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?
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July 11, 2024CNCF Ambassadors
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Showing 13 of 231 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, 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)
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, 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)
Di Xu
(He/Him)
- Location: Shanghai, China
- Project Experience: Argo, cert-manager, Cilium, CoreDNS, CRI-O, Crossplane, CubeFS, Envoy, etcd, Fluentd, Flux, gRPC, Harbor, Helm, Istio, Jaeger, k3s, Karmada, KEDA, Kubernetes, KubeVela, KubeVirt, Lima, Open Cluster Management, OpenKruise, OpenTelemetry, Pixie, Thanos, TiKV, Vineyard, Virtual Kubelet, Volcano
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.
(He/Him)
Hung-Ying Tai
(He/Him)
- Location: Taipei, Taiwan
- Project Experience: containerd, CRI-O, Kubernetes, Lima, WasmEdge Runtime
I am the maintainer of WasmEdge Runtime and an active mentor in LFX mentorship. I am enthusiastic about sharing how to leverage the WebAssembly technology with the Cloud Native ecosystem, including giving talks at the conference[1] and hosting online tutorials [2]. [1]: https://kccnceu2023.sched.com/event/6c0f559281122a74f5292f3d05b5936e?iframe=no#video_stream [2]: https://coscup.org/2023/zh-TW/session/EFYC8R I am going to have more tutorials and information related to Cloud Native+Wasm on my personal blog (https://hyd.ai). Stay tuned!
Why I am excited to be an ambassador: WebAssembly is new for the Cloud Native ecosystem. I’m excited to join the CNCF ambassador community this year to promote the connection between Could Native software and Wasm and bring this knowledge to local communities and university clubs/courses in Taiwan.
(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
Leonard Pahlke
(He/Him)
Liquid Reply
- Location: Hamburg, Germany
- Project Experience: Argo, Backstage, Buildpacks, CloudEvents, CoreDNS, Crossplane, Dapr, Envoy, gRPC, Helm, Kubernetes, Lima, NATS, OpenFeature, OpenTelemetry, Prometheus
Hey, my name is Leonard Pahlke, and I am a software engineer with a focus on cloud, open source and sustainability. I like to build systems that tend to get big and complex. I post regularly on the CNCF blog and my own website lvsp.io. I am a CNCF Ambassador, Chair for the CNCF TAG Environmental Sustainability, lead the Kubernetes release team for v1.26 and organize meetups in Hamburg.
Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I love the cloud and the infinite variety and complexity of systems that can be built on it. The CNCF truly makes cloud-native applications accessible to anyone and any platform. The open source spirit fascinates and inspires me. Serving as a ambassador the community is a great honor.
(He/Him)
Nscale
Nick Jones
(He/Him)
Nscale
- Location: Edinburgh, United Kingdom
- Project Experience: Argo, Cilium, Container Network Interface (CNI), containerd, CoreDNS, etcd, Fluentd, Helm, k3s, KUDO, Lima, Longhorn, Open Policy Agent (OPA), Submariner
Serial meetup organiser, including Cloud Native and Kubernetes Edinburgh, CNK Manchester, as well as larger events such as Kubernetes Community Days UK. Currently employed as Head of Engineering at Nscale, helping to build a next-generation managed Kubernetes service tailored for AI workloads. Passionate about new technology, but simultaneously romantic about the old with a penchant for decrepit Silicon Graphics and Sun Microsystems hardware. Sporadically blogs at https://dischord.org
Why I am excited to be an ambassador: As a CNCF Ambassador, I’m really excited about formalising the ability to build bridges across the CNCF ecosystem, helping communities collaborate and support each other in their Cloud Native journey. I look forward to being able to leverage the resources and support provided by the CNCF to bring the best to the community events that I’m a part of.
(He/Him)
SUSE Rancherlabs
Nuno Do Carmo
(He/Him)
SUSE Rancherlabs
- Location: Montreux, Switzerland
- Project Experience: k3s, Kubernetes, Kubewarden, Lima, Meshery
Known as the Corsair and a massive Windows fan in the Cloud Native community, he set his mission to help running the amazing Cloud Native projects on WSL2 and create “technologically inclusive” blogs at https://wsl.dev. He’s also a Tech Writer for SUSE where he contributes to the man OpenSource projects, such as Kubewarden, Epinio, Elemental, Rancher Desktop. His principal traits are that he has 4 cats at home (read: a lot of patience) and provides Swiss chocolate during events (read: community oriented)
Why I am excited to be an ambassador: The most important point and motivation is the community! To be able to meet persons from different backgrounds and still share a same passion for Cloud Native ecosystem. And as a “rare” Windows fan in Cloud Native, one of my personal goals is to bring more docs/blogs/talks in running projects on WSL2 and make it even more inclusive for the million of Windows users around the world.
(He/Him)
AWS
Phil Estes
(He/Him)
AWS
- Location: Charlottesville, Virginia, United States
- Project Experience: Buildpacks, Confidential Containers, containerd, CRI-O, Distribution, gRPC, Istio, k3s, Keylime, ko, Kubernetes, Lima, OpenTelemetry, ORAS, The Update Framework (TUF), Virtual Kubelet, zot
Phil is a Principal Engineer for Amazon Web Services (AWS), focused on core container technologies that power AWS container compute offerings. Phil is currently an active contributor and maintainer for containerd, a graduated CNCF project, and participates in the Open Container Initiative (OCI) as the member of the Technical Oversight Board (TOB). Phil enjoys helping others understand and implement container and cloud native concepts and speaks worldwide at industry conferences and meetups on behalf of AWS and his open source roles.
Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I’m excited to be a CNCF ambassador for the express purpose of helping others understand the world of containers and, specifically, the core container runtime technology and standards that enable and power that world. Having been involved in the CNCF since nearly its beginning, I know that it can be an overwhelming place for newcomers at it has grown, and as an ambassador, I’m happy to play a part in helping people understand and navigate the projects and work of the CNCF.
(He/Him)
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)
Sebastien Prune THOMAS
(He/Him)
- Location: Levis, Quebec, CANADA
- Project Experience: Argo, CDK for Kubernetes (CDK8s), cert-manager, Cilium, containerd, Cortex, Crossplane, Envoy, external-secrets, gRPC, Harbor, Helm, Istio, Jaeger, k3s, Knative, Kubeflow, Kyverno, Lima, NATS, Open Policy Agent (OPA), OpenCost, OpenTelemetry, OpenTracing, Operator Framework, Prometheus, Service Mesh Performance, SPIFFE, Strimzi, Thanos
I’ve been involved and passionated by the CNCF community for many years ! I’m co-organizing the Canadian CNCF & Kubernetes meetups for Canada (virtual) and Quebec City / Montreal meetups in person with other wonderful Organizers and Ambassadors ! I’m also a speaker in other meetups, at 2022 KubeCon US and at KubeCon’s Rejeks 2023. I love sharing my experience and documenting. I try to blog my projects and experiences. Check at https://medium.com/@prune998 I’m invested in some CNCF or OSS projects linked to K8s and I’m maintaining an official fork of KubeColor that was unmaintained for years: https://github.com/kubecolor/kubecolor I’ve been patching a lot of projects, OSS or CNCF, like ArgoCD, Cilium, Kafka tools…
Why I am excited to be an ambassador: My goal as an ambassador is to promote Kubernetes and the wonderful ecosystem under the CNCF banner. Being involved in the Ambassador community will help me grow my skills at communicating and hopefully inspire others to join the movement.
(He/Him)
ITQ
Stéphane Este-Gracias
(He/Him)
ITQ
- Location: Luxembourg
- Project Experience: Antrea, Artifact Hub, Backstage, Buildpacks, Carvel, cert-manager, Cilium, containerd, Contour, Distribution, Flux, Harbor, Helm, Kubernetes, Kured, Lima, OpenGitOps, OpenTelemetry, Operator Framework, Prometheus, Teller, zot
For many years now, I have been a strong advocate for the development and promotion of free and open-source software. My passion for this cause has led me to actively participate in various initiatives, such as organizing the Cloud Native Luxembourg meetups and being part of the French localization team of CNCF Glossary. I’m dedicated to promoting the benefits of open-source software, believing it to be more secure, reliable, and conducive to innovation. Additionally, I leverage my expertise to help teams harness cloud-native technologies, fostering a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement.
Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Drawing from my passion for open-source, I will strive to promote the ethos of collaboration, emphasizing the merits of open-source projects within the CNCF landscape and encouraging more entities to contribute and participate. I am committed to guiding the next generation of cloud native enthusiasts. Through mentorship programs and hands-on training sessions, I aim to reduce the learning curve for newcomers and ensure they have the necessary tools and knowledge to thrive within the ecosystem. In essence, as a CNCF Ambassador, my overarching goal is to be a catalyst for growth, learning, and innovation within the Cloud Native community, ensuring that it remains at the forefront of technological progress while upholding the values of collaboration, inclusivity, and open-source spirit.
(He/Him)
Preferred Networks
Toru Komatsu
(He/Him)
Preferred Networks
- Location: Japan
- Project Experience: Cilium, containerd, CRI-O, Helm, Jaeger, k3s, Kubernetes, Lima, OpenTelemetry
Toru contributes to OSS as an individual contributor. He is the author and lead developer of youki, an OCI Runtime in Rust, and I am also a maintainer of the OCI Runtime Specification. Additionally, he serves as a reviewer for runwasi and is involved in developing a world that utilizes containers and Wasm. Lately, he has developed an interest in Kubernetes schedulers. Furthermore, he has given presentations at KubeDay Japan and has spoken at various community events in Japan.
Why I am excited to be an ambassador: The area of container runtime is the unsung hero of the Cloud Native space, where the intricacies of the technology and new features often don’t get the spotlight they deserve. As a developer in this field, I want to help more people become aware of the exciting features it has to offer. I aim to encourage them to take the leap into this fascinating domain! I am also looking forward to assisting the Japanese Cloud Native community in becoming more vibrant on an international level.