Meet your Cloud Native Ambassadors (CNAs)!
Ambassadors are an extension of CNCF, furthering the mission of “making cloud native ubiquitous” through community leadership and mentorship.
Interested in becoming an ambassador? Learn more about the application process and requirements.
Get the latest news on the program by following CNCF Ambassadors on Twitter!
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CNCF Ambassadors
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Showing 9 of 154 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, LitmusChaos, NATS, Notary, OpenCost, OpenEBS, OpenMetrics, OpenTelemetry, ORAS, Pixie, Prometheus, Rook, SPIFFE, SPIRE, Thanos, The Update Framework (TUF), Vitess, WasmEdge, 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.
(She/Her)
OVHcloud

Aurélie Vache
(She/Her)
OVHcloud
- Location: Toulouse, France
- Project Experience: Argo, etcd, gRPC, Harbor, Helm, Istio, Jaeger, Knative, Kubernetes, Kyverno, Linkerd, NATS, Open Policy Agent (OPA), OpenTelemetry, OpenTracing, Prometheus
Aurélie is a DevRel at OVHcloud. She is a GDE (Google Developer Expert) for Cloud technologies, Docker Captain, CNCF Ambassador & GitPod Hero. Conferences and meetups organizer since 2016. She is a technical writer, a book author & reviewer. She is also a sketchnoter and a speaker at international conferences. She created a new visual way for people to learn and understand Cloud technologies: “Understanding Kubernetes/Istio/Docker in a visual way” in sketchnotes, videos and visual technical books. Blog: https://dev.to/aurelievache/ Conferences: https://noti.st/aurelievache YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/AurelieVache Books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Aur%C3%A9lie-Vache/author/B09WHB5YR6 Website: http://scraly.com/
Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I have been a passionate and advocate of Cloud Native, especially CNCF technologies, for many years and I am very happy to be its ambassador. It’s an opportunity for me to share and spread knowledge, contribute to native cloud technologies and meet the community.
(He/Him)
SECTION6

BMK Lakshminarayanan
(He/Him)
SECTION6
- Location: Wellington, New Zealand
- Project Experience: DevSpace, Envoy, gRPC, Helm, Istio, Kubernetes, NATS, Service Mesh Interface (SMI)
Transformation Architect, SECTION6 BMK is an inspiring and passionate DevOps Advocate and Value Stream Architect promoting DevOps, Lean and Value Stream Management principles & practices. He is also a New Zealand ambassador for the Cloud-Native Computing Foundation(CNCF), DevOps Institute and a Board Advisor for the Value Stream Management consortium(VSMC). He hosts the CNCF meetup in Wellington, New Zealand and is co-chair of Cloud-Native Summit A/NZ. He blogs about his experiences and learnings at https://bmk.nz/
Why I am excited to be an ambassador: 1. Promoting Open Source and Cloud-Native projects and ecosystem tools in our community. 2. Connecting with experts, maintainers, contributors and other Opensource and cloud-native thought leaders to amplify my learning 3. Use the ambassador program and help in bringing in the best to my community in terms of cloud-native learnings, education and training.
(He/Him)
DiveInto

James Spurin
(He/Him)
DiveInto
- Location: London, United Kingdom
- Project Experience: Argo, Container Network Interface (CNI), containerd, etcd, Istio, k3s, KEDA, Knative, Kubernetes, KubeVirt, NATS
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.
(He/Him)
O11y

Julien Pivotto
(He/Him)
O11y
- Location: Ath, Belgium
- Project Experience: containerd, CoreDNS, Cortex, gRPC, Jaeger, Kubernetes, NATS, OpenMetrics, OpenTelemetry, OpenTracing, Prometheus, Thanos
Julien Pivotto is a prominent figure in the world of open-source monitoring and alerting. As a maintainer of Prometheus, he has made significant contributions to the development and advancement of this powerful tool. Additionally, he is the co-founder of O11y, a company that specializes in providing premium support for various open-source observability tools such as Prometheus, Thanos, and Grafana.
Why I am excited to be an ambassador: As a maintainer, I am truly enthusiastic about being a CNCF ambassador because the foundation contributes significantly to the success and growth of numerous open-source projects. By becoming an ambassador, I can give back to the community by promoting CNCF’s initiatives, spreading awareness about its contributions, and helping others discover the value of cloud native technologies.
(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)
Aviatrix

Mitch Connors
(He/Him)
Aviatrix
- Location: Redmond, United States
- Project Experience: Argo, Crossplane, Envoy, Flux, Istio, Jaeger, Knative, Kubeflow, Kubernetes, Linkerd, NATS, Prometheus, Service Mesh Interface (SMI), Service Mesh Performance
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.
(He/Him)
San Carlos of Guatemala University

Sergio Méndez
(He/Him)
San Carlos of Guatemala University
- Location: Guatemala
- Project Experience: Argo, Backstage, cert-manager, Chaos Mesh, Contour, Flux, gRPC, Harbor, Helm, Jaeger, k3s, KEDA, Keptn, Knative, Kubernetes, Linkerd, Longhorn, NATS, OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Strimzi
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.
(He/Him)
Merico, Inc.

Tiexin Guo
(He/Him)
Merico, Inc.
- Location: Chengdu, China
- 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.