Mentorship

Faeka dove into the world of cloud-native projects during her student days, and the thrill of it has kept her hooked ever since. Originally drawn in by the technology, she quickly discovered that it was the people in the community who made it truly special

Key Researcher & Lecturer, Public Speaker, Creator of the Software Bill of Behavior (SBoB) and maintainer of the Kubernetes Storm Center for cloudnative intelligence

Backstory: Living intentionally is hard when routine takes control. I grew up wanting to be a scientist, studying Biochemistry, starting med school, and ultimately earning a PhD in General Relativity to explore how humans perceive ‘reality.’ When US funding cuts ended that path, I realized academia left me without agency.

In the private sector, I discovered the value of risk. The Cloud Native paradigm let me experiment, fail fast, and try again without fear of lasting damage. In positive-sum collaborations, I saw how my algorithms could shape real-world outcomes, and how taking calculated risks created visible change for people and systems alike. This freedom to test ideas with relatively low cost revealed a new kind of agency, an immediacy and measurable connection to the meaning of work.

My vision is to empower others to leverage cloud native technology with respect for the human element, security, and risk. Because having agency means creating reality for our society, for each one of us, one epsilon at a time.

ChengHao is a co-organizer of the Cloud Native Taiwan User Group (CNTUG), assisting in organizing monthly meetups and guiding new community members to contribute. He is interested in exploring each CNCF project and regularly helps resolve issues. Occasionally, he writes technical articles on Kubernetes/CNCF on his blog. Feel free to visit!

Arsh is a Senior DevRel Engineer at MetalBear. He has previously been awarded the Kubernetes Contributor Award for his open source contributions. He loves tinkering with new projects in the cloud ecosystem and writing about his learnings. He has worked in the platform engineering space over the last few years and was part of the open-source Kubernetes team at VMware prior to that. He has also contributed to CNCF projects such as cert-manager and Kyverno. Arsh has written blogs and delivered talks on various topics in the cloud ecosystem. Recordings of some of his past talks can be found at: https://arshsharma.com/speaking/

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I owe a lot to open source and the CNCF open source community in particular. I’m excited to be an ambassador to be able to give back to the community and help others get started on their journey of contributing! As someone who has firsthand witnessed the benefits in personal and professional life thanks to the community, I want others to be able to share these joys as well.

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.

Afzal is a passionate open-source enthusiast with a deep interest in cloud-native technologies and building new things on top of them. He specializes in supporting cloud infrastructure and actively contributes to ArgoCD open-source project. Additionally, he has made significant contributions to various CNCF projects, including Meshery, Keptn, and Jaeger. His dedication to the Keptn project earned him recognition as a Keptn Crew member. He also enjoys creating video content and writing blogs to share his experiences in the cloud-native space with like-minded individuals.

I am a cloud native enthusiast who participated in the LFX Mentorship program in 2024 and contributed to the KubeEdge project. I am deeply passionate about the cloud native community and have attended KubeCon events in Shanghai and Hong Kong multiple times. I am highly optimistic about the potential of cloud native technologies in the AI era and am committed to actively contributing to the cloud native community.

Vyom is a final-year computer science student who has been working with open source throughout his degree program. He has been awarded the Google OSPB Award for contributing to Kubernetes. He has been a contributor to Kubernetes, Kyverno and KubeArmor. He co-organizes the CNCF Chandigarh Chapter.

Software Engineer at Accuknox and a recent graduate in Information Technology Engineering from Jabalpur Engineering College. He previously worked as a DevOps Engineer Intern at Scoutflo, where he developed MCP tools for various CNCF projects, including Kubernetes, Prometheus, Grafana, ArgoCD, and Istio. He was an LFX Spring Mentee 2024 for the CNCF – Kyverno, where he developed the Kyverno-Envoy plugin. He had worked as a DevOps Engineer Intern at Cloudraft. Sanskar is a LiFT Scholar, a Kyverno Community Member, and an open-source contributor to various projects, including Kyverno, Kubescape, Nix, Envoy, and more.

Sandipan enjoys collaborating with people on developing software. He is a Member, Community Manager, and part of the Contributor Experience Special Interest Group and the Contributor Communications team at Kubernetes. Sandipan has been a Mentee at CNCF under the Linux Foundation Mentorship Program, where he worked on Cilium, and a Google Summer of Code Contributor 2024 at Kubeflow. As a participant in CNCF Security Slam 2023, he has also contributed to improving the security hygiene of Kubernetes subprojects. Sandipan is a CNCF Community Groups Organizer of the Kolkata chapter.

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.

Raj is an accomplished Staff Software Engineer at Harness with over 5+ of experience, making significant strides at a leading Unicorn Startup. His journey in the tech industry is marked by a series of noteworthy contributions. Additionally, Raj plays a crucial role as a current maintainer of LitmusChaos, underlining his deep commitment to open-source projects. Raj’s contributions also extend to other CNCF projects, where he is an active contributor to Prometheus, Kyverno and SigNoz. Balancing roles as a developer by day and SRE by night, he is passionate about building resilient systems and fervently advocates for cloud-native best practices. Raj has shared his expertise at various international conferences, including KubeCon, engaging with the global tech community.

A Masters of Computer Science Student at Banaras Hindu University. Passionate about Cybersecurity, DevOps and Cloud Computing. An active open-source contributor, contributed towards several open-source projects. Previously, contributed to in-toto as a GSoC contributor.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Being a part of cloud native community, gaining new skills and qualities. Gathering more knowledge from other community members. Motivating and guiding my community members towards cloud native.

Oshi Gupta is a Site Reliability Engineer at Improving Pune (InfraCloud) . She specializes in Kubernetes and serves as an LFX Mentee and KCA exam contributor for CNCF Kyverno. A frequent KCD speaker across India (Bengaluru, Kochi, Delhi), Oshi is passionate about growing the cloud-native community and making Kubernetes more accessible to practitioners.

Nitish has served as a Linux Foundation Mentee under the Kubernetes Release Engineering Team, where he built a Go library that is used by the Kubernetes project internally. Being passionate about Open Source, he has also contributed to various other projects including Kyverno, Okteto, etcd etc. Nitish has given various talks in the past around cloud-native, DevOps, and Security, one of which he led a panel discussion at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America, 2023 in Chicago. He has also been featured on one of the Veam Podcast Show.

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.

Husni is a CNCF Ambassador and a Sr. Site Reliability Engineer, where he is responsible for building and maintaining infrastructure platforms. In addition to these responsibilities, he primarily focuses on architecting Cloud-Native solutions. He also graduated from the LFX mentorship Program in 2022 (Kyverno Project) and in spare time, contributed to some CNCF Project like Kubernetes, OpenTelemetry, Istio, Cilium, KEDA. He also founded Kubenesia (Indonesia’s #1 Kubernetes & Cloud-Native Training Specialist) where he teach Kubernetes & Cloud-Native Technology.