Ambassadors

Aakansha Priya is DevRel at EmpathyOps, a CNCF Ambassador and an organiser for KubeHuddle, Toronto. Working on empowering & upscaling the communities. In the past, she has been a Community Manager at Hashnode & WeMakeDevs, experienced in working efficiently in groups as well as individually. As a frontend dev turned DevOps explorer, loves sharing tech insights, and views on learning & building in public, blogging & building personal brand. Aakansha, a reader and speaker, paints, sings, and loves spontaneous travel. She has spoken at various conferences about DevOps and the human side of tech. Catch her at meetups & conferences!

I’m a Kubernetes enthusiast with a traveling soul, passionate about open-source software and cloud-native technologies. As a Solution Architect at Devtron Inc., I specialize in managing cloud-native application deployments and actively contribute to the open-source project Devtron (https://github.com/devtron-labs/devtron). My mission is to make Kubernetes adoption as seamless as packing for a weekend getaway, sharing my experiences and insights just as eagerly as I share my travel stories.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I’m thrilled to be a CNCF Ambassador because it gives me the opportunity to connect with like-minded individuals in the community. Being part of CNCF not only opens new doors for collaboration but also allows me to reach a broader audience. This platform helps me share knowledge, raise awareness, and educate more people about the Cloud Native ecosystem and the tools and technologies that power it.

I am Platform Engineer and a Certified ISO 22301 Lead Implementer in Business Continuity, I bring a wealth of experience in Software Engineering, Enterprise Application Management, Server Infrastructure Management, Database Management, Incident Management, and Cloud Engineering. I holds a B.Sc in Computer Science from Babcock University and an M.Sc in Business Information Technology from Middlesex University. My technical proficiencies span various programming languages and tools including SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, Docker, Kubernetes, and numerous scripting languages.

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 is a CNCF Ambassador, blogger, host of the Geeking Out Podcast, and a maintainer of the OpenTelemetry End User SIG. By day, she’s a Principal Developer Advocate at Dynatrace, focusing on Observability and OpenTelemetry. By night, she climbs walls. She also loves capybaras, because they make her happy.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Having spent a chunk of my time since 2022 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!

Afzal is a passionate open-source enthusiast with a deep interest in cloud-native technologies and building new things on top of them. He specializes in supporting cloud infrastructure and actively contributes to ArgoCD open-source project. Additionally, he has made significant contributions to various CNCF projects, including Meshery, Keptn, and Jaeger. His dedication to the Keptn project earned him recognition as a Keptn Crew member. He also enjoys creating video content and writing blogs to share his experiences in the cloud-native space with like-minded individuals.

I’m an SRE/DevOps Engineer at BT Group and co-organizer of Deaf in Cloud Native, a meetup group focused on empowering Deaf and Hard of Hearing professionals in tech and cloud-native. Through my involvement in the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Working Group (DHHWG), I’ve contributed to best practices for inclusive, welcoming conferences and worked with the LF/CNCF to enhance accessibility across our ecosystem.

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

As CTO, Andy Suderman uses his extensive cloud native and Kubernetes experience to help drive research and development at Fairwinds. He has previously held roles as SRE, Principal Engineer and Director of R&D and Technology. He works with infrastructure spanning all three major clouds as well as verticals from Healthcare to SaaS and Fortune 500 to small business. He is a Co-Chair of the Policy Working Group, as well as the author and maintainer of Goldilocks.

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.

Arsh is a Senior DevRel Engineer at MetalBear. He has previously been awarded the Kubernetes Contributor Award for his open source contributions. He loves tinkering with new projects in the cloud ecosystem and writing about his learnings. He has worked in the platform engineering space over the last few years and was part of the open-source Kubernetes team at VMware prior to that. He has also contributed to CNCF projects such as cert-manager and Kyverno. Arsh has written blogs and delivered talks on various topics in the cloud ecosystem. Recordings of some of his past talks can be found at: https://arshsharma.com/speaking/

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I owe a lot to open source and the CNCF open source community in particular. I’m excited to be an ambassador to be able to give back to the community and help others get started on their journey of contributing! As someone who has firsthand witnessed the benefits in personal and professional life thanks to the community, I want others to be able to share these joys as well.

Arthur Berezin is a product leader and Kubernetes expert with extensive experience in cloud-native solutions. As a co-organizer of the CNCF Tel Aviv Chapter and Kubernetes Community Days Tel Aviv, Arthur is committed to fostering the DevOps and Kubernetes communities.

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 Developer Advocate at OVHcloud. She is a CNCF Ambassador, Docker Captain, GDE for Cloud & GitPod Hero. Conferences organizer since 2016. She is a technical writer, a book author & reviewer. She is also a sketchnoter and a speaker at international conferences. She is a co-host for the “Tranches de Tech” OVHcloud podcast. 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
Books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Aur%C3%A9lie-Vache/author/B09WHB5YR6

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.

Aykut Bulgu has 15+ years of experience working as a software engineer, consultant, trainer, and technical content architect. He has worked on many enterprise projects—mainly Java—and has expertise in JBoss middleware. He’s an expert on Apache Kafka, Apache Camel, Kubernetes/OpenShift, and Strimzi (Kafka on Kubernetes).

He is currently working as a Principal Software Engineer at Red Hat Ansible team. After years with Java, he tries to master and embrace Python and Go as his new languages. Moreover, he helps organizations with technical content development and training via System Craftsman.

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.

CNCF. She possesses extensive expertise in optimising Release processes and DevOps methodologies at Zscaler. In her previous role at Servicenow, Bhavani spearheaded a team in migrating infrastructure to Kubernetes, skilfully managing microservice deployments, Kubernetes application backup and monitoring. Recognised as a prominent speaker at conferences, Bhavani is passionate about enlightening audiences on the transformative potential of DevOps and CNCF Projects. Through her involvement with Women in CNCF, she orchestrates workshops focused on CNCF projects and advocates for increased female representation in the CNCF ecosystem.

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.

I am a Solutions Architect at AWS where I help organization adopt Kubernetes at scale. The two areas I focus on are Platform Engineering and Data on Kubernetes.

Open source and cloud native lover by day, sleep deprived mom by night. I’m a non-techie turned techie who is still learning about the CNCF Landscape. I love contributing to community projects, connecting with others, and learning all I can along the way. I work for Nirmata, the creators of Kyverno as Head of Community. I also have experience in DevRel, Solutions Engineering, and a array of non-tech roles to boot. I help organize the CNCF Bilbao Community Meetup and various KCD events. Additionally, I advocate for kindness, support for people transitioning to a career in tech — especially women, DEI, BIPOC, and work-life balance for all parents in this space.

I contribute to Kubernetes SIG Docs as the Japanese localization owner within the CNCF community, and I am also an individual contributor to Kubernetes, Kubernetes CSI, and various Kubernetes SIGs. I serve as an organizer for study groups targeted at beginners, mainly covering cloud-native technologies centered around Kubernetes (https://k8s-novice-jp.connpass.com/). Additionally, I co-host broadcasts with friends on YouTube, where we share updates and news about cloud-native tools (https://www.youtube.com/@KubernetesInternal). When I give presentations, I often share findings from my research into the internal implementations of Kubernetes and its related repositories (https://speakerdeck.com/bells17).

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.

I am passionate about cloud-native technologies and all open-source technologies. I am very curious and I like to share everything I discover. I test some cloud-native technologies to help my city community expand its skills. If I discover and/or do not understand something, I do not hesitate to create issues on open-source technologies to improve the documentation or features. I co-organize a Cloud-Native community with partners to highlight cloud-native and surrounding technologies, such as generative AI.

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.

Dolis Sharma is a seasoned technologist with extensive experience guiding enterprises through their cloud-native journeys. She has deep expertise in Kubernetes, GitOps, DevOps, and DevSecOps, helping organizations accelerate and scale cloud-native adoption. Dolis has built and managed mission-critical systems and successfully led multiple environments through rigorous security certifications, including SOC 2 and ISO 27001. Known for translating complex technical challenges into tangible business outcomes, she partners closely with enterprise teams, offering architecture guidance, automation strategies, and operational best practices. When she’s not exploring the world of technology, she enjoys hiking, chasing waterfalls, relaxing on the beach, or dancing. She holds a diploma in Kathak and loves moving to the rhythm of the music

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!

With over 7 years of experience in the tech industry, currently working as a Solutions Engineer at Sysdig, focusing on cloud native security. He actively contributes to open source by maintaining the Portuguese (Brazil) translations of the Kubernetes documentation, the CNCF Cloud Native Glossary, and OpenTelemetry documentation.

Passionate about business, technology and sports. Teacher and eternal learner. With a background in multiple technologies, I decided to start my own business to provide the best technical advisor services possible. Currently leading multiple communities in Latin America and their events such as KCD Argentina.

As a Senior Platform Engineer and an organizer of Cloud Native Days Romania, I am passionate about fostering welcoming communities and advocating for cloud-native solutions. My goal as a CNCF Ambassador is to empower talented individuals, support meaningful initiatives, and expand CNCF’s reach.

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 also an AWS Container Hero and shares his experience with the community around these technologies. He is part of the organiser team of the official CNCF Istanbul Community Chapter (https://community.cncf.io/istanbul/). He is also part of the CNCF Glossary Turkish team and helps the local community to understand the Cloud Native terms in their native language. 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 KCD (Kubernetes Community Days) Istanbul 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 renowned in the development community as a speaker, lecturer, author, baseball expert, open source maintainer and CNCF Ambassador. His chooses roles that allow him to help the world understand the challenges they are facing with cloud native, development, and 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. More on https://speakerhub.com/speaker/eric-d-schabell

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.

As a Platform Engineer with over 15 years of experience, I specialize in Cloud Native technologies and Kubernetes, focusing on driving these innovations to the edge. In 2016, I founded Fullstaq, a consulting company dedicated to advancing Cloud Native solutions, and through its merger into TrueFullstaq, I now serve as Chief Evangelist. I’m passionate about sharing insights and best practices in the CNCF ecosystem, actively engaging in the community to promote Kubernetes and edge computing.

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.

Henrik Rexed is a Cloud Native Advocate at Dynatrace with over 15 years of expertise as a Performance Engineer. Passionate about Observability and Performance, he actively contributes to the tech community as an organizer of the WOPR and KCD Austria conferences. Henrik is also the creator of the YouTube channel Is It Observable?, where he shares insights on Kubernetes security, observability, and runtime tools.

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. Co-organizer of the CNCF Lagos community group and KCD Nigeria 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.

I have over a decade of experience in cloud and distributed systems, and hold a PhD in the field.

In the role of Cloud Native Training Manager and Senior Engineer at Elastisys, I am helping organizations adopt cloud native technologies and DevOps practices.

As the Linux Foundation Authorized Instructor, I teach all Kubernetes courses in preparation for CKA, CKAD, and CKS exams.

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 runs the Gothenburg chapter for CNCF communities and is an active part in Cloud Native Nordics. She’s building platforms to improve developer experience and passionate about empowering teams to build great products!

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 practitioner and ecosystem builder in the field of AI Native Infrastructure, with a long-term focus on compute governance, GPU resource abstraction, and the evolution of cloud native systems in the AI era.

He is a CNCF Ambassador and a long-time contributor to the cloud native ecosystem, with hands-on experience across projects such as Kubernetes, Envoy, and Istio. He is also the founder of Cloud Native Community China, where he has worked extensively to bridge open source communities, developers, and enterprises.

In recent years, Jimmy’s work has shifted deeper into infrastructure fundamentals, particularly around GPU sharing, scheduling, isolation, utilization, and cost control. He advocates treating compute — especially GPU — as a first-class, governable infrastructure resource, and actively contributes to building scalable, open ecosystems around this vision.

Jimmy is also an author and speaker, sharing insights on the intersection of cloud native technologies and AI infrastructure through writing, talks, and community initiatives.</p

Jintao is a Sr. SE at Kong Inc. Kubernetes Ingress-NGINX maintainer. Microsoft MVP. Public speaker and author. He was speaking at multiple conferences, including KCD, IstioCon, DockerCon, and more. He enjoys sharing technology and has been actively involved in open-source projects for a long time.

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.

I began my IT career as a Linux SysAdmin specializing in deployment. In 2015, everything changed when I discovered Docker, igniting my passion for containerization. I learned Kubernetes and passed the CKA certification in 2020. Currently, I’m an enthusiast of Cilium CNI, have collaborated on the Cilium certification (CCA) and i created an OpenTofu provider for deploying Cilium in Kubernetes. I’m also a Kubestronaut. My blog: https://medium.com/@littel.jo My credly: https://www.credly.com/users/joseph-ligier

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!

He is passionate about cloud native technologies, especially Kubernetes, and is a professional in this field. He leads the localization of Kubernetes and CNCF documentation as a localization approver in SIG-Docs and a reviewer for several projects. Additionally, he is an active OSS contributor to Kubernetes and related projects. To encourage more people to join the community, he is part of the organizer team for Kubernetes Upstream Training. (Related blog post: https://kubernetes.io/blog/2024/10/28/k8s-upstream-training-japan-spotlight/ )

Khanh is maintainer of the PipeCD project. He is currently employed at CyberAgent Inc, and responsible for the CI/CD system across the organization. As a member of the productivity development team, he is interested in anything that improves development and operations processes, especially cloud-native topics. He is also an organizer at the Cloud Native Community Hanoi, Vietnam.

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!

I work as a SRE with SEKAI (swiss based startup) prior to joining SEKAI I worked as a Solution Architect with AWS where I worked with startups on several ways of building on AWS. I spend most of my time working across containers, but my philosophy revolves more about buidling cheaply and reliably. I have written several blogs which revolves around this in some way such as, https://thenewstack.io/how-to-run-databases-in-kubernetes/ https://medium.com/@kollzey69/balancing-innovation-and-cost-in-the-cloud-era-rethinking-best-practices-and-the-role-of-3264677ff726 https://techcabal.com/2024/07/29/strategic-tech-choices-a-cost-centric-philosophy-for-ctos/

He works at Kubermatic as a Kubernetes Consultant and Trainer to help companies with their cloud-native journey. Before that, he worked for startup and enterprise companies in the advertising, banking, and telecom industries as SysAdmin, Application Admin, DevOps Engineer, and SRE for more than 20 years.

Kristina Devochko is a platform engineer, tech content creator, speaker and tech community contributor based in Norway. She focuses on all things cloud native, open source and green tech. Kristina is an owner of kristhecodingunicorn.com tech blog, a CNCF Ambassador, Green Software Champion, host of Platform & Cloud Café podcast, co-organizer of multiple meetup groups and mentor. In her free time Kristina enjoys working on her homelab, 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.

Kunal is a DevOps and Cloud Native Advocate with a passion for Open Source. He’s been involved in the DevOps and open-source ecosystem for 2+ years now and has strong experience in public speaking, community management, content creation etc. He has experience working on and contributing to some of the major projects in the CNCF, including Kubernetes, Layer5 and others. He strives to empower others with his experiences and believes in growing with the community! These days, his focus lies in the field of DevOps, Cloud Native and Developer Relations.

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.

With over a decade of experience working on production, large-scale systems, serving million of users, Lior specializes in DevOps and Site Reliability Engineering principles. He has vast experience working with Kubernetes and contributing to the ecosystem, both as a user and a cloud provider. Lior has also been leading Kubernetes networking efforts and is a key contributor to Gateway API. Alongside his technical work, Lior mentors startups and development teams worldwide, providing them advice in R&D growth, platform scalability, cloud deployments and cost efficiency.

Lisa is a developer advocate and community architect, and is Head of Developer Relations at Intuit (home of Argo Proj). Lisa is also a CNCF Ambassador and Silicon Valley Cloud Native User Group organizer (with over 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! 🙂

Open source enthusiast, Senior DevOps Engineer with experience in implementing CNCF projects/tools including Kubernetes, Argo, etc. and an active community organizer in Kuala Lumpur

Strategic and results-driven GCP Architect with 6+ years of specialized experience in Google Cloud Platform (GCP), complemented by a total of 15+ years in the IT industry. Proven expertise in designing and implementing robust cloud solutions. Passionate about knowledge sharing and actively contributes to the cloud community through workshops, mentorship, and content creation. As an organizer of the Cloud Native Chennai community for the past 4 years, I have led numerous initiatives, fostering a vibrant and collaborative community. Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manikandank276/

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.

Matteo is a seasoned Software and Cloud Engineer but also a former startup CTO, DevRel and Solution Architect. Hacker and builder, advocating for Cloud Native technologies around the world as active member of the Cloud Native community. Matteo is a Kubernetes Release Team Member and active contributor who loves Platform Engineering. Co-organizer of KCD Netherlands and CNGC Netherlands meetups, helping out different KCDs and founding organizer of Cloud Native Days. @mbianchidev on (almost) every social media.

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.

Arif is a Cloud, Platform, Cybersecurity, and AI Architect with over two decade of experience in telecom and cloud-native transformation. He is a passionate advocate for open source and community-driven innovation. As a community leader, Arif co-organizes community activity with Kubernetes User Group Bangladesh (K8SUGBD) and Cloud Native Rajshahi, fostering collaboration and knowledge-sharing across the region.

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’m Michel Murabito, but everyone calls me Mich. I’m a Developer Advocate at Mia-Platform with over 18 years of experience in software development. Throughout my career, I’ve held various roles in tech companies, enhancing my skills and contributing to numerous projects that have shaped my expertise. My areas of interest include Sustainability, Platform Engineering and Cloud Native technologies in general, which have guided my career choices and contributions I actively contribute to the CNCF, participating in the Sustainability TAG and the Platform WG of the APP Delivery TAG, and I organize KCD Italy, a key event for the Kubernetes community in Italy. I founded DevelopersLife, an Italian community of 800 members dedicated to supporting developers, both new and experienced, by providing them with the resources and guidance needed to maximize their professional opportunities in the development sector.

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 Engineering at Nscale, helping to build a next-generation managed Kubernetes service tailored for AI workloads. 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.

Oleg is a developer tools hacker, community builder and DevRel consultant. He’s passionate open source software, open ecosystems and open hardware advocate. Oleg is a core maintainer Jenkins project where he writes code, mentors contributors and organizes community events. He is a CNCF and CDF ambassador, Testcontainers Champion and a former Jenkins Board member and CDF TOC Chair. Oleg has a PhD degree in electronics design and volunteers in the Free and Open Source Silicon Foundation, and in a number of Ukrainian support and Russian anti-war organizations.

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/

Oluebube Princess, also Bube is a Devrel Engineer and an advocate for cloud-native technologies. She co-leads the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) Abuja Chapter and is currently the Docs sub-lead for the Kubernetes v1.31 release. Her expertise lies in container orchestration with Kubernetes and technologies around orchestration.

Orlin Vasilev aka Orlix is a Principal Technology Advocate at SUSE. Also running the communities and maintainer for Project Harbor. CNCF Ambassador and driving the biggest Meetup Group ~1700 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. Runs a YouTube channel where he shares and teaches the technologies and good practices he uses every day as an SRE at Bitso.

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.

Praseeda Sathaye is a Principal Specialist Solution Architect for App Modernization and Containers at Amazon Web Services, based in the Bay Area, California. She specializes in accelerating cloud-native adoption, modernizing platform infrastructure, and architecting microservices using Kubernetes, GitOps, and service mesh. Praseeda has published highly acclaimed workshops and blogs on Amazon EKS, Karpenter, and Istio-on-EKS, which have been widely praised for their educational value. She is an active contributor to the open-source community, having helped add Amazon EKS usecase to Istio documentation. Praseeda is an engaging presenter at major conferences like Grace Hopper, KubeCon and GitopsCon for her ability to make complex topics relatable. With over 25 years of experience in leading, designing, and architecting software products across various domains, Praseeda is an inspirational role model who empowers women and minority groups in the tech industry through her teaching, mentoring, presenting, contributing, and evangelizing efforts.

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 !

Rafael “Rafa” Brito has over 30 years of industry experience in distributed computing, Kubernetes, Cloud, grid/HPC, and high-frequency trading infrastructure (HFT). Rafa is a principal engineer at StormForge by CloudBolt, dedicated to delivering Kubernetes optimization and scalability to customers. Before joining StormForge, Rafa worked at VMware, Citigroup, and NYSE. Rafa co-organizes the KCD Texas and CNCF Austin Community Group, and he serves as co-chair of CNCF TAG Operational Resilience (as of 2025-2026). Rafa is the co-author of the best-selling book “Acing the CKA Exam” 2nd Edition. When not working with Kubernetes, you’ll find Rafa training for marathons at the Lady Bird Trail in Austin, TX, and fanatically rooting for his Brazilian soccer team, Flamengo.

Raj is an accomplished Staff Software Engineer at Harness with over 5+ of experience, making significant strides at a leading Unicorn Startup. His journey in the tech industry is marked by a series of noteworthy contributions. Additionally, Raj plays a crucial role as a current maintainer of LitmusChaos, underlining his deep commitment to open-source projects. Raj’s contributions also extend to other CNCF projects, where he is an active contributor to Prometheus, Kyverno and SigNoz. Balancing roles as a developer by day and SRE by night, he is passionate about building resilient systems and fervently advocates for cloud-native best practices. Raj has shared his expertise at various international conferences, including KubeCon, engaging with the global tech community.

I’m Ramesh Kumar, a dedicated advocate and mentor in the dynamic realm of cloud-native technologies. With a genuine passion for empowering others and a commitment to fostering meaningful connections, my journey is not just about the technology, but about the profound impact I make on the lives of those around me.

At the forefront of my endeavors are the CNCF/Kubernetes meetups I lead in Sacramento and Penang. These gatherings are not just about technical learning, they are about building a community where individuals find support, encouragement, and a strong sense of belonging. I aim to foster collaboration and knowledge sharing, especially caring for the newbies navigating the landscape. Through my patient guidance and steadfast support, I help over 500+ students and professionals navigate the complexities of Kubernetes certifications, empowering them to achieve their goals and pursue their passions.

My specialties lie in mentoring, teaching, training, and collaborating, and I take pride in my ability to inspire and guide others in their learning journey. I love encouraging and inspiring others to reach for their dreams and embrace new opportunities using CNCF Technologies. Whether guiding a career transition or championing initiatives using CNCF technologies, my compassionate approach has a lasting impact on all who encounter me.

Join me on my mission to build a more inclusive and supportive tech community with the help of CNCF. Let’s create a future where collaboration thrives, knowledge is freely shared, and everyone is supported and empowered on their journey to success.

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 Tech Lead at Codefresh by Octopus Deploy, an ArgoCD maintainer and involved with the Argo community. I am also 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.

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.

Rishit is a CS student at the University of Toronto. He spends most of his time researching and working with learning algorithms and vision. Currently, he also works as a research scientist intern at Qualcomm Research. He also maintains/contributes extensively to popular open-source projects like TensorFlow, PyTorch, Kubernetes, and Kubeflow among others and also frequently works on building new open-source projects. You will also often find him speaking at a CNCF conference.

I am a self-proclaimed “cloud automator”, and I work at Sopra Steria based out of Oslo, Norway. I have been granted the title of Microsoft MVP for my work with Azure, and I have been an active contributor in the CNCF for which I earned the title Cloud Native Ambassador. 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 co-chair for the TAG, 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.