAM and Hispanic communities learn and adopt Cloud Native and Kubernetes. Cloud native technologies have the power to transform businesses and individuals alike, and I am passionate about sharing this potential with as many people as possible. By empowering the community to embrace these technologies, we can create a more equitable and prosperous future for everyone. I am honored to have this opportunity to make a difference in the lives of so many people.

I’m contributor and maintainer of KubeArmor (A CNCF runtime security project). I’m interested in Kubernetes Security. You can read my blogs here https://kranurag.dev

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I’m excited to be a CNCF ambassador because I’ll try to bring and educate more people towards CNCF ecosystem. CNCF is one of the most welcoming community. I also want to share my knowledge when it comes to Kubernetes and other CNCF projects to new peoples who’re getting started. Finally, I would love to meet and connect with fellow CNCF ambassadors.

Ayrat (Archy) is a CNCF Ambassador, Cloud Native Tech Professor at Mcgill University and Cloud Native Architect at Google Cloud. As a CNCF Ambassador he has an opportunity to educate people and share knowledge about benefits of Cloud Native ecosystem via CNCF and Kubernetes Meetups, workshops or by helping customers to build modern cloud native applications that can run seamlessly on-prem or any cloud provider. Archy is passionate about community, he is a Founder and lead organizer of Canadian CNCF Meetups (Virtual, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec, Waterloo, Halifax) and frequent speaker GDG, CNCF Meetups and CNCF related conferences. He is an organizer of Canadian Kubernetes Community Days (KCDs), Cloud Native Days Canada 2019 and GDG Cloud & AI DevFest 2019.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: To be part of amazing team of Ambassadors provides you opportunity to learn from other experts and meet new friends across the world who is passionate about same technology. Being Ambassador also gives you a life time opportunity to meet and learn with Cloud Native Community at Kubecons. Give back to community by organizing K8s Meetups, KCDs and sharing the knowledge with wider community.

I’m a tester turned developer advocate. I work on & talk about Cloud native, Kubernetes & DevOps. I also create content – blog posts, Twitter threads – & host Twitter spaces. In addition, I’m one of the organiser of CNCF Hyderabad and strongly believe in collaborative learning and growth. When I am not working, I’m a food & travel blogger & love exploring eateries & going on road trips. You can find me at @TheTechMaharaj on Twitter.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I am absolutely stoked to be a CNCF ambassador! Being a part of this community means I get to geek out with a group of like-minded individuals who are passionate about Cloud native technologies, Kubernetes, and DevOps. It’s an opportunity to keep learning and growing, while also sharing my knowledge and enthusiasm with people in Hyderabad. I’m excited to dive headfirst into the latest trends and developments, all while having a blast! I can’t wait to host fun events, share cool content, and help spread the word about CNCF and related technologies. Overall, this is not just a chance to contribute to a thriving ecosystem, but to also make connections, learn new things, and have a ton of fun along the way!

Aurélie is a DevRel at OVHcloud. She is a GDE (Google Developer Expert) for Cloud technologies, Docker Captain, CNCF Ambassador & GitPod Hero. Conferences and meetups organizer since 2016. She is a technical writer, a book author & reviewer. She is also a sketchnoter and a speaker at international conferences. She created a new visual way for people to learn and understand Cloud technologies: “Understanding Kubernetes/Istio/Docker in a visual way” in sketchnotes, videos and visual technical books. Blog: https://dev.to/aurelievache/ Conferences: https://noti.st/aurelievache YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/AurelieVache Books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Aur%C3%A9lie-Vache/author/B09WHB5YR6 Website: http://scraly.com/

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I have been a passionate and advocate of Cloud Native, especially CNCF technologies, for many years and I am very happy to be its ambassador. It’s an opportunity for me to share and spread knowledge, contribute to native cloud technologies and meet the community.

Batuhan Apaydın a.k.a. developer-guy has been very active in the Software Supply Chain Security space. He is eager to learn more about it in all aspects because he knows this topic will become one of the utmost critical topics that everybody has to be concerned about. Towards that direction, he won the “Best Sigstore Evangelist” award and wrote a blog post about it to encourage to the next one and took an active role in the first-ever SigstoreCon by being one of the Program Committee members of the event and created a Twitter Community about Software Supply Chain Security and that community is now about 500+ people joined. He is also selected as Docker Captain Program 2023. In addition to that he is also a CDF (Continuous Delivery Foundation) Ambassador 2023. He also tries to be active in Turkey by organizing in-person, and virtual meetups, and workshops. He is the organizer of two important organizations in Turkey named DevOpsTr, CNCF Istanbul Chapter, and Cloud Native Turkiye. He is also one of the organizers of the KCD Turkey. He is also an active contributor to several CNCF projects including Ko, Flux, and Kyverno. He also enjoys writing technical blog posts and wrote 10+ blog posts and all of which are published on important official websites including Kyverno, CD Foundation, Flux, Sigstore, etc. • https://cd.foundation/blog/2022/10/18/tekton-chains/ • https://fluxcd.io/blog/2022/10/prove-the-authenticity-of-oci-artifacts/ • https://fluxcd.io/blog/2022/08/manage-kyverno-policies-as-ocirepositories/ • https://fluxcd.io/blog/2022/11/verify-the-integrity-of-the-helm-charts-stored-as-oci-artifacts-before-reconciling-them-with-flux/ • https://kubesimplify.com/the-secret-gems-behind-building-container-images-enter-buildkit-and-docker-buildx • https://blog.kubesimplify.com/getting-started-with-ko-a-fast-container-image-builder-for-your-go-applications • https://nirmata.com/securing_base_images/ • https://blog.sigstore.dev/how-to-verify-container-images-with-kyverno-using-kms-cosign-and-workload-identity-1e07d2b85061

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: First of all, I’m the first person from Turkey who has been selected as a CNCF Ambassador which is super great for me because I have the energy to spread all my knowledge with other people and I do really like to collaborate with people by organizing in-person, virtual meetups. I thought that I can waste my time and energy by becoming a CNCF Ambassador still continue organizing meetups and sharing knowledge because Turkiye has great potential of using CNCF projects to solve problems.

Bob is a Program Manager at the Google Open Source Programs Office with a focus on Cloud Native computing. He serves the Kubernetes project as a Steering Committee member and chair of the Contributor Experience Special Interest Group and has been involved in many other cross-cutting areas of the project. Bob comes from an academic background, spending 15 years at the University of Michigan with a later focus on computational research. He is passionate about Academic Outreach, and is an outspoken advocate of Open Source, Open Science and pets of the furry 4 legged variety.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Just happy to be a part of the new program and help other ambassadors 🙂

For 25 years, I’ve built and operated distributed systems and helped over a million people learn dev and ops topics. I’m also a Docker Captain and the creator of the wildly popular Docker & Kubernetes Mastery series on Udemy. I provide DevOps-style consulting, workshops, a popular DevOps Discord server, a container-focused YouTube channel, and a podcast. I basically spend my days helping people and giving high fives.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I think DevOps culture and container tech have changed the IT Pro and Developer world forever! For over eight years, I’ve been a megaphone for container tech and love teaching cloud native DevOps topics. The CNCF community has been a great experience for me both as a teacher and a learner, and I want to make sure it’s great for many years to come.

Carlos Santana is a Senior Specialist Solutions Architect at AWS leading Container solutions in the Worldwide Application Modernization GTM team. He is experienced in distributed application architecture, emerging technologies, open source, serverless, gitops, devops. He is a contributor to CNCF projects such as Kubernetes and Knative. Find him on Twitter @csantanapr or his Kubernetes Bookclub https://santana.dev

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I’m excited to work with the CNCF, and be able to help the CNCF to improve on how it works and get perceive by the community of contributors and consumer of cloud native tech. I’m excited to meet new folks and be able to collaborate on projects on enablement of projects such as Kubernetes.

Chamod Shehanka Perera serves as a Software Engineer and is a passionate advocate for open source and cloud-native technologies. He has a keen interest in delivering tech talks on subjects like open source and cloud technologies. Notably, he has taken on leadership roles for KCD Sri Lanka 2022 and KCD Sri Lanka 2023, alongside his dedicated team. Presently, he leads various communities, including Kubernetes Sri Lanka, GDG Sri Lanka, and GitHub Community Sri Lanka, while he’s also fully experienced on building cloud native CI/CD platform when worked at WSO2. He shares his insights and experiences related to software development on his blog, accessible at https://chamodshehanka.medium.com. Furthermore, he has successfully implemented a solution for Database Scaling on Kubernetes as part of his undergraduate research, which has been published as a paper (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9671185). In his leisure time, Chamod Shehanka Perera is an avid practitioner of karate, holding a 2nd-degree black belt, and enjoys spending time at the gym and surfing on weekends.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I am excited to be an ambassador because it allows me to continue what I’m doing, giving back to the community and contributing to CNCF projects. Additionally, the role offers the opportunity to network with new people, fostering connections with like-minded individuals. As an ambassador, I look forward to sharing knowledge and ideas, enabling us all to stay updated on the latest developments in this rapidly-evolving field.

Daniel Oh is Java Champion and Senior Principal Developer Advocate at Red Hat. He works to evangelize building cloud-native microservices and serverless functions with cloud-native runtimes to developers. He also continues to contribute to various open-source cloud projects and ecosystems as a Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) ambassador for accelerating DevOps adoption in enterprises. Daniel also speaks at technical seminars, workshops, and meetups to elaborate on new emerging technologies for enterprise developers, SREs, platform engineers, and DevOps teams.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: It will give me more opportunities to meet more technical folks who want to adopt/learn new cloud-native technologies and tools. Also, the ambassador makes me a more proactive person to evangelize non-tech people in terms of how/why they move forward to the cloud.

Di Xu is passionate about open source projects and get involved in. He is a top-60 code contributor in Kubernetes community and founds CNCF Sandbox project Clusternet. He is also an avid speaker and has spoken many times at open source conferences and meetups, including KubeCon, Open Source Summit, etc. Nowadays he is specialized in cloud native, Kubernetes and infrastructure.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I’ve been an active member of the Kubernetes community since 2016. I am eager to become a CNCF Ambassador to give back to the open source community and help drive cloud native adoption. My practical experience with CNCF technologies can provide valuable insights to users. As an ambassador, I look forward to mentoring new contributors, staying connected to the latest developments, speaking at events, creating tutorials, and connecting with the cloud native community. This role aligns well with my passion for open source software and interest in emerging cloud native technologies. I am excited by the opportunity to contribute meaningfully as an ambassador, share my knowledge with others and help advance the CNCF ecosystem.

I am a passionate technologist with a focus on cloud-native technologies, particularly Kubernetes. As a co-organizer of Cloud Native Lithuania Meetup, I have helped to build a strong community of like-minded professionals where everyone is sharing their own experience. In addition to my meetup involvement, I am a speaker at technology conferences and currently work as an SRE at Vinted, where I bring my expertise in Kubernetes to help ensure the reliability and scalability of our systems.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I’m excited to be an ambassador because it enables me to connect with like-minded other ambassadors, share our knowledges and expertise and will help to educate and promote cloud-native technologies to a wider audience. The role also provides access to exclusive events and resources, as well as opportunities for professional growth and career development. Overall, being a Cloud Native Foundation Ambassador is a great way to give back to the community!

Emin is working as a Solutions Architect and has undertaken tasks such as producing solutions related to Kubernetes, Cloud technologies and Cloud Native Transformation in general, and transferring best practices about these areas. He is part of the AWS Community Builder Program within the Containers category and he is part of the HashiCorp Ambassador Program within the Open Source community. He is part of the organiser team of the official CNCF Istanbul Community Chapter (https://community.cncf.io/istanbul/). He publishes blog posts from his personal Medium page (https://medium.com/@eminalemdar) and also participates in Open Source and Cloud Native related conferences and delivers talks about these technologies. He is in the organiser team of Kubernetes Community Days Turkiye conference.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Community activities have always been my biggest motivation throughout my career. Helping people and learning from the people by participating in community activities is extremely important for me. Cloud Native Community is really one of a kind and being part of this community is really like a dream coming true for me.

Eric is Chronosphere’s Director Evangelism. He’s renowned in the development community as a speaker, lecturer, author and baseball expert. His current role allows him to help the world understand the challenges they are facing with cloud native observability. He brings a unique perspective to the stage with a professional life dedicated to sharing his deep expertise of open source technologies and organizations. Follow on https://www.schabell.org.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I’m excited to officially have the title of ambassador as I’ve been actively promoting a lot of the work they do for over a decade now.

Faseela is a cloud-native developer, maintainer and steering committee member at Istio Service Mesh. She has served as the Program Chair for the Istio Meetups in 2023 including the IstioDays co-located with KubeCon Europe and NorthAmerica. She regularly contributes to the Istio blogs, helping all the latest news about Istio reach users and contributors worldwide.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Having done the work of an ambassador for Istio for several years now, I look forward to continuing this work officially now, making use of the support CNCF provides. I would love to provide more support for the women in cloud native community with this new opportunity I am provided with.

Fog Dong, a maintainer of KubeVela, and a senior engineer at Alibaba Cloud. She has been actively involved in the open source community, particularly in the cloud native DevOps field. Fog is now responsible for building large scale application workflow for Serverless Application Engine Product in Alibaba, while she’s also fully experienced on building cloud native CI/CD platform when worked at Bytedance.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: As an Ambassador of CNCF, I am excited to have the opportunity to promote and educate people about cloud-native technologies, which are shaping the future of computing. CNCF has a vibrant community of developers and tech enthusiasts who are passionate about advancing these technologies, and I am thrilled to be a part of this community. Additionally, as an ambassador, I will have the chance to connect with other like-minded individuals and share knowledge and ideas, which will help us all stay up-to-date with the latest developments in this rapidly-evolving field. Overall, I am honored to represent CNCF and am looking forward to contributing to the growth and success of this innovative organization.

Frederico started working with GNU and Linux in the mid-90s out of sheer curiosity, a decision that strongly influenced his life. Actively involved in the free software and open source community from early on, he made a path from programming and system administration towards data science, cloud computing and enterprise architecture. In recent years he has been actively involved in projects touching such diverse areas as Quantum computing, IoT, and analytics, and actively participating in the Kubernetes project as part of the Release Team, SIG Contribex, and others. He currently leads the Cloud and Architecture domain at SAS, for the South West & East Europe region. He holds a BA in Archaeology from the University of Lisbon, where he is an MA student and where he also took Physics.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I see being a CNCF Ambassador as a great opportunity to engage with others both in the technical aspects of cloud-native computing and in the many ways that those interested can become active members of the community. Cloud-native technology has largely been developed through open collaboration, and being an Ambassador is taking a step towards more visible participation in building the community – and learning from it.

Guy was fortunate enough to experience hands-on the entire evolution of cloud-native computing, from bare-metal servers to VMs and ultimately to Kubernetes. He is passionate about sharing his vast knowledge by writing blogs, speaking at global events, creating video content, and contributing to open-source projects by the CNCF. Guy has been dubbed “The Good Guy” by his peers and members of the community for his persistent desire to help others. It’s no wonder then that his day job at Komodor revolves around helping organizations to adopt K8s and solve the challenges that come with it, while his free time is dedicated to building a local community for Solution Architects and maintaining his educational Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@the_good_guy

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I’m excited to be an ambassador because it allows me to further my mission of sharing knowledge and driving the adoption of cloud-native technologies. As an ambassador, I will have the opportunity to create more resources, collaboration opportunities, and initiatives with the community & end-users to promote adoption and innovation.

I started my career in a data center in Istanbul, Turkey. I have been interested in the CNCF world since 2018. Although my main areas are generally technical aspects, there were companies where I took part in community and product management. I am currently in the role of Co-Founder at Kubezy. Apart from the commercial side, we have been organizing events as Organizers at CNCG Istanbul since last year, together with my friends in Turkey. I am also a member of the KCD Türkiye team. I have a community role as Technology Evangelist at KubeSphere and KubeSphere Products.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I am in love with community and all things community. I have met so many people since I first joined the CNCF community. It is a great pleasure to contribute to this community with people from all over the world who believe in the same goal. One goal and hundreds of people contributing to this goal. I think my biggest excitement in being an ambassador is making new friends and representing my community in the best way possible. Also, ambassador swags are great 🙂

Harry is a DevOps Evangelist and CTO @ Melio AI. He specialises in helping organisations navigate the cloud native landscape and adopt cloud native technologies. Harry runs the Cloud Native Computing Johannesburg Meetup which is part of the CNCF community groups in South Africa. https://www.meetup.com/cloud-native-computing-johannesburg/ https://community.cncf.io/johannesburg/

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Harry is excited to be an ambassador as he is able to bring local cloud native enthusiasts together. This creates a platform where everyone can share their experiences embarking on their cloud native journeys. Through frequent knowledge sharing, this advances the entire cloud native community as a whole.

I am a distinguished Docker Captain based in India, recognized for my expertise in containerization and cloud technologies. As a Cloud Innovator Champion, I’m committed to driving innovation and best practices in cloud computing. Additionally, i am a Top Kubernetes answerer worldwide on StackOverflow, demonstrating my dedication to fostering knowledge sharing within the global tech community.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Becoming a CNCF ambassador is thrilling because it means actively shaping the future of cloud-native technologies, collaborating with industry leaders, and bridging gaps in the tech ecosystem. It’s an opportunity to contribute to a global community that’s driving innovation and setting standards for modern computing.

Huan has more than 15 years of work experience, and his current focus is cloud-native edge computing, distributed cloud, and high-performance computing. He is currently working as a Senior Technical Director at HarmonyCloud, a company located in Hangzhou, China, providing leading cloud-native products and solutions for hundreds of enterprise customers, including Kubernetes, PaaS, edge computing, micro service visibility, DevOps, etc. In addition, Huan serves as a Technical Steering Committe member of the CNCF edge computing project KubeEdge. Huan is an open source technology enthusiast and is currently committed to building an open source technology ecosystem in China.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: The company I work for, HarmonyCloud, is an influential cloud native tehnology supplier in China and a long-term partner of CNCF. HarmonyCloud has helped many customers around the world complete the transformation of cloud-native technology. At the same time, I am currently working as a TSC member in the CNCF Project KubeEdge community, responsible for leading several SIG teams and working with other TSC members towards the graduation of the KubeEdge project. Over the years, I have also given speeches at conferences organized by CNCF. Therefore, I am familiar with the operation process of CNCF projects and understand the job responsibilities of CNCF ambassadors. If I become an ambassador, I will promote the maturity and promotion of Kubernetes, KubeEdge and more open source projects, and help users around the world to apply these advanced and open source cloud-native tenologies.

Humble, a Staff Engineer/Tech Lead at VMware and a dedicated open source advocate for over 17 years, also serves as a Ceph Ambassador. Since 2016, his pivotal role as a core contributor/maintainer to Kubernetes has been instrumental in its ongoing maintenance and evolution. Notably, he initiated the Kubernetes Bangalore meetup, uniting over 8k+ enthusiasts, and assumed an organizational role in the Cloud Native Bangalore chapter. Expanding his influence, in 2019, Humble spearheaded the creation and management of the Kubernetes Kerala Meetup, actively nurturing the Cloud Native community in the region while leading KCD Kerala 2024. His fervor for mentoring and empowering individuals drives his ongoing commitment. Alongside speaking engagements at various conferences, his impactful blogs on Cloud Native technologies underline his expertise. Furthermore, his authorship of “Mastering KVM Virtualization” solidifies his authoritative stance in the field. https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/graphs/contributors https://kcdkerala.in https://community.cncf.io/cloud-native-bangalore/ https://bit.ly/k8sKerala https://bit.ly/k8sBLR https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/container-native-storage-39-enhanced-day-2-management-and-unified-installation-within-openshift-container-platform https://kubernetes.io/blog/2022/09/21/kubernetes-1-25-use-secrets-while-expanding-csi-volumes-on-node-alpha/ https://www.humblec.com/

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I’m excited to be a CNCF ambassador because it offers a unique opportunity to actively contribute to the world of cloud-native technologies, which is a dynamic and rapidly evolving field. As an ambassador, I can foster collaboration and knowledge sharing among a diverse group of professionals, ultimately advancing the adoption and understanding of cloud-native practices. It’s an inspiring role that allows me to be at the forefront of innovation and connect with experts and enthusiasts in the CNCF ecosystem, all while promoting the growth of these transformative technologies.

Ileriayo is a Certified Kubernetes Developer, Administrator, and Security Specialist (CKAD, CKA, CKS) with a passion for people and technology. A KCD co-organizer committed to the growth of Africa. A teacher who takes pleasure in democratizing complex technical concepts. He is the creator of Get Going With Kubernetes, which consists of book reading and a series of workshops to help people learn Kubernetes.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: The adoption of Cloud Native in Africa has been quite low compared to other regions. Becoming an ambassador provides me the opportunity to champion the adoption, development, and growth of Cloud Native on a bigger scale in Africa.

Sessionize: https://sessionize.com/ileriayo

Founder at SIGHUP, I have been involved with Kubernetes and the CNCF since its inception in 2015. I am passionate about Kubernetes and full lifecycle management of production-grade infrastructures, open standards and currently serving in the advisory board of Linux Foundation Europe.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I’m thrilled to continue supporting the CNCF, both as a community of like-minded individuals and as a technological ecosystem. My mission is to encourage organizations to adopt open source projects as a foundation for the evolution of their infrastructure and governance, promoting the use of OSS and Open Standards.

With over 25 years of experience, James Spurin is an industry veteran skilled in various technical fields and adept at leading Engineering teams in top-tier Financial Services organisations. He now focuses on creating online courses and Technical Educational Content in areas such as DevOps, Kubernetes, and Cloud Native, incorporating hands-on learning experiences through container-based lab environments and has reached over 100,000 students globally. As a CNCF Ambassador, James actively advocates for Container and Cloud Native knowledge, education, and Kubernetes-based orchestration. His company, DiveInto, champions Cloud Native and consistently shares fresh content on its YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/DiveInto James has also established an inclusive community dedicated to Cloud Native learning, which can be accessed at https://community.diveinto.com

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I am excited to be a CNCF Ambassador as it aligns perfectly with my passion for creating technical educational content on Cloud Native/Kubernetes whilst also Giving Back, a core-principle of the CNCF. The role supports me in more actively engaging with a diverse global community, enabling me to learn from others whilst also sharing my own knowledge and expertise. As an Ambassador, I will contribute to thought leadership in the cloud native space and hope to provide an instrumental role in fostering a culture of knowledge sharing, learning and innovation. Throughout this journey, I am also eager to support and encourage others in pursuing CNCF Cloud Native certifications – an endeavour I am both passionate about and an advocate for. Overall, being a CNCF Ambassador is a highly rewarding and fulfilling experience that allows me to give back to the community while staying updated on the latest developments in the field.

I am a cloud native believer and advocator with over 15 years of experience in cloud computing. I was an early contributor to Kubernetes and led its adoption at eBay for six years. I am currently working as a product and development owner of cloud native FinOps at Tencent Cloud, where I founded the open-source project Crane, which helps users optimize their cloud costs. I am also auther of “The Journey of Kubernetes Production Adoption Success”, translator of “Cloud FinOps”, and speaker on various cloud native topics including Cloud Native Campus in geektime.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I am excited to be an ambassador because I love cloud native and I want to share my passion and knowledge with others. I think cloud native is the future of software development and it can bring many benefits to users, developers, and businesses. I want to help the cloud native community grow and thrive by contributing to open-source projects, writing books and articles, and organizing events. Being an ambassador will give me more opportunities to connect with other cloud native enthusiasts and learn from their experiences. I hope to inspire more people to join the cloud native journey and make a positive impact on the world.

Jessica is Product Area Lead for Engineering Enablement at Kognic, providing products and services for internal development teams. She runs the Gothenburg chapter for CNCF communities and is an active part in Cloud Native Nordics.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I’m excited to continue creating an open community for sharing and learning around cloud native technologies and to get a chance to meet other amazing people doing similar work all around the world.

I’m Jim Angel. I love solving problems and working with incredible people! I’m primarily involved with upstream Kubernetes (SIG-Release and SIG-Docs). Currently working on restarting our local Austin meetup and a Texas KCD. You can follow my latest projects at jimangel.io

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: It’s awesome to get to know so many great people and work with leading technology that’s responsible for changing multiple industries. The community that keeps Kubernetes open and welcome is a special thing, and I hope to maintain such standards myself. I also enjoy helping connect the folks using open source tooling with the resources they need to be successful, and being an ambassador keeps me connected.

Jimmy Song(宋净超) is a developer advocate at Tetrate and founder of Cloud Native Community(China). He is an outstanding blogger and author of cloud native technical books. You can know him better from his blog jimmysong.io

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I used to be the second Chinese to join the CNCF Ambassador program and then the CNCF Ambassador changed the rules of the game and I thought I should reapply.

Johann is a passionate software engineer living in Switzerland. He has over 20 years of industry experience working as a developer, architect, trainer, and consultant in various domains and for different customers. Johann is enthusiastic about the cloud-native movement and organizes the Swiss Cloud Native day (https://cloudnativeday.ch) and the Cloud Native Bern Meetup (http://www.cloudnativebern.ch).

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Bringing engineers together at meetups and conferences is a fulfilling and inspirational task. I love to connect with this thriving community on a local and international level. And I would like to raise awareness of environmental sustainability.

Josh is passionate about enabling project builders and end users to succeed with cloud computing. He’s a solution architect for Red Hat and leader of CNCF’s TAG App Delivery and WG Platforms. He also leads the CNCF Chicago community group and other Chicago-area groups. Check out Josh’s blog at https://blog.joshgav.com/!

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I’m thrilled to continue enabling beginners and experts alike to make the most of cloud computing! As an ambassador I’ll be even more empowered to educate and support Chicago-area developers in our local communities. I’m looking forward to sharing knowledge myself, but most of all I’m looking forward to enabling people in my communities to share their knowledge with each other!

Kohei Ota is a Senior Field Engineer at Apple. He is a CNCF Ambassador and contributes to Kubernetes SIG Docs as the Japanese localization owner in the CNCF communities. He also organizes Docker Meetup Tokyo and CloudNative Days Tokyo; some of the biggest “container/cloud native” communities and conferences in Japan.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I’ve been involved with local cloud native community based in Japan. Unfortunately not many folks from Japan have tightened relationship with international community. I’m excited to be part of organizers of both sides and would love to help local experts become part of the international community!

Kristina Devochko is a platform engineer, tech content creator, speaker and tech community contributor based in Norway. She focuses on all things cloud native, Kubernetes, cloud security and green tech. Kristina is an owner of kristhecodingunicorn.com tech blog, a CNCF Ambassador, Microsoft Azure MVP, CNCF TAG Environmental Sustainability tech lead, Kubernetes Unpacked podcast host, co-organizer of multiple meetup groups and mentor. In her free time Kristina enjoys doing CTF challenges, reading and cuddling with her four cats.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I love giving back to the tech community and I hope that my actions and contributions can inspire others to create software with sustainability, security and cloud native principles in mind. Another important goal for me is to contribute to even stronger diversity, equality and inclusion in the cloud native space by creating a non-judgemental, open, safe and welcoming space for everyone. By being an ambassador I can focus even more on doing just that! I’m also very excited to meet all the fantastic ambassadors and members of the cloud native community and collaborate on making a positive impact in the CNCF space together 🙂

Kunal Kushwaha is a Developer Relations Manager at Civo, where he fosters a deep connection between developers and innovative cloud-native technologies. With a passion for empowering others, Kunal has taught thousands online and consulted numerous companies on their DevOps journey. Recognized as a community leader, he has delivered keynote speeches at global conferences, embodying empathy in all aspects of his work and life.

I’m a technical support engineer, currently I mostly have varied interests ranging from Hardware to K8s and VM’s Blogs I’ve written are at https://dev.to/mediocreDevops

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: This is a quite new thing to me so I’m taking it all in, hoping I can get some guidance on how this whole thing works, but I’m excited to be a part of this and give back to the community

Hey, my name is Leonard Pahlke, and I am a software engineer with a focus on cloud, open source and sustainability. I like to build systems that tend to get big and complex. I post regularly on the CNCF blog and my own website lvsp.io. I am a CNCF Ambassador, Chair for the CNCF TAG Environmental Sustainability, lead the Kubernetes release team for v1.26 and organize meetups in Hamburg.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I love the cloud and the infinite variety and complexity of systems that can be built on it. The CNCF truly makes cloud-native applications accessible to anyone and any platform. The open source spirit fascinates and inspires me. Serving as a ambassador the community is a great honor.

Lin is the Head of Open Source at Solo.io, also serving as a CNCF TOC member and ambassador. She has been actively involved with the Istio service mesh since its inception in 2017, holding positions on both the Istio Steering Committee and Technical Oversight Committee. Prior to her current role, she was a Senior Technical Staff Member and Master Inventor at IBM for 15+ years. She is the author of the book “Istio Ambient Explained” and has more than 200 patents to her name.

Lisa is a developer advocate and community architect, and most recently was Head of Developer Relations at Cockroach Labs for 3 years. Lisa is also a CNCF Ambassador and SF Bay Cloud Native Platforms User Group organizer (with nearly 7000 members). Lisa is an advocate and frequent speaker for open source technology and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion initiatives, a writer, an avid sports fan, and loves wine and dogs. Follow Lisa on Twitter @SWDevAngel and LinkedIn @lnamphy.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: It has been a great pleasure to be a CNCF Ambassador for the past several years and I am thrilled to continue the journey. I love working with this particular group of colleagues to evangelize open source and cloud native technology, to mentor new community members, to give a platform and a voice and to encourage participation in ALL areas of the cloud native ecosystem. And to have the support of the CNCF to extend the reach of cloud native technology to “the last mile” has been an extremely rewarding experience that I am grateful and excited to continue! 🙂 Looking so much forward to working with all of you in the coming years! 🙂

Marcus is a platform engineer and his main area of focus in recent years has been around CI/CD, Go, Kubernetes, containers and DevOps but originally started out as a web developer and JavaScript enthusiast. A self-described “tinkerer”, when not building Kubernetes solutions, Marcus likes to dabble with 3D printing and experimenting with smart home tech. He can be found blogging online at www.MarcusNoble.co.uk and giving talks at meetups & conferences.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I am excited to leverage the support of the CNCF to better help others within out community through shared knowledge and experience. I’m excited for the opportunity to meet more amazing people in the cloud native space and learn from their experiences and expertise.

Márk is a SWE/SRE from Hungary with years of experience in various Cloud Native technologies as well as contributing to and maintaining Open Source Software. He is one of the core maintainers of Dex, a Cloud Native identity federation solution and a number of Go libraries (Viper being the most prominent among them). Márk also organizes several tech meetups in Hungary (Go Budapest, Kubernetes and Cloud Native Budapest, Microservices Budapest) and regularly appears as a speaker in the region at meetups, workshops, conferences and podcasts. You can occasionally find him posting to his blog (https://sagikazarmark.hu/), but chances are his GitHub profile is more interesting. In his free time, Márk likes riding a bicycle, reading books, but his favorite hobby for more than 20 years has been Hungarian folk dance.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I always liked learning/building new technologies and then sharing the knowledge with others. By working on various Open Source projects for more than a decade I also learned to appreciate the opportunity to learn from people coming from different backgrounds. By being an ambassador I hope that I’ll have more opportunities to connect with people, learn from them and maybe share some of my knowledge as well.

Maryam Tavakkoli is a senior Cloud engineer at RELEX Solutions, specializing in the design and implementation of Cloud and Kubernetes infrastructure. She is also one of the organizers of the CNCF meetups in Finland. With a strong passion for open-source cloud-native solutions, Maryam actively engages in collaborative efforts and idea-sharing within this domain.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I’ve had the fortune to learn from world-class cloud native leaders, and I want to pay it forward by organizing, speaking at and participating in cloud native events. In addition, I’m excited to make the cloud native concepts more tangible through my research.

I am an Open Source Software Engineer at @Diagrid, contributing to and driving initiatives for the Dapr OSS project. I also serve as a Steering Committee member for the Knative Project, and I am Co-Leading the Knative Functions initiative. I’ve been writing on my blog, salaboy.com for over 15 years and I just published a book titled Platform Engineering on Kubernetes for Manning. I previously worked at VMware and Red Hat, building tools to help developers be more productive.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I’ve been working on Cloud Native and CNCF communities for over seven years now, and I’ve been constantly trying to give back and connect people who share the same interests around open source projects. Being an ambassador allows me to expand my network to keep connecting, mentoring, and guiding community members to grow.

Max is Co-Founder and Cloud Native Advocate at Liquid Reply. He is Co-Chair of the CNCF Environmental Sustainability Technical Advisory Group and served 3 years at the Kubernetes release team. His focus is on designing and building cloud-native solutions on/with Kubernetes anywhere and the platform engineering to simplify the current challenges of complex systems. He runs the Munich Kubernetes Meetup as well as the Munich and Ukraine Kubernetes Community Days.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Being an ambassador is a sign that working with the community and being part of the community is a high value, empowering anyone to join and be part of it. And as ambassadors, we are potentially the enabler to guide people but also motivate others to share their experiences to create a synergy. I’m also excited to meet other ambassadors in person and maybe create new ideas and events.

Michael Levan is a seasoned engineer and consultant in the Kubernetes and Platform Engineering space who spends his time working with startups and enterprises around the globe on consulting, training, and content creation. He is a trainer, 3x published author, podcast host, international public speaker, and was part of the Kubernetes v1.28 Release Team.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: The avenue that’s now opened to work with more people around the world. I’ve been giving back to the community, creating free content, and contributing to projects for 5+ years. I’m now excited to work with others who are passionate about doing the same.

I am a member of the technical oversight committee for Istio, where I have worked full time for four years. I regularly contribute to the Istio blog and lead conferences like IstioCon, helping new users and veterans alike to get connected.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I have been unofficially doing the work of an ambassador for Istio for several years now, and look forward to continuing this work officially now that Istio has joined the CNCF.

Serial meetup organiser, including Cloud Native and Kubernetes Edinburgh, CNK Manchester, as well as larger events such as Kubernetes Community Days UK. Currently employed as Head of Cloud Native and Platform Engineering at EscherCloudAI, helping to build a next-generation managed Kubernetes service tailored for AI workloads backed by a sustainable approach to running infrastructure. Passionate about new technology, but simultaneously romantic about the old with a penchant for decrepit Silicon Graphics and Sun Microsystems hardware. Sporadically blogs at https://dischord.org

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: As a CNCF Ambassador, I’m really excited about formalising the ability to build bridges across the CNCF ecosystem, helping communities collaborate and support each other in their Cloud Native journey. I look forward to being able to leverage the resources and support provided by the CNCF to bring the best to the community events that I’m a part of.

I’m Obinna Odirionye. I work on Kubernetes Tooling, Infrastructure, and Distributed Systems. I write and speak about Serverless, Containers, and Kubernetes. I am a Co-Maintainer and Member of Helm working on ChartMuseum. I write my thoughts on https://iamobinna.com

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: As a CNCF ambassador, I am passionate about bringing more individuals into the African ecosystem to contribute to the cloud-native community. I have seen the impact that becoming a co-maintainer and member of Helm has had on my career, and I am eager to extend these opportunities to others in my region. By leveraging the resources available through my role as a CNCF ambassador, I can support and mentor curious individuals in their transition into SRE and Kubernetes roles. My goal is to help grow the cloud-native community and positively impact my region.

Oleg is a passionate open source advocate and community builder. He works on user and developer communities around WireMock and WireMock Cloud. He is a core maintainer and board member in Jenkins, maintainer in Keptn and OpenFeature, and a TOC member in the Continuous Delivery Foundation. Oleg has a PhD degree in electronics design and volunteers in the Free and Open Source Silicon Foundation. He helps to organize Jenkins, CDF and CNCF meetups in Switzerland.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: CNCF is a driver behind many open source initiatives and industry-wide projects in the areas of observability, software delivery and virtualization. For years I’ve been a user and contributor of many projects, and also advocated for CNCF projects and best practices in my talks. It is an honor to join the CNCF Ambassadors. There are many great folks there, and I am happy to join the team. Looking forward to participating more!

Sessionize profile: https://sessionize.com/onenashev/

Orlin Vasilev aka Orlix is a Senior Community Manager and Engineer(maybe a Dev Rel or even kind a Dev Advocate) at VMware running the communities and maintainer for Project Harbor and Velero. CNCF Ambassador v1 and driving the biggest Meetup Group ~1300 members in Bulgaria. Multiple times KubeCon CfP review board member and co-chair. SysAdmin/Dev/SRE/System engineering roles for over 15 years! Located in Bulgaria, Europe! Father of two – a fantastic girl and a boy! Passionate snowboarder, DIY and semi-professional BBQ Pitmaster and baker!

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Being ambassador makes your part of the most fantastic crowd in the Tech World these days. As Ambassador v1 allowed me to drive the meetup and many other local activities with universities and helping put people in general with Cloud Native technologies.

Professional Nerd, SRE and Content Creator. Love advocating for Open-Source and container technologies. I’ve been running a YouTube channel where I share and teach the technologies and good practices I use every day as an SRE.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I love teaching and helping people to become better engineers. I love everything open source and what it stands for, knowledge must be shared and everyone should have the opportunity to become better at their jobs.

Paige Cruz is passionate about cultivating sustainable on-call practices and believes that open source instrumentation has a bright future. She isn’t afraid to admit that distributed traces are her favorite 😛 and will talk to anyone about adopting OpenTelemetry. After retiring from SRE she brought her zest for bringing people their aha moment with observability to Chronosphere where she works as a Senior Developer Advocate. Read her blog posts over on https://chronosphere.io/learn/category/blog/ or her personal blog at https://www.paigerduty.com/. Off-the-clock you can find her scouring fiber apprenticing at a local sustainable yarn mill or watching trash TV.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Excited to be an ambassador to demystify observability concepts and practices for all levels of technologists. Looking to grow the OpenTelemetry community from end-users to contributors and maintainers while sparking collaboration across company boundaries.

Freelance cloud architect, OSS addict, huge fan of k8s, cilium, argocd and friends. I speak regularly about cloud tech, security and OSS projects I use or implement for my clients. I run several meetups in my city Docker, CNCF Lyon, DevSecCon France, co-organize conferences (KCDFRANCE) and involved regularly as conference MC and member of CFP committee , more importantly I’m a happy husband and dad

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I’m freaking excited to join the ambassador community.To meet new friends, help growing communities, sharing the skills I’ve learned and give back to the CNCF community. Being an ambassador will allow me to what i love the most, mentoring, i can’t wait to jump in !

I’m Ramesh Kumar, a passionate advocate of cloud-native technologies and a dedicated mentor. I am the founder and organizer of the CNCF/Kubernetes Sacramento Meetup and CNCF/Kubernetes Penang Meetup, where I empower and support over 500 students in obtaining Kubernetes certifications, helping them enhance their lives and careers. My specialties lie in mentoring, teaching, and training, and I take pride in my ability to inspire and guide others in their learning journey. Through my meetups and expertise in CNCF technologies, I strive to build a more inclusive and innovative tech community, one act of kindness at a time. I also maintain a blog where I share my knowledge and insights with the broader tech community.

Raphaël Pinson is a seasoned Solutions Architect with over 15 years of experience in the tech industry. He specializes in Kubernetes, Terraform, and Cilium, and currently works at Isovalent. Raphaël is passionate about bridging the gap between DevOps and Cloud Native communities, and he’s excited to represent CNCF as a co-organizer of the Swiss Romandie (Lausanne chapter) CNCF meetup and regular speaker at industry events. Raphaël has contributed to various CNCF projects. His public work can be found at https://polywork.com/raphink.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I’m thrilled to become a CNCF ambassador because it allows me to expand my impact and bring Cloud Native technology to a wider audience. By representing CNCF and bridging the gap between Cloud Native and other communities, I hope to further advance our industry’s growth and adoption. It’s an honor to be part of a community of talented and passionate advocates who are driving innovation and making a difference in the tech world.

I am an OSS addict, an active ArgoCD contributor and a speaker at CNCF events (GitOpsCon, ArgoCon, KubeDay Israel). I also actively encourage and inspire others to contribute to CNCF projects and to speak at conferences. I lead a Cloud Platform Team, and I live in Israel. On 08.10.2023, I was supposed to start a new role – Dev Advocate focused on OSS. On 07.10.2023, my country suffered a deadly terrorist attack and was forced into a war against terror, so all hands on deck. I’m still leading the Platform Team and will re-focus on advocating for OSS when we defeat terrorism. #StandWithIsrael

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I love being part of and collaborating with the cloud-native OSS community. In addition to the great benefit of using OSS, I strongly believe that adopting the methodology used to write, maintain and release OSS widely benefits any organization. CNCF makes cloud-native OSS accessible to everyone, and I am excited to take part in fostering the CNCF ecosystem and increasing the OSS adoption.

I am a self-proclaimed “cloud automator”, and works primarily with Microsoft Azure infrastructure, Platform Engineering, DevOps and Cloud Native technology. I am a Microsoft MVP for my work with Azure, and an HashiCorp Ambassador primarily for my work with Terraform. Furthermore, I am active in the CNCF, OpenSSF and several open source communities and projects. I initiated Cloud Native Norway, a non-profit that works to build up and enable Cloud Native adoption and development in Norway. I also co-founded the Azure Cloud Native User Group, and founded the Norwegian PowerShell User Group. In the CNCF, I have been active for years in TAG App Delivery, and currently serves as a maintainer on the OpenGitOps project, and as co-chair of the Platforms Working Group.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: For many years, the CNCF has continued to impress me. The way that the foundation has supported the community and the projects is truly admirable. Even though I have other honorary titles, the CNCF Ambassador title is one that I value very much. While I don’t do community work for the titles, I am happy for the recognition. I have big plans for my work in the CNCF, and I look forward to seeing how the ambassador program will help me achieve more for the community.

Sessionize: https://sessionize.com/roberth-strand

Hello! I’m Robin Smorenburg, a passionate technologist with an eye for detail who turned his passion for technology into a career. Throughout my career, I’ve become a respected thought leader in the industry, sharing my knowledge and expertise with others, being recognized by Microsoft, and receiving the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional or MVP Award in the Azure category. With Kevin Evans, I run the StreamingClouds live stream, where we engage with inspiring individuals—our industry’s thought leaders—spreading positivity and sharing their knowledge and advice. And the StreamingClouds Community is a safe place where we’re helping each other, supported by a fantastic group of moderators we can call friends.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I’m really excited about joining the CNCF on the mission of “making cloud native ubiquitous”. Enhancing my efforts of leading by example, inspiring and helping as many people as possible while being open and inclusive, and treating everyone with the utmost respect. Making a difference through community building and mentoring, impacting the lives of others, leveling the playing field, and fostering community collaboration and relationships. And last but not least, the technologist in me loves cloud-native!

I am Ronit Banerjee, a pre-final year Computer Science Engineering Undergraduate student. Along with my academics, I have maintained a strong portfolio being an Open Source Developer at the projects incubated and graduated from The Linux Foundation and Cloud Native Computing Foundation. My enthusiasm with DevOps and Cloud Native helped me to secure scholarships like Travel Funding Scholarship and Dan Kohn Scholarship by The Linux Foundation and Cloud Native Computing Foundation to attend flagship conferences such as KubeCon + CloudNativeCon + Open Source Summit China 2023 at Shanghai and Open Source Summit Europe 2022 at Dublin. I also worked as an Open Source Developer in Google Summer of Code (GSoC) at DBpedia Association. Apart from my technical experience, I got my hands dirty in fostering the Cloud Native Ecosystem. I am also the Chapter Lead at Cloud Native Hooghly which is an official CNCF Chapter listed amongst 40 such clubs in the Asia Pacific Region. Right now, with the proliferation of the Cloud Native Tools, I successfully turned the chapter to be the fastest growing in the entire Eastern India, catering 250+ Active members. I am also a Sig Contribex’s Comms Volunteer for Kubernetes Contributors Summit North America 2023 at Chicago, United States of America primarily looking into the “Call for Proposal” emails and notifying about the updates to the KubeCon co-located event attendees. I have significant experience in pitching tech products to Venture Capitalists and have successfully secured grants from Government of India twice for my deep-tech startup.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I always wanted to boost Cloud Native Ecosystem in my locality whereas I felt there is a gap of awareness. Being an ambassador, it would really help me to reach areas where I couldn’t do by myself just being a CNCG chapter lead of Hooghly. With CNCF’s support it would be possible.

Working as MTS3 Site Reliability Engineer at VMWare Software India PVT. LTD. Cloud Native Day Pune (CND Pune’23) Organizer Kubernetes Community Day Pune (KCD’24) Organizer Open-Source Enthusiast, A firm believer in the power of community education. Google Summer Of Code Admin since 2018, Mentor, Mentee 2022 @PEcAn Project GSoD, GSSoC, Github Externship, SIH mentor CKS | CKA | CKAD | Terraform Certified Mentored 10k+ students & professionals for free across India for career guidance, Job Search, Open Source, Cloud Native Docker & CNCG Pune community leader Enjoys photography, Acting, Teaching, Trekking, fitness

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I have been organising monthly meetups under CNCG Pune chapter, have been sharing my knowledge by speaking at different events, conferences, rural area colleges, schools, local meet-up groups to spread awareness and share knowledge about cloud native. By becoming CNCF Ambassador I will get more support, training, mentorship, guidance and rewards to build stronger community which will open wide door of the opportunities – to network with other community leaders, CNCF leaders and share my knowledge to wider audience. As part of CNCF Ambassador, it will give me opportunity to network with equally passionate Ambassadors from all over the globe. CNCF Ambassador gets support, mentorship, trainings, funding to host the events which will help me a lot to foster a strong community and upcoming events. It will give me the opportunity to promote Cloud Native technologies projects globally.

Sai is currently working as Senior Solutions Architecture Specialist, APJ at HashiCorp and is based out of Singapore. Sai started his career in Networking and had 17 years of experience in private/public cloud infrastructure solutions for highly regulated security-conscious industries such as Banking, Financial Services Industries, Aviation, ISPs and Public Sector organizations across APJ Region. Previously He was part of the Field Engineering team at solo.io, Professional Services Consultant (APJ) at chef.io. He focuses on modernizing infrastructure automation and microservices application networking from Edge to Service Mesh at scale, where the tech stacks are built on HashiCorp Vault, Consul, Boundary, Terraform, Chef, Istio, Envoy Proxy, eBPF, Cilium, GraphQL built for Kubernetes, VMs & Cloud.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Singapore and ASEAN Region need more active and organized meetups around cloud native community. The activities are behind compare to US, EMEA and ANZ Region. As an ambassador, I will continue to create more awareness and advocate CNCF projects in Singapore and ASEAN Region. I am also participating for the KubeDay Singapore as one of the event chairs, and continue to contribute. I’m very proud of being CNCF Ambassador and representing CNCF in Singapore and APAC Region.

Hello, my name is Saim Safdar, working as a Developer Relations Manager at Rafay Systems, host of the cloud-native podcast (https://www.youtube.com/@cloudnativefm), co-founder of Cloud Native Islamabad (https://community.cncf.io/islamabad/), Organizer of KCD Pakistan (https://www.cncf.io/blog/2023/03/10/from-community-group-to-event-a-kcd-pakistan-experience/). Maintainer of the cncf Sandbox project, Paralus (https://www.paralus.io/).

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I love sharing my Open Source jourey with others, currently there’s a desparate need of mentorship within the community, as cloud native eco-system constantly equipped with new tooling, students, tech pro, difficult to find and map existing knowledge to work with OS and communities, I’m hoping my time as an Ambassador, I’ll get on-board and shortened the loop for code to contribution to outreaching new OS tooling to the world.

Saiyam is working as Director of Technical Evangelism at Civo with a focus on defining the Civo cloud platform for simplifying Kubernetes and making it accessible for developers. Previously at Walmart Labs, Oracle, and HP, Saiyam has worked on many facets of k8s including machine learning platform, scaling, multi-cloud, managed k8s services, and k8s documentation. He’s worked on implementing Kubernetes solutions in different organizations. When not coding, Saiyam works on contributing to the community by writing blogs and organizing local meetups for Kubernetes and CNCF. He is also a CNCF ambassador, runs a YouTube channel and Kubesimplify community that aims to simplify cloud native and can be reached on Twitter @saiyampathak

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Simplifying cloud native for everyone

Sascha works on many different container related open-source projects like Kubernetes and various container runtimes. He joined the CNCF community back in 2018, having gained container experience before. Sascha’s passions include contributing to open source, as well as giving talks and evangelizing Kubernetes-related technologies.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I’m thrilled to act as CNCF ambassador because mentoring and onboarding new people into the community is one of my passions! The CNCF ambassador program provides me a bigger context to connect with new and existing community members. It also makes it easier for me to boost the visibility of open source projects while evangelizing best practices, code of conduct and openness.

Passionate about Virtualization, Containerization and Observability technologies, I have made it my job. Today, I accompany our customers in their #MoveToCloud transformation mainly on OnPremise environments by maximizing the use of OpenSource products. Much more than just products, OpenSource is for me a philosophy. I love to share and transmit on the subjects which impassion me, I do it with students, conferences, and also by publishing specialized blogs posts.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I am very happy and excited to have joined this program. It will allow me to promote the Cloud Native more widely in France. It’s a subject that is still unknown in some companies and the specialized content is often not translated from English. My goal is to promote the power of the Cloud Native through French articles, Meetups, and conferences.

I’ve been involved and passionated by the CNCF community for many years ! I’m co-organizing the Canadian CNCF & Kubernetes meetups for Canada (virtual) and Quebec City / Montreal meetups in person with other wonderful Organizers and Ambassadors ! I’m also a speaker in other meetups, at 2022 KubeCon US and at KubeCon’s Rejeks 2023. I love sharing my experience and documenting. I try to blog my projects and experiences. Check at https://medium.com/@prune998 I’m invested in some CNCF or OSS projects linked to K8s and I’m maintaining an official fork of KubeColor that was unmaintained for years: https://github.com/kubecolor/kubecolor I’ve been patching a lot of projects, OSS or CNCF, like ArgoCD, Cilium, Kafka tools…

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: My goal as an ambassador is to promote Kubernetes and the wonderful ecosystem under the CNCF banner. Being involved in the Ambassador community will help me grow my skills at communicating and hopefully inspire others to join the movement.

Seema Saharan is working as an SRE in Autodesk. I am an IT enthusiast, who is passionate about all the latest technologies from a research perspective. I love to help, mentor people, and share my knowledge. I do that through my blogs, videos, and meetups.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Becoming a CNCF ambassador is an exciting opportunity for me, who is passionate about cloud-native technologies, which enables me to promote these cutting-edge technologies, engage with a vibrant community, share my knowledge, network with industry professionals, and contribute to open-source projects. It offers opportunities for personal and professional growth, as well as the chance to influence the direction of the CNCF community and its projects.

Senthil works as a Software Architect, building cloud native AI/ML platforms. He specialises in Cloud native software development, Machine Learning, MLOps, Distributed Systems and Edge Computing. He has 20+ years of experience spanning Telecom, Cloud, Containers, Kubernetes, ML and MLOps. He is a Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA), Maintainer of Open-Source project “kube-fledged”, Tech Blogger, Speaker and Organizer of Kubernetes Community Days Chennai. He likes contributing to Open source, building Tech communities, exploring new technologies and mentoring Students.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: The cloud native ecosystem is vast and is made up of a plethora of technologies and methodologies. Becoming a CNCF ambassador will help in bringing more focus and structure to my contribution to the community. I’ll have immense opportunities to work closely with CNCF and other Ambassadors. The Ambassador standards of excellence would serve as a north star in making my community contribution more effective. I can rely on support and guidance from CNCF to learn new ways of connecting and collaborating with the community.

Sergio Méndez is a DevOps Engineer at Yalo and professor of operating systems at USAC university. He is getting involved students into the CNCF Ecosystem and hosting a Cloud Native Community group and KCDs in Guatemala. He has been a speaker at several conferences such as KubeCon, WTFisCloudNative, and Kubernetes Community Days. He is also a Linkerd Ambassador and author of the book Edge Computing with Kubernetes with Packt. His website is https://sergiops.xyz.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I am excited because I can help others to learn new technologies and getting involved to participate, also gives me the opportunity to help Latinamerican people to participate in the CNCF ecosystem and students to start contributing in open source. As an Ambassador I can reduce the gap of language creating content in Spanish.

I am Shahriyar Al Mustakim Mitul, and I am currently pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science & Engineering at BRAC University. I am also the organizer of Cloud Native Bangladesh. Moreover, I am one of the maintainers for the CNCF Glossary and Kubernetes localization Project. I do organize monthly meetups on the Cloud Native Bangladesh community group. You may join the Cloud Native Bangladesh community : https://community.cncf.io/cloud-native-bangladesh/

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: One of my goals was to become a CNCF ambassador because I had seen ambassadors develop their skills and assist others. I have been working to close the technical and community gaps up to this point. I now have more chances than ever as an ambassador to support my local community.

Shimon co-organizes the CNCF chapter in Tel Aviv, In addition, he is also the co-organizer of KCD Israel. He also creates tutorial videos about cloud-native technology and Kubernetes. In addition, Shimon maintains the Datree open-source project (https://github.com/datreeio/datree 6000+ Stars), a cloud-native solution to prevent Kubernetes misconfigurations by blocking resources that do not meet your policy.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I am excited to be a CNCF ambassador as I believe in the CNCF philosophy of being a vendor-agnostic and open-source foundation. I wanted to become a CNCF Ambassador to continue performing community activities involving the CNCF and open-source projects and host meetups and events like the KCD.

Simon Forster is a cloud native technology architect and engineer based in London. Simon has extensive experience working in heavily regulated financial institutions on the design, delivery and security of critical cloud native applications. He has a specific focus on ensuring cloud native technologies deliver against business goals. As co-chair of the CNCF Cartografos Group, Simon developed and co-authored the CNCF Cloud Native Maturity Model and the CNCF children’s book “Admiral Bash’s Island Adventure”. He has contributed to both the Business Value Subcommittee and Financial Services User Group.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: As a longtime member of the cloud native community, I’m excited to evangelise its mission. I look forward to mentoring and training members of the community, no matter the technical skill set, to better understand why cloud native serves digital innovation and meets business goals. I strongly believe that every person in the community can help drive cloud native forward and am excited to help achieve this goal.

Hi Team, I am DevOps and MultiCloud Engineer and happy to become a CNCF member to add some input to this journey.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: It provides a platform to connect with other professionals in the industry, share knowledge and expertise, and contribute to the growth of the community. As an ambassador, one can learn about the latest developments and trends in the cloud-native ecosystem and play a role in shaping the future of the industry.

I’m OSS/Ecosystem Advocate at Sysdig, the company which created and open-sourced Falco, the Security Runtime Engine for Kubernetes and Cloud-Native technologies. I worked for Qonto, a modern banking for SMEs and freelancers, where I managed their Kubernetes clusters and the enthusiastic tools around, like ArgoCD, Traefik, Prometheus. I also assisted for many years pure-players and e-business companies for a large managed service provider, as an AWS expert and FinOps. I’m one of the longest tenured members of the Falco community, and the creator of Falcosidekick and Falcosidekick-UI, two major components of the Falco ecosystem.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: As an SRE for several years, I’ve been able to use a number of CNCF projects in production. I’m also one of the maintainers of the most advanced OSS security project in the landscape. I would like to help even more architects and users to integrate these projects into their infrastructures. Moreover, in 2024, the KubeCon EU will be in Paris, France, it’s important for me to do my best to help the organizers and show the vitality of French tech.

Thomas is a Principal Cloud Architect, Advocate and Educator enthusiastic about making cloud-native more comfortable. As a CNCF/CDF Ambassador and Open Source Maintainer (Keptn and K8sGPT), he is always eager to find ways to deliver software and troubleshoot issues more efficiently.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I am very passionate about cloud-native technologies and working with them is cool. In the last few years, I got more and more involved in the cloud-native community and learned that it’s not only about technical things, it’s also about the people and the community. I am excited to be an ambassador because I like to bring people into the cloud-native world but also educate and teach them how to use products and technologies.

Thomas Vitale is a software engineer and architect working across cloud native development and platform engineering, primarily focusing on developer experience and security. He works at Systematic (Denmark), is the author of the book “Cloud Native Spring in Action” (Manning), and is an organizer of KCD Denmark. Thomas likes contributing to open source projects in the Java and cloud native space (Spring, Keycloak, Carvel, Cartographer, Buildpacks, TAG App Delivery, Paketo), and sharing knowledge with the community. His speaking gigs include KubeCon+CloudNativeCon, KCD, Devoxx, and GOTO. Thomas also likes sharing his cloud native journey on his blog (thomasvitale.com).

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: The community is probably the best part of the cloud native ecosystem. As an ambassador, I’m excited I’ll have the chance to engage even more with this fantastic community, help it grow, and empower more people to realize their goals with cloud native technologies.

Founder and PMC chair of DevStream@CNCF, ex-AWS senior DevOps, ex-Huawei tech expert, cloud architect for Daimler, Tesco, Credit Suisse, and other Fortune 500 corps. Writer at DevOps.com, guest expert at GitGuardian (DevSecOps), blog@Medium: https://medium.com/4th-coffee. Key speaker at the 1st Lisbon K8s meetup. Keynote speaker of BuildStuff 2022. I specialize in DevOps and cloud-related technologies, like CI/CD, developer tools, Terraform, AWS, etc., and I blog on DevOps/DevSecOps.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I am truly excited and honored to be an ambassador for the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). This opportunity allows me to contribute to the promotion and adoption of cutting-edge cloud-native technologies, which play a crucial role in shaping the future of software development and infrastructure. Being an ambassador also connects me with a vibrant, passionate community of professionals who share insights and experiences, fostering collaboration and innovation. I am genuinely grateful for this chance to learn from others and help drive the industry forward, making a meaningful impact on the cloud-native ecosystem.

Viktor Farcic is a lead rapscallion at Upbound and a published author. He is a host of the YouTube channel DevOps Toolkit and a co-host of DevOps Paradox.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Viktor Farcic is excited to join the CNCF Ambassadors program because he believes in the power of open source software to transform the world. He is passionate about helping others learn about and adopt CNCF technologies, and he is eager to contribute to the CNCF community in new and innovative ways. Viktor is also excited to be part of a team of dedicated and talented individuals who are working to make the world a better place through open source software.

Whitney is a lovable goofball who enjoys understanding and using tools in the cloud native landscape. Creative and driven, Whitney recently pivoted from an art-related career to one in tech. This past fall, Whitney co-presented a silly yet informative keynote about platform building at Kubecon NA 2022 (https://youtu.be/eJG7uIU9NpM). You can catch her lightboard streaming show ⚡️ Enlightning on Tanzu.TV (https://via.vmw.com/Enlightning), and she also co-hosts the streaming show You Choose! – a ‘Choose-Your-Own-Adventure’-style journey through the CNCF landscape. And not only does Whitney rock at tech – she literally has toured playing in the band Mutual Benefit on keyboards and vocals.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: When I was new in the cloud native space, it was very intimidating that in every room that I entered the men *vastly* outnumber the women. It has taken time and intentional effort to learn how to proudly take up space, join conversations, and understand that my opinion as a relative beginner has a lot of value. I’m excited to be a CNCF Ambassador in the hopes that the title will give me connections, credibility, and reach to find and elevate underrepresented voices on the streaming shows that I host. The more visibility we have, the more we can help to create a welcoming environment for everyone. I’m also excited to make SO MANY NEW FRIENDS!

I’m focused in helping customers designing, building, and running their Kubernetes and Internal Developer Platforms. I wore many hats in the IT world, Engineering, Pre-Post sales, Product Owner and Consulting. from HPC, Storage and Distributed Systems. I also enjoy volunteering at the Dutch Cloud Native/Kubernetes Meetup and the NL KCD. I have lived in many European countries and now Netherlands is the place I call home.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Being a CNCF Ambassador is the confirmation that my efforts towards the Open Source community are heading in the right direction. I’m excited to help the community and being supported and by the CNCF while doing it

Senior cloud native architect and evangelist at Flomesh. I am a seasoned programmer, LF APAC open source evangelist, CNCF Ambassador, member of the cloud native community committee(China local) and Microsoft Azure MVP. With many years of microservice and infrastructure practice experience, mainly involving microservices, containers, Kubernetes, DevOps, etc. In the past there years, I organize two meetups in Guangzhou and Service Mesh Conference in Shanghai together with community members. In the coming April 15, I will organize KCD in Dalian with other community members. I own a Chinese blog https://atbug.com and start writing on Medium https://addozhang.medium.com.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Being a CNCF ambassador is a recognition of my involvement in open source and cloud-native technology promotion over the past few years. After becoming a CNCF ambassador, I can better promote CNCF technology and organize more in-person and virtual events. At the same time, I can also receive more support from CNCF.

My agenda is taking care of team serving cloud platform and design it’s architecture. I’m a cloud enthusiast who missed events and community in my area. So I have relaunched Cloud Native Prague meetups and I co-organize Kubernetes Community Days Czech & Slovak.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I’m honored to be an ambassador as I can help with spreading knowledge about fantastic cloud native technologies and connecting people with the same interest. It can help them to solve their issues instead of reinventing the wheel over and over again.