Ambassadors

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Emin is working as a Solutions Architect and has undertaken tasks such as producing solutions related to Kubernetes, Cloud technologies and Cloud Native Transformation in general, and transferring best practices about these areas. He is also an AWS Container Hero and shares his experience with the community around these technologies. He is part of the organiser team of the official CNCF Istanbul Community Chapter (https://community.cncf.io/istanbul/). He is also part of the CNCF Glossary Turkish team and helps the local community to understand the Cloud Native terms in their native language. He publishes blog posts from his personal Medium page (https://medium.com/@eminalemdar) and also participates in Open Source and Cloud Native related conferences and delivers talks about these technologies. He is in the organiser team of KCD (Kubernetes Community Days) Istanbul conference.

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

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

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 🙂

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mario is from a small village in Germany and working for Kubermatic. He studied creative media at an English university and moved his field of knowledge to Cloud Native Infrastructure. He is working as a Customer Delivery Architect with the focus on planning and building concepts and architecture for Infrastructure in the cloud native world. Furthermore, he started the Google Developer Group for Cloud in Munich back in 2016. His passion is always to move the cloud native community one step forward. He is part of the Kubernetes SIG ContribEx and helps in the SIG K8s Infra with reporting.

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

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

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

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.

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/

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

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

I’m Ramesh Kumar, a 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.

I create content around CNCF projects, building enablement content around CNCF projects. I help contribute around marketing and community efforts with CNCF projects. I am a new code contributor to a CNCF project

Saloni Narang is the co-founder of KubeSimplify, where she leads content strategy and development for the Kubesimplify YouTube channel, making cloud-native technologies accessible to all. She has helped organize meetups in Bangalore, Mumbai, and Chandigarh, creating spaces for Kubernetes enthusiasts to connect and learn. Saloni has spoken at KubeCon Paris and will be presenting at the upcoming KubeCon North America. https://kubesimplify.com/

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

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

I’m a Open Source mega fan, part of Cloud Native Santiago, Open Source Santiago and DevOps Days Santiago, finally a Developer Advocate from the hearth

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.

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

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