Ambassadors

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.

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

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

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

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

Annie Talvasto is an award-winning international technology speaker & marketing leader. She has been recognised with the CNCF Ambassador & Azure MVP awards. Annie has been a co-organizer of Kubernetes & CNCF Finland meetup since 2017 and has spoken at technology conferences across the world, including KubeCon + CloudNativeCon, Microsoft Build & Ignite, KCDC and NDC. Annie also has hosted Cloud Native Live, a weekly livestream by CNCF, since 2021.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I believe in the positive impact open source technology and CNCF projects have in the world, and I am excited to continue spreading the word about them!

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Staff Engineer at Alibaba Cloud, working on cloud native technologies, maintainer of KubeVela, a CNCF incubation project.

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.

Co-founder of the Nordic meetup alliance, Cloud Native Nordics, where he also organize the Aarhus group, and tries to help the nordic community as much as possible, e.g. setting up KCDs and more. He works as Lead Platform Architect at Lunar where he in the past has shared many experiences with Cloud Native tech at meetups and conferences. Kasper wrote his master thesis, “KubeCloud – A Small Scale Cloud Computing Environment”, on how Universities could leverage small-scale cloud environments built out of Raspberry Pis running Kubernetes.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I’m excited to be an ambassador, because it’s a great community of like-minded people. I hope to meet and learn from the other awesome Ambassadors, and help grow the adoption of Cloud Native technologies even more here in the Nordics.

Kunal is empowering communities via open-source and education. He finds passion in teaching and has taught thousands of folks online and in person. He is a developer relations manager at Civo, CNCF Ambassador, TEDx speaker and a GitHub Star. He is the founder of WeMakeDevs and also started the official Cloud Native Student Community group joined by thousands of folks, focussed on getting more young people involved in the ecosystem. In the past he has been a track chair of the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon, Major League Hacking Coach and a Google Summer of Code mentor with Red Hat. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/KunalKushwaha Blog: https://blog.wemakedevs.org Community: https://wemakedevs.org

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I am a strong believer in the importance of diversity and inclusion, particularly in the field of cloud native technology. My goal has always been to facilitate the learning and onboarding process for individuals interested in this ecosystem. Therefore, I believe that becoming a CNCF Ambassador would be a significant step towards achieving this objective.

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.

Lukonde is a Senior Developer Advocate at AWS. He has years of experience in application development, solution architecture, cloud engineering, and DevOps workflows. He is a life-long learner and is passionate about open-source and developer communities. Nowadays, Lukonde spends the majority of his time contributing to the cloud-native ecosystem. He specializes in Kubernetes, service meshes, and GitOps (ArgoCD and Flux). YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/LukondeMwila

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I’m excited to be an ambassador because it’s an opportunity to contribute to help provide enable for those who are part of the cloud native community, as well as those wanting to join. In addition to that, I’m excited to be a part of a group of individuals who are passionate about the development and adoption of cloud-native technologies. I’m also very keen to help expand the cloud-native footprint in Africa.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scott is a Brooklyn based interdisciplinary artist and Developer Advocate. He co-founded the Basekamp art and research group in 1998 and the massively collaborative Plausible Artworlds international network. In technology he enjoys helping develop open source software that anyone can use, most recently projects in the cloud native landscape including co-maintaining Helm, Flux, and OpenGitOps. He helps organize groups such as NYC Kubernetes meetup and CNCF GitOps Working Group under TAG App Delivery. In daily decisions large or small, he tries to help make the world a better place for everyone.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I deeply enjoy helping members of the wider open source community, specifically the CNCF and LF project communities. I try to lift others up whenever possible: through co-presenting talks, replying in Slack, amplifying the work of others, welcoming new people to meetings, helping ensure meetings run smoothly, helping with CNCF Working Group and project governance, and generally being an ally. I’m particularly interested in continuing to encourage cross-project collaboration and alignment between people in CNCF TAGs, WGs and projects. I’m also very dedicated to continuing to help new people step up contributor ladders (and encouraging the creation of those ladders when not present), specifically getting involved in things like project pull request reviews, design discussions, and communication processes around projects and WGs.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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