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.
Get the latest news on the program by following CNCF Ambassadors on Twitter!
Interested in becoming an Ambassador?
Recent Ambassador News
Now what? Kubernetes troubleshooting with AI?
July 11, 2024CNCF Ambassadors
Browse Geographically
Filter the Full List
Showing 35 of 235 Ambassadors
(He/Him)
Cuemby
Angel Ramirez
(He/Him)
Cuemby
- Location: Delray Beach, United States
- Project Experience: Antrea, Argo, cert-manager, Cilium, containerd, Contour, CoreDNS, Crossplane, Curiefense, Dex, Envoy, etcd, external-secrets, Falco, Fluentd, gRPC, Harbor, Helm, Istio, k3s, KEDA, Knative, Kuma, Linkerd, Longhorn, Operator Framework, Prometheus, Rook, SchemaHero, Strimzi, Tinkerbell
Angel Ramirez is a Kubernetes Certified Administrator (CKA) and curator of the Kubernetes CKA exam, with expertise in cloud computing, infrastructure, cloud and software architecture, DevOps, security, team building, leadership, and community building. With over a decade of experience in the industry, Angel is a skilled practitioner and evangelist of cloud native technologies. Angel has founded the Hispanic Foundation of Cloud Native, which aims to empower the Spanish-speaking community to adopt cloud native technologies, and currently runs two Kubernetes community chapters with over 1500 members, making him a valuable asset and true Kubernetes Ambassador. https://www.youtube.com/@fhcn https://community.cncf.io/kcd-colombia/ https://community.cncf.io/medellin/ https://community.cncf.io/south-florida/ https://www.meetup.com/lahoradekubernetes/ https://www.meetup.com/kubernetes-and-cloud-native-south-florida/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVCT1t69BF4&list=PLKR8WO9E9BlM_22CmbvsiBlWsXQK9l9R5
Why I am excited to be an ambassador: As the Kubernetes Ambassador, I am particularly excited to help the LATAM and Hispanic communities learn and adopt Cloud Native and Kubernetes. Cloud native technologies have the power to transform businesses and individuals alike, and I am passionate about sharing this potential with as many people as possible. By empowering the community to embrace these technologies, we can create a more equitable and prosperous future for everyone. I am honored to have this opportunity to make a difference in the lives of so many people.
(He/Him)
Ankur Kothiwal
(He/Him)
- Location: Devprayag, India
- Project Experience: Cilium, Container Network Interface (CNI), containerd, CRI-O, etcd, Falco, gRPC, Helm, KubeArmor, Kubernetes, Kubescape, Prometheus
I work as a Software Engineer, focusing on cloud-native development. My interest lies in discussing and writing about open-source software, cloud security, and the Linux kernel. Furthermore, I am a contributor and maintainer to the KubeArmor project, and have also served as a mentor in various outreach programs.
Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Being a CNCF ambassador provides the opportunity to connect with inspiring individuals and learn from their diverse experiences. I firmly believe in the strength of open source, and this role offers the opportunity to continue giving back to the community. I look forward to expanding my impact within the community, collaborating with fellow ambassadors, and enjoying the journey of contributing to a thriving ecosystem.
(He/Him)
Anurag Kumar
(He/Him)
- Location: Kolkata, India
- Project Experience: Argo, Artifact Hub, Carvel, cert-manager, Cilium, containerd, Emissary-ingress, Falco, Fluentd, Flux, Harbor, Helm, Istio, k3s, KEDA, ko, KubeArmor, Kubernetes, Kubescape, Kubewarden, Kyverno, Open Policy Agent (OPA), OpenCost, ORAS, Pixie, Prometheus, Telepresence, zot
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.
(He/Him)
Aryat Khayretdinov
(He/Him)
- Location: Montreal, Canada
- Project Experience: Argo, Artifact Hub, containerd, CoreDNS, Crossplane, Emissary-ingress, Envoy, etcd, Falco, Fluentd, Flux, Harbor, Helm, Istio, Jaeger, k3s, KEDA, Kubernetes, Kyverno, Lima, Linkerd, NATS, Notary, OpenCost, OpenEBS, OpenMetrics, OpenTelemetry, ORAS, Pixie, Prometheus, Rook, SPIFFE, SPIRE, Thanos, The Update Framework (TUF), Vitess, WasmEdge Runtime
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.
(He/Him)
Barun Acharya
(He/Him)
- Location: Ghaziabad, India
- Project Experience: Cilium, Container Network Interface (CNI), containerd, CRI-O, Falco, gRPC, Helm, k3s, KubeArmor, Kubernetes, KubeVirt, Kyverno, OpenTelemetry, Operator Framework, Service Mesh Interface (SMI)
Barun likes hacking on low level stuff and fiddling around developer toolings. He maintains KubeArmor, a CNCF Sandbox project and currently works as a Software Engineer at Accuknox. He loves to talk about Open Source and has been associated with programs like Google Summer of Code and LFX Mentorship. Find his blogs at https://barun.cc
Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Becoming a CNCF Ambassador has heightened my enthusiasm to further promote, educate, and support the cloud-native community. Leveraging my prior experience as a speaker and maintainer, I am now even better positioned to advocate for and strengthen the ecosystem through advocacy and knowledge sharing.
(He/Him)
Trendyol
Batuhan Apaydın
(He/Him)
Trendyol
- Location: Istanbul, Turkey
- Project Experience: Argo, Artifact Hub, Buildpacks, cert-manager, containerd, Dex, Falco, Flux, Harbor, Helm, in-toto, ko, Kubernetes, Kyverno, Lima, Notary, Open Policy Agent (OPA), ORAS, SPIFFE, SPIRE, zot
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.
(He/Him)
Basiq
Brad McCoy
(He/Him)
Basiq
- Location: Coolum Beach, Australia
- Languages: English, Spanish
- Project Experience: Artifact Hub, Backstage, Buildpacks, cert-manager, CloudEvents, Container Network Interface (CNI), containerd, Crossplane, Falco, Flux, gRPC, Helm, Jaeger, Keptn, Kubernetes, Open Policy Agent (OPA), OpenGitOps, OpenTelemetry, Prometheus
Brad is originally from New Zealand now working in Australia as the Head of Platform Engineering, he has been involved in the DevOps space for a long time now and serves as a board member of the Continuous Delivery Foundation. Brad is a maintainer of the Keptn project and works on the Kubernetes Release team. And is involved in mentoring in GSoC projects. His favorite projects to work on from the CNCF are GitOps, Security and Observability projects. He is helping to organize the KCD Australia and also runs a meetup in Australia.
Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I’m excited to be an ambassador to further help and mentor other folks coming into the cloud native space and guide them in the right direction. I’m also excited because I can continue working on the outreach of the CNCF and show organizations how they can contribute and help grow the projects and unlock innovation.
(She/Her)
Shopify Inc.
Cailyn Edwards
(She/Her)
Shopify Inc.
- Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
- Project Experience: cert-manager, Cilium, containerd, CoreDNS, Crossplane, etcd, Falco, Fluentd, gRPC, Helm, Kubernetes, Kyverno, Linkerd, Open Policy Agent (OPA), Prometheus, Vitess
Cailyn is a Senior Infrastructure Security Engineer, with a passion for Kubernetes and the open source world. She is an active contributor to Kubernetes SIG-Security, SIG-CLI and a 2022 Kubernetes Contributor Award recipient. Her current focus is on network, and Kubernetes multi-tenancy security and she gets to spend her working hours contributing up stream. It brings her great joy to spend time with the CNCF community and empower folks to become involved. Outside of work Cailyn can be found running, playing squash, walking her dogs or working in the garden.
Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I am *so* excited to be a CNCF ambassador because this community has been incredibly impactful to my growth in the industry and I want to give back. I cannot wait to help share all the wonderful things happening at CNCF and organize events for members new and old. One of my favourite parts of my job is mentoring, and I look forward to being able to do this in the Cloud Native community! I want to ensure that each new member has the same welcoming and positive experience that I did!
.
(She/Her)
Carolina Valencia
(She/Her)
- Location: Sao Paulo, Brazil
- Project Experience: Container Network Interface (CNI), containerd, Falco, Helm, Kubernetes, Kubescape
Carol is an enthusiastic software developer focused on the practices of secure cloud native. She collaborates in open-source projects and contributes to the Kubernetes project. Currently residing in Sao Paulo, Brazil and collaborates with local events. In her free time, she enjoys running, playing beach tennis and watching history documentaries.
Why I am excited to be an ambassador: – The opportunity to establish meaningful relationships with like-minded individuals who are interested in shared knowledge – Contributing to the community by sharing knowledge and announcements inside my local area and social media, to help us to develop ourselves. – Learning and growing together with the community, leveraging the collective knowledge and experiences of its members to foster personal development.
(He/Him)
Civo
Chad M. Crowell
(He/Him)
Civo
- 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 Senior Platform Engineer at Civo, and author of the book “Acing the Certified Kubernetes Administrator Exam”. Chad has been an instructor for over six years on platforms such as A Cloud Guru (now Pluralsight) and INE. Through KubeSkills, he helps people find fun and interactive ways to learn Kubernetes, Linux, and containers.
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.
(He/Him)
Vinted
Edgaras Apsega
(He/Him)
Vinted
- Location: Vilnius, Lithuania
- Project Experience: Argo, Container Network Interface (CNI), containerd, CoreDNS, etcd, Falco, Harbor, Helm, Kubernetes, Prometheus
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!
(He/Him)
Spacelift
Emin Alemdar
(He/Him)
Spacelift
- Location: Izmir, Turkey
- Project Experience: Argo, cert-manager, Cilium, Container Network Interface (CNI), containerd, CoreDNS, Crossplane, Envoy, etcd, external-secrets, Falco, Flux, Harbor, Helm, Istio, Jaeger, k3s, KEDA, KubeArmor, Kubernetes, Kubescape, KubeVirt, Linkerd, Longhorn, Open Policy Agent (OPA), Prometheus, Thanos
Emin is working as a Solutions Architect and has undertaken tasks such as producing solutions related to Kubernetes, Cloud technologies and Cloud Native Transformation in general, and transferring best practices about these areas. He is part of the AWS Community Builder Program within the Containers category and he is part of the HashiCorp Ambassador Program within the Open Source community. He is part of the organiser team of the official CNCF Istanbul Community Chapter (https://community.cncf.io/istanbul/). He publishes blog posts from his personal Medium page (https://medium.com/@eminalemdar) and also participates in Open Source and Cloud Native related conferences and delivers talks about these technologies. He is in the organiser team of Kubernetes Community Days Turkiye conference.
Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Community activities have always been my biggest motivation throughout my career. Helping people and learning from the people by participating in community activities is extremely important for me. Cloud Native Community is really one of a kind and being part of this community is really like a dream coming true for me.
(He/Him)
Halil Ibrahim BUGOL
(He/Him)
- Location: Istanbul, Turkey
- Project Experience: Antrea, Argo, cert-manager, Chaos Mesh, Chaosblade, Cilium, containerd, ContainerSSH, Falco, Fluentd, Harbor, Helm, Istio, k3s, Karmada, KEDA, Knative, KubeEdge, Kubernetes, Kubescape, KubeVirt, Kuma, Litmus, Longhorn, Nocalhost, Open Service Mesh, OpenEBS, OpenELB, OpenFunction, OpenTelemetry, Porter, Prometheus, Rook, Serverless Workflow, Strimzi, TensorFlow, Virtual Kubelet, wasmCloud
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 🙂
(He/Him)
NAV - Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration
Hans Kristian Flaatten
(He/Him)
NAV - Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration
- Location: Bergen, Norway
- Project Experience: Buildpacks, cert-manager, Cilium, Falco, Fluentd, Helm, Jaeger, Kubernetes, Kyverno, Linkerd, Litmus, MetalLB, OpenMetrics, OpenTelemetry, Operator Framework, Prometheus
Platform Engineer in the largest branch of the Norwegian Government (NAV) where I am tech lead for Cloud Native Application Observability. Public speaker and Co-Organizer of KCD Oslo, Cloud Native Bergen, GDG Bergen and Co-Host of Norway’s only Platform Engineering podcast Plattformpodden.
(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
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/They/Them)
censhare GmbH
Husni Alhamdani
(He/Him/They/Them)
censhare GmbH
- Location: Jakarta, Indonesia
- Project Experience: Cilium, Cortex, Falco, Istio, Jaeger, KEDA, Knative, Kubernetes, Kyverno, OpenTelemetry, Pixie, Prometheus
I have been working around infrastructure and platform for more than 5 years, currently, I work as a Site Reliability Engineer (SRE).
I graduated from the LFX mentorship Program in 2022 (Kyverno Project), and in my spare time I do contributions to CNCF Project, so far, I have been contributing to OpenTelemetry, Istio, Cilium, KEDA project.
(He/Him)
Ileriayo Adebiyi
(He/Him)
- Location: Lagos, Nigeria
- Languages: English, Yoruba
- Project Experience: Argo, Falco, Helm, k3s, Kubernetes
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
(He/Him)
Aqua Security
Itay Shakury
(He/Him)
Aqua Security
- Location: Tel Aviv, Israel
- Languages: English, Hebrew
- Project Experience: Falco, Harbor, in-toto, KubeArmor, Kubernetes, Kyverno, Notary, Open Policy Agent (OPA), Open Policy Containers, ORAS, Pixie, Prometheus
Itay Shakury is VP Open Source at Aqua Security, where he leads engineering and strategy of open source, cloud native, security solutions. Itay has some 20 years of professional experience in various software development, architecture and product management roles. Itay had initiated several local technical communities and events, including the successful CNCF Tel Aviv meetup group.
Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I’m honored to be recognized as a CNCF Ambassador, and join this amazing team of worldwide experts. To me, the CNCF is an intersection between two passions of mine – technology and community, which I have been pursuing since early in my career. I’m excited to continue to collaborate with the various technical working groups, events, projects and initiatives that the CNCF ecosystem continuously generates.
(He/Him)
Jim Angel
(He/Him)
- Location: Austin, TX, United States
- Languages: English
- Project Experience: Argo, Buildpacks, cert-manager, Cilium, Container Network Interface (CNI), containerd, CoreDNS, Dex, Dragonfly, Envoy, etcd, external-secrets, Falco, Harbor, Helm, Istio, Knative, ko, Kubeflow, Kubernetes, metal3-io, Open Policy Agent (OPA), Prometheus, Tinkerbell
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.
(He/Him)
Zenable
Jon Zeolla
(He/Him)
Zenable
- Location: Pittsburgh, PA, United States
- Languages: American Sign Language, English
- Project Experience: Curiefense, Falco, Fluentd, in-toto, Kubernetes, Kyverno, Open Policy Agent (OPA), OpenTelemetry
Jon Zeolla is the founder of Zenable, where they are revolutionizing corporate governance by integrating cloud-native security and compliance with artificial intelligence. Previously he co-founded Seiso where he received the 2021 Start-Up Innovator of the Year Award and currently serves as strategic advisor, guiding key business decisions and company growth.
He is also a CNCF Ambassador, SANS Instructor for SEC540: Cloud Security and DevSecOps Automation, and an active member of CNCF TAG Security.
(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)
Liquid Reply
Max Körbächer
(He/Him)
Liquid Reply
- Location: Munich, Germany
- Project Experience: Argo, cert-manager, Cilium, Cloud Custodian, Confidential Containers, Container Network Interface (CNI), Crossplane, Dapr, Envoy, etcd, Falco, Helm, Keptn, KubeEdge, Kubernetes, Kyverno, Linkerd, Longhorn, Open Policy Agent (OPA), OpenCost, OpenFeature, OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Service Mesh Interface (SMI), wasmCloud, WasmEdge Runtime
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.
(He/Him)
Nao Nishijima
(He/Him)
- Location: Fujisawa, Japan
- Project Experience: Cilium, Falco, Helm, Kubeflow, Kubernetes, KubeVirt, Prometheus
For most of his 10+ year career, Nao has been involved in the architecture, design, and engineering of open source systems, including the Linux kernel, OpenStack, Kubernetes, and Hyperledger. Nao is currently working on cloud native and platform services. Nao had started the CNCF/Glossary Japanese translation projects and was one of the organizers of the Cloud Native Community Japan. https://community.cncf.io/cloud-native-community-japan/
Why I am excited to be an ambassador: As an ambassador, I look forward to energizing the technical/non-technical community in Japan and making connections with the global community.
(He/Him)
Desotech
Nicola Marco Decandia
(He/Him)
Desotech
- Location: Altamura, Italy
- Project Experience: Antrea, Carvel, CDK for Kubernetes (CDK8s), cert-manager, Cilium, Container Network Interface (CNI), containerd, Contour, CoreDNS, Dex, Envoy, etcd, Falco, Fluentd, Flux, Harbor, Helm, Istio, Jaeger, k3s, KEDA, Kubernetes, Kyverno, Longhorn, Notary, Open Policy Agent (OPA), OpenEBS, OpenELB, rkt, Rook, Vitess
I am a seasoned cloud-native professional with over 20 years of experience in the industry, specializing in Kubernetes, containerization, and DevOps practices. As the founder and organizer of the Bari and Matera CNCF Cloud-Native Meetup, I have fostered a strong local community committed to sharing knowledge and best practices. My technical expertise spans across multiple CNCF projects, including Prometheus, Envoy, and Helm. I regularly share my insights and experiences on my blog at www.tanzu.eu, where I explore emerging trends and innovative solutions in the cloud-native ecosystem. Passionate about continuous learning and collaboration, I am excited to contribute to the community as a CNCF Ambassador.
Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I am thrilled to be an Ambassador because it allows me to actively contribute to the growth and development of the cloud-native ecosystem, which I am truly passionate about. This role provides a unique platform to engage with a diverse and talented community, enabling the exchange of knowledge and ideas that drive innovation. Furthermore, being an Ambassador presents the opportunity to mentor and inspire others while learning from the collective experiences of fellow professionals. It is an honor to serve as a bridge between the CNCF and the broader community, fostering collaboration and mutual support.
(He/Him)
Gradle / CDF / Jenkins
Oleg Nenashev
(He/Him)
Gradle / CDF / Jenkins
- Location: Neuchâtel, Switzerland
- Languages: English, French, Russian
- Project Experience: Argo, Artifact Hub, Backstage, Buildpacks, Cilium, CloudEvents, Crossplane, Falco, Fluentd, gRPC, Helm, Istio, Jaeger, Keptn, Knative, Kubernetes, KubeVirt, Open Policy Agent (OPA), OpenFeature, OpenFunction, OpenGitOps, Operator Framework, Prometheus
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/
(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)
AccuKnox
Rahul Jadhav
(He/Him)
AccuKnox
- Location: Bangalore, India
- Project Experience: Cilium, Container Network Interface (CNI), Falco, in-toto, k3s, KubeArmor, Kubescape, Kyverno, SPIFFE, SPIRE
An avid coder, a systems engineer working on solutions involving security and performance optimizations of cloud-native technologies. He runs a Kubernetes Cloud Native Security Bangalore Meetup and has been working closely with IETF Standards working groups. Taken several projects from conception to market and is an active maintainer for CNCF Sandbox project, “KubeArmor” and the lead author for IoT simulation framework “Whitefield”. He co founded Accuknox where they are enabling runtime, zero-trust security by leveraging Linux-LSM/eBPF based security for k8s and containerized/cloud-native workloads.
Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Connecting to community and engaging at events, meeting new people, talking about cloud native technologies is something that I cherish. It is always great to be an ambassador of the community whose motto and modus operandi is something that I believe in. One specific goal that I would like to achieve is to establish a security focussed community locally by understanding activities that were undertaken at CNCF wide initiatives.
(He/Him)
kubernetes@.com
Ramesh Kumar
(He/Him)
kubernetes@.com
- Location: Sacramento, United States
- Project Experience: Argo, cert-manager, Cilium, Container Network Interface (CNI), CoreDNS, Crossplane, Emissary-ingress, Envoy, etcd, Falco, Fluentd, Flux, gRPC, Helm, Istio, Jaeger, k3s, Kubernetes, Kubescape, KubeVirt, Lima, Linkerd, Network Service Mesh, Open Cluster Management, Open Policy Agent (OPA), Open Policy Containers, Open Service Mesh, OpenCost, OpenEBS, OpenELB, OpenGitOps, OpenMetrics, OpenTelemetry, OpenTracing, Service Mesh Interface (SMI), Service Mesh Performance, Virtual Kubelet, Vitess
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.
(He/Him)
Isovalent
Raphaël Pinson
(He/Him)
Isovalent
- Location: Lausanne, Switzerland
- Project Experience: Argo, cert-manager, Cilium, Container Network Interface (CNI), Falco, Flux, Helm, k3s, Kubernetes, Open Policy Agent (OPA), OpenTracing, Prometheus
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.
(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)
Sagar Utekar
(He/Him)
- Location: Pune, India
- Project Experience: Argo, CDK for Kubernetes (CDK8s), Cilium, containerd, Falco, Fluentd, Harbor, Helm, Istio, Jaeger, k3s, KEDA, Keptn, Kubeflow, Kubernetes, Kuma, Meshery, Open Policy Agent (OPA), Open Service Mesh, OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Service Mesh Interface (SMI), TensorFlow, Thanos
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.
(He/Him/They/Them)
Rafay Systems
Saim Safdar
(He/Him/They/Them)
Rafay Systems
- Location: Rawalpindi, Pakistan
- Project Experience: Argo, Backstage, CDK for Kubernetes (CDK8s), cert-manager, Cilium, containerd, Crossplane, Envoy, etcd, Falco, Fluentd, Helm, Istio, KEDA, Kubernetes, Kubescape, Kyverno, Linkerd, Open Policy Agent (OPA), Open Service Mesh, OpenFeature, OpenTelemetry, Paralus
Hello, my name is Saim Safdar, working as a Developer Relations Manager at Rafay Systems, host of the cloud-native podcast (https://www.youtube.com/@cloudnativefm), co-founder of Cloud Native Islamabad (https://community.cncf.io/islamabad/), Organizer of KCD Pakistan (https://www.cncf.io/blog/2023/03/10/from-community-group-to-event-a-kcd-pakistan-experience/). Maintainer of the cncf Sandbox project, Paralus (https://www.paralus.io/).
Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I love sharing my Open Source jourey with others, currently there’s a desparate need of mentorship within the community, as cloud native eco-system constantly equipped with new tooling, students, tech pro, difficult to find and map existing knowledge to work with OS and communities, I’m hoping my time as an Ambassador, I’ll get on-board and shortened the loop for code to contribution to outreaching new OS tooling to the world.
(He/Him)
Thomas Labarussias
(He/Him)
- Location: Bordeaux, France
- Project Experience: Argo, Cilium, CloudEvents, Container Network Interface (CNI), containerd, Falco, Fluentd, Helm, k3s, KEDA, ko, Kubernetes, Kyverno, NATS, OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Thanos
I’m OSS/Ecosystem Advocate at Sysdig, the company which created and open-sourced Falco, the Security Runtime Engine for Kubernetes and Cloud-Native technologies. I worked for Qonto, a modern banking for SMEs and freelancers, where I managed their Kubernetes clusters and the enthusiastic tools around, like ArgoCD, Traefik, Prometheus. I also assisted for many years pure-players and e-business companies for a large managed service provider, as an AWS expert and FinOps. I’m one of the longest tenured members of the Falco community, and the creator of Falcosidekick and Falcosidekick-UI, two major components of the Falco ecosystem.
Why I am excited to be an ambassador: As an SRE for several years, I’ve been able to use a number of CNCF projects in production. I’m also one of the maintainers of the most advanced OSS security project in the landscape. I would like to help even more architects and users to integrate these projects into their infrastructures. Moreover, in 2024, the KubeCon EU will be in Paris, France, it’s important for me to do my best to help the organizers and show the vitality of French tech.
(He/Him)
Canonical Ltd.
Tiexin Guo
(He/Him)
Canonical Ltd.
- Location: Chengdu, China
- Languages: Chinese, English
- Project Experience: Argo, Backstage, cert-manager, Cilium, Container Network Interface (CNI), DevStream, external-secrets, Falco, Flux, Helm, Istio, Kubernetes, Linkerd, NATS, Open Policy Agent (OPA), Prometheus
Founder and PMC chair of DevStream@CNCF, ex-AWS senior DevOps, ex-Huawei tech expert, cloud architect for Daimler, Tesco, Credit Suisse, and other Fortune 500 corps. Writer at DevOps.com, guest expert at GitGuardian (DevSecOps), blog@Medium: https://medium.com/4th-coffee. Key speaker at the 1st Lisbon K8s meetup. Keynote speaker of BuildStuff 2022. I specialize in DevOps and cloud-related technologies, like CI/CD, developer tools, Terraform, AWS, etc., and I blog on DevOps/DevSecOps.
Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I am truly excited and honored to be an ambassador for the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). This opportunity allows me to contribute to the promotion and adoption of cutting-edge cloud-native technologies, which play a crucial role in shaping the future of software development and infrastructure. Being an ambassador also connects me with a vibrant, passionate community of professionals who share insights and experiences, fostering collaboration and innovation. I am genuinely grateful for this chance to learn from others and help drive the industry forward, making a meaningful impact on the cloud-native ecosystem.
(He/Him)
Viktor Farcic
(He/Him)
- Location: Barcelona, Spain
- Project Experience: Argo, Buildpacks, CDK for Kubernetes (CDK8s), Cilium, Crossplane, Dapr, DevSpace, Falco, Flux, Harbor, Helm, KEDA, Knative, KubeArmor, Kubernetes, Kubescape, KubeVela, KubeVirt, Kyverno, OpenFunction, OpenGitOps, Pixie, Prometheus, SchemaHero, Teller
Viktor Farcic is a lead rapscallion at Upbound and a published author. He is a host of the YouTube channel DevOps Toolkit and a co-host of DevOps Paradox.
Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Viktor Farcic is excited to join the CNCF Ambassadors program because he believes in the power of open source software to transform the world. He is passionate about helping others learn about and adopt CNCF technologies, and he is eager to contribute to the CNCF community in new and innovative ways. Viktor is also excited to be part of a team of dedicated and talented individuals who are working to make the world a better place through open source software.