Meet your Cloud Native Ambassadors (CNAs)!
Ambassadors are an extension of CNCF, furthering the mission of “making cloud native ubiquitous” through community leadership and mentorship.
Interested in becoming an ambassador? Learn more about the application process and requirements.
Get the latest news on the program by following CNCF Ambassadors on Twitter!
Recent Ambassador News
CNCF Ambassadors
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Showing 19 of 154 Ambassadors
(He/Him)
Forrester Research

Aditya Soni
(He/Him)
Forrester Research
- Location: Jaipur, India
- Project Experience: Argo, cert-manager, Container Network Interface (CNI), containerd, ContainerSSH, CRI-O, DevSpace, DevStream, Envoy, etcd, Fluentd, Flux, gRPC, Helm, Istio, Jaeger, Knative, Kubeflow, Kuberhealthy, Kubernetes, Kubescape, Linkerd, Litmus, Open Cluster Management, OpenGitOps, OpenTelemetry, Operator Framework, Serverless Workflow, Service Mesh Interface (SMI), Service Mesh Performance
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.
(He/Him)
Canonical

Alex Jones
(He/Him)
Canonical
- Location: London, United Kingdom
- Project Experience: Argo, cert-manager, Cilium, containerd, CRI-O, Crossplane, Envoy, Helm, Jaeger, k3s, Keptn, Kube-OVN, Kubernetes, KubeVirt, Linkerd, Longhorn, Open Policy Agent (OPA), OpenEBS, OpenFeature, OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Rook, Volcano
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.
(She/Her)
Boer Technology

Ananda Dwi Rahmawati
(She/Her)
Boer Technology
- Location: Yogyakarta, Indonesia
- Project Experience: Argo, Buildpacks, CDK for Kubernetes (CDK8s), cert-manager, Chaos Mesh, Cilium, Container Network Interface (CNI), containerd, CoreDNS, CRI-O, Envoy, etcd, Falco, Fluentd, Flux, gRPC, Harbor, Helm, Istio, Jaeger, k3s, KEDA, Keptn, Knative, Konveyor, KubeArmor, Kubeflow, Kubernetes, KubeVela, KubeVirt, Litmus, LitmusChaos, Longhorn, Network Service Mesh, Open Policy Agent (OPA), Open Policy Containers, Open Service Mesh, OpenEBS, OpenELB, OpenFeature, OpenGitOps, OpenMetrics, OpenTelemetry, Porter, Prometheus, rkt, Rook, Submariner, TensorFlow, Thanos, Vitess, Volcano
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.
(He/Him)
Freelance - Crossover Engineering B.V.

Andrea Giardini
(He/Him)
Freelance - Crossover Engineering B.V.
- Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Project Experience: Argo, Artifact Hub, cert-manager, containerd, CoreDNS, CRI-O, etcd, external-secrets, Fluentd, Flux, Harbor, Helm, Istio, k3s, KEDA, Knative, Kubeflow, Kubernetes, Linkerd, Prometheus
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.
(He/Him)
Raft

Chad Crowell
(He/Him)
Raft
- Location: Austin, TX, United States
- Project Experience: cert-manager, Cilium, Container Network Interface (CNI), containerd, CoreDNS, CRI-O, Crossplane, CubeFS, Envoy, etcd, Falco, Flux, gRPC, Harbor, Helm, Istio, k3s, KEDA, Kubernetes, KubeVirt, Linkerd, Longhorn, Open Policy Agent (OPA), Prometheus, Service Mesh Interface (SMI), Service Mesh Performance, Thanos, Virtual Kubelet
Chad is a DevSecOps Engineer for Raft (goraft.tech), and author of the book “Acing the Certified Kubernetes Administrator Exam”. Chad has been an instructor for over five years on platforms such as A Cloud Guru and INE. Through KubeSkills, he helps people find fun and interactive ways to learn Kubernetes.
Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I really enjoy helping people get involved in open source software. I have realized the power of community, in lifting others up and succeeding together, and I love to share it with others. I believe it is my duty in life to share what I’ve learned in order to make intellectual progress as a human race.
JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Dio Rettori
JPMorgan Chase & Co.
- Location: Frisco, TX, United States
- Project Experience: Argo, Backstage, Buildpacks, Cilium, CloudEvents, Container Network Interface (CNI), CRI-O, Envoy, etcd, Flux, Helm, Istio, Kubernetes, Kyverno, Linkerd, Network Service Mesh, Open Policy Agent (OPA), Open Service Mesh, OpenTelemetry, OpenTracing, ORAS, Prometheus, SPIFFE, SPIRE
Executive Director at JPMorgan Chase & Co, Head of Cloud Architecture & Engineering for Asset & Wealth Management. Working with Kubernetes since 2014. Founded multiple meetups and currently involved in the North Dallas CNCF Meetup.
Why I am excited to be an ambassador: My passion is growing the community by finding, creating and delivering meaningful content. I want members to feel skilled to do their work, and aware of the evolution and innovation in the space.
(She/Her)
Ambassador Labs

Edidiong (Didi) Asikpo
(She/Her)
Ambassador Labs
- Location: Lagos, Nigeria
- Project Experience: CRI-O, DevSpace, Emissary-ingress, Flux, gRPC, Helm, Prometheus, Telepresence
Edidiong Asikpo is a Senior Developer Advocate based in Lagos, Nigeria. She is passionate about sharing her knowledge of DevOps through technical articles, videos, and social media. Edidiong has given over 100+ talks at tech events worldwide and continues to play a significant role in building developer communities in Africa. She is a Certified Kubernetes Application Developer and Open Source contributor. When she’s not doing anything tech-related, she travels across the world, takes beautiful pictures, and analyzes movies.
Why I am excited to be an ambassador: July is going to make it 2 years since I transitioned to the cloud native ecosystem. The thing with moving to a new field is that you’d often times struggle with imposter syndrome or ask yourself if you made the right decision to switch when things become overwhelming. Nevertheless, I woke up every day trying to do better and put my best foot forward. Less than two years down the line and I’ve been selected as a CNCF Ambassador. What? That’s so exciting for me and it makes me super proud of myself for not being scared to take a chance on myself and learn in public. Now, I can create and share cloud native learning resources, guides, and how-tos with the community on a global scale.
Chronosphere

Eric D Schabell
Chronosphere
- Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Project Experience: Argo, containerd, CRI-O, Fluentd, Helm, Jaeger, Kubernetes, OpenTelemetry, OpenTracing, Operator Framework, Prometheus
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.
(He/Him)
Hangzhou HarmonyCloud Technology Co., Ltd

Huan Wei
(He/Him)
Hangzhou HarmonyCloud Technology Co., Ltd
- Location: Hangzhou, China
- Project Experience: Argo, cert-manager, Chaos Mesh, Chaosblade, Cilium, Container Network Interface (CNI), containerd, CoreDNS, CRI-O, Envoy, Falco, Fluentd, gRPC, Harbor, Helm, Istio, Karmada, KEDA, Knative, KubeEdge, Kubernetes, KubeVirt, Prometheus, Volcano, WasmEdge
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.
(He/Him)
SIGHUP

Jacopo Nardiello
(He/Him)
SIGHUP
- Location: Milano, Italy
- Project Experience: Argo, Cilium, Container Network Interface (CNI), CoreDNS, CRI-O, etcd, Helm, Kubernetes, Kuma, Open Policy Agent (OPA), Prometheus
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.
(He/Him)
Apple

Kohei Ota
(He/Him)
Apple
- Location: Japan
- Languages: English, Japanese
- Project Experience: Argo, cert-manager, Cilium, containerd, Contour, CRI-O, Envoy, etcd, external-secrets, Falco, Fluentd, gRPC, Harbor, Helm, Jaeger, KEDA, Kubernetes, KubeVirt, Lima, Longhorn, OpenTelemetry, Pixie, Prometheus, Telepresence, Tinkerbell
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!
(He/Him)

Lucas Käldström
(He/Him)
- Location: Helsinki, Finland
- Project Experience: cert-manager, Container Network Interface (CNI), containerd, CoreDNS, CRI-O, etcd, Flux, gRPC, Helm, Jaeger, Kubernetes, OpenGitOps, OpenMetrics, OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, The Update Framework (TUF)
Lucas is an independent cloud native expert, former Kubernetes SIG co-lead, an avid KubeCon speaker, and one of the organizers of the CNCF meetups in Finland. Primary expertise include Kubernetes, GitOps and educating cloud native concepts.
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.
(He/Him)
Red Hat

Mario Loriedo
(He/Him)
Red Hat
- Location: Paris, France
- Project Experience: Argo, Backstage, CRI-O, Devfile, Dex, Helm, Istio, Kubernetes, KUDO, Operator Framework
Mario is a Senior Principal Software Engineer at Red Hat. He works on container-based developer tools. He co-maintains the CNCF Devfile project and leads the Eclipse Che project. He has been a speaker at conferences such as KubeCon, LinuxCon, JavaOne and FOSDEM.
Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I am excited to be part of the CNCF ambassador program because that will help share my knowledge and my experience as a developer using and developing Kubernetes with others. I am also looking forward to meet with other ambassadors.
(He/Him)
AWS

Phil Estes
(He/Him)
AWS
- Location: Charlottesville, Virginia, United States
- Project Experience: Buildpacks, Confidential Containers, containerd, CRI-O, Distribution, gRPC, Istio, k3s, Keylime, ko, Kubernetes, Lima, Notary, OpenTelemetry, ORAS, The Update Framework (TUF), Virtual Kubelet, zot
Phil is a Principal Engineer for Amazon Web Services (AWS), focused on core container technologies that power AWS container compute offerings. Phil is currently an active contributor and maintainer for containerd, a graduated CNCF project, and participates in the Open Container Initiative (OCI) as the member of the Technical Oversight Board (TOB). Phil enjoys helping others understand and implement container and cloud native concepts and speaks worldwide at industry conferences and meetups on behalf of AWS and his open source roles.
Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I’m excited to be a CNCF ambassador for the express purpose of helping others understand the world of containers and, specifically, the core container runtime technology and standards that enable and power that world. Having been involved in the CNCF since nearly its beginning, I know that it can be an overwhelming place for newcomers at it has grown, and as an ambassador, I’m happy to play a part in helping people understand and navigate the projects and work of the CNCF.
(He/Him)
Innablr

Prateek Nayak
(He/Him)
Innablr
- Location: Melbourne, Australia
- Project Experience: Argo, Artifact Hub, Buildpacks, CDK for Kubernetes (CDK8s), cert-manager, Chaos Mesh, Cilium, Container Network Interface (CNI), containerd, Contour, CoreDNS, Cortex, CRI-O, Crossplane, Envoy, Falco, Fluentd, Flux, gRPC, Helm, Istio, Jaeger, Knative, Kubescape, Kubewarden, Kured, Linkerd, Litmus, LitmusChaos, Notary, Open Policy Agent (OPA), OpenCost, OpenEBS, OpenTelemetry, OpenTracing, Operator Framework, Pixie, Prometheus, SPIFFE, Thanos, Virtual Kubelet
I’m the Chief Technology Officer at Innablr, a top cloud engineering and platform consultancy in Melbourne. My role involves setting the technology direction for Innablr and guiding our clients through their transformation journey. I’ve been fortunate to work with some big companies in Melbourne, where I’ve helped them modernise their tech stacks with cloud native platforms that deliver applications quickly and securely. I started out as a developer and gradually transitioned to cloud engineering and DevOps. I’m really enthusiastic about the Kubernetes ecosystem and even co-organise the Melbourne Kubernetes User Group. We have recently started the Cloud Sustainability User Group Australia / New Zealand to build the comunity around the topic of sustainability.
Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I’m thrilled about becoming a CNCF Ambassador because it would serve as validation for the work I’ve done building the Melbourne Kubernetes community over the past few years. As an ambassador, I will have the opportunity to amplify my efforts and further expand the community.
(He/Him)
sevensphere

Rachid Zarouali
(He/Him)
sevensphere
- Location: Lyon, France
- Project Experience: Argo, Artifact Hub, cert-manager, Cilium, containerd, ContainerSSH, CoreDNS, Cortex, CRI-O, Crossplane, Curiefense, DevSpace, etcd, external-secrets, Falco, Fluentd, Harbor, Helm, k3s, KEDA, Kubernetes, Kubescape, KubeVirt, Kured, Kyverno, metal3-io, Notary, Open Policy Agent (OPA), OpenCost, OpenMetrics, OpenTelemetry, ORAS, Parsec, Pixie, Prometheus, Telepresence, Thanos, zot
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 !
(He/Him)
Nordcloud, an IBM company

Robin Smorenburg
(He/Him)
Nordcloud, an IBM company
- Location: Almere, Netherlands
- Project Experience: Argo, Backstage, Buildpacks, cert-manager, Chaos Mesh, Cilium, Container Network Interface (CNI), containerd, CoreDNS, CRI-O, Crossplane, Envoy, etcd, Falco, Fluentd, Flux, gRPC, Helm, Istio, Jaeger, KEDA, Knative, KubeArmor, Kubernetes, Linkerd, Open Policy Agent (OPA), Open Service Mesh, OpenTelemetry, Prometheus
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!
(He/Him)
Red Hat

Sascha Grunert
(He/Him)
Red Hat
- Location: Leipzig, Germany
- Project Experience: Argo, cert-manager, Confidential Containers, CRI-O, gRPC, Kubeflow, Kubernetes
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.
(He/Him)
Kasten by Veeam

Sylvain Huguet
(He/Him)
Kasten by Veeam
- Location: Paris, France
- Project Experience: cert-manager, Container Network Interface (CNI), containerd, CRI-O, Dex, Emissary-ingress, Envoy, etcd, Falco, Fluentd, Harbor, Helm, Istio, k3s, K8up, Kubernetes, KubeVirt, Kyverno, Longhorn, Open Policy Agent (OPA), OpenEBS, OpenTelemetry, OpenTracing, Operator Framework, Prometheus, Rook, WasmEdge
KCD France Organizer & Director of Technical Product Management at Kasten by Veeam, I specialize in all things Cloud Native, obviously Kubernetes, but also Storage, Network, Compute, Observability, Security, Infrastructure, etc. From datacenters to applications, from business to operations, I enjoy talking about every aspect of our connected world.
Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I’m excited to represent the CNCF as an Ambassador to help others find their path through Cloud Native technologies and get started in the space. There is a technology for everyone, and there is a space for everyone, no matter to skill level, no matter you interest. If you don’t know where to start, come talk to me, I’ll be happy to get you oriented!