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.

I am an engineering director for Kubernetes at Canonical. I participate in opensource as a Governing board member for Keptn and a founder of the Open Feature project. When I fancy taking to the camera I also run a youtube channel for advocating learning for senior engineers https://www.youtube.com/c/CloudNativeSkunkworks/featured

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I believe the ambassador programme is perfectly timed to come out of hibernation as people yearn for more day-to-day information on the CNCF and where to get started. I’ve been here a while now and I am happy to help be that guide on their cloud-native journey.

Tech and Community lover with more than 10 years of experience playing with software professionally. Engaged in cloud native since 2017 when he began learning about Kubernetes, it served as his gateway to the world of tech meetups. Since then, he has actively participated in and collaborated with multiple tech communities in Guatemala and across Latin America Actively collaborating with: Cloud Native Latam – CNCF Group Kubernetes Guatemala – CNCF Group Cloud Native Guatemala – CNCF Group Kong Meetup Guatemala TensorFlow User Group Guatemala.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Since I first started learning about tech, the community has played a significant role, and being part of a Cloud Native meetup I’ve been able to see how it creates great opportunities to meet people, learn from their experiences, get inspired and inspire others! I strongly believe that the community movement can make a difference specially on my region, helping us not just to improve our technical skills but also in how we interact, create and learn together.

I am a Brazilian software engineer with focus on Cloud Native and Free and Open-Source Software and have been contributing to the Kubernetes community since 2020 mainly on SIG-Network and SIG-Windows initiatives. My writings and notes can be find here: http://opssec.in/.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Is a great honor to have the opportunity on collaborate and increase the community, I am very excited to be part and advocate in favor of this big community.

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.

Angel Ramirez is a Kubernetes Certified Administrator (CKA) and curator of the Kubernetes CKA exam, with expertise in cloud computing, infrastructure, cloud and software architecture, DevOps, security, team building, leadership, and community building. With over a decade of experience in the industry, Angel is a skilled practitioner and evangelist of cloud native technologies. Angel has founded the Hispanic Foundation of Cloud Native, which aims to empower the Spanish-speaking community to adopt cloud native technologies, and currently runs two Kubernetes community chapters with over 1500 members, making him a valuable asset and true Kubernetes Ambassador. https://www.youtube.com/@fhcn https://community.cncf.io/kcd-colombia/ https://community.cncf.io/medellin/ https://community.cncf.io/south-florida/ https://www.meetup.com/lahoradekubernetes/ https://www.meetup.com/kubernetes-and-cloud-native-south-florida/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVCT1t69BF4&list=PLKR8WO9E9BlM_22CmbvsiBlWsXQK9l9R5

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: As the Kubernetes Ambassador, I am particularly excited to help the LATAM and Hispanic communities learn and adopt Cloud Native and Kubernetes. Cloud native technologies have the power to transform businesses and individuals alike, and I am passionate about sharing this potential with as many people as possible. By empowering the community to embrace these technologies, we can create a more equitable and prosperous future for everyone. I am honored to have this opportunity to make a difference in the lives of so many people.

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.

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.

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.

Chamod Shehanka Perera serves as a Software Engineer and is a passionate advocate for open source and cloud-native technologies. He has a keen interest in delivering tech talks on subjects like open source and cloud technologies. Notably, he has taken on leadership roles for KCD Sri Lanka 2022 and KCD Sri Lanka 2023, alongside his dedicated team. Presently, he leads various communities, including Kubernetes Sri Lanka, GDG Sri Lanka, and GitHub Community Sri Lanka, while he’s also fully experienced on building cloud native CI/CD platform when worked at WSO2. He shares his insights and experiences related to software development on his blog, accessible at https://chamodshehanka.medium.com. Furthermore, he has successfully implemented a solution for Database Scaling on Kubernetes as part of his undergraduate research, which has been published as a paper (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9671185). In his leisure time, Chamod Shehanka Perera is an avid practitioner of karate, holding a 2nd-degree black belt, and enjoys spending time at the gym and surfing on weekends.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I am excited to be an ambassador because it allows me to continue what I’m doing, giving back to the community and contributing to CNCF projects. Additionally, the role offers the opportunity to network with new people, fostering connections with like-minded individuals. As an ambassador, I look forward to sharing knowledge and ideas, enabling us all to stay updated on the latest developments in this rapidly-evolving field.

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.

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.

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.

Faseela is a cloud-native developer, maintainer and steering committee member at Istio Service Mesh. She has served as the Program Chair for the Istio Meetups in 2023 including the IstioDays co-located with KubeCon Europe and NorthAmerica. She regularly contributes to the Istio blogs, helping all the latest news about Istio reach users and contributors worldwide.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Having done the work of an ambassador for Istio for several years now, I look forward to continuing this work officially now, making use of the support CNCF provides. I would love to provide more support for the women in cloud native community with this new opportunity I am provided with.

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.

I am a distinguished Docker Captain based in India, recognized for my expertise in containerization and cloud technologies. As a Cloud Innovator Champion, I’m committed to driving innovation and best practices in cloud computing. Additionally, i am a Top Kubernetes answerer worldwide on StackOverflow, demonstrating my dedication to fostering knowledge sharing within the global tech community.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Becoming a CNCF ambassador is thrilling because it means actively shaping the future of cloud-native technologies, collaborating with industry leaders, and bridging gaps in the tech ecosystem. It’s an opportunity to contribute to a global community that’s driving innovation and setting standards for modern computing.

Hi, I’m Huabing Zhao, founder of the CNCF open-source project Aeraki Mesh(https://aeraki.net). I’m passionate about Cloud-Native technologies like Microservices, Kubernetes, and Service Mesh. I share my thoughts on Cloud-Native technologies through my blog(https://zhaohuabing.com https://medium.com/@zhaohuabing). When I’m not working, I enjoy watching movies, swimming, hiking, travelling, and skateboarding.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I am thrilled to be a CNCF ambassador because it’s an opportunity for me to share my passion for Cloud-Native technologies with others who are interested in this space. In the meatime, I have the chance to connect with other experts in this field and learn from them.

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.

I am a Senior R&D Engineer at Tencent, with a past focus in cloud computing and a current emphasis in the gaming industry. Alongside friends, I co-run a WeChat public account aimed at the Chinese audience on cloud-native technologies, [China CloudNative](https://cloudnative.to/). This year, we organized two meetups focusing on eBPF-based observability: [Meetup 1](https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/ugDeIcdyugnTdiGhFZKIfg) and [Meetup 2](https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/XXW8KHLPBX5YVqNOXFBDgw). My areas of expertise include Kubernetes, API gateways, and eBPF.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I am honored and thrilled at the prospect of becoming an CNCF ambassador. This role presents a wonderful opportunity for me to engage with more technology enthusiasts and share knowledge about cloud-native technologies. It also provides a platform for me to enhance my own skills in this area and stay abreast of the latest advancements in cloud-native technology.

I am a cloud native believer and advocator with over 15 years of experience in cloud computing. I was an early contributor to Kubernetes and led its adoption at eBay for six years. I am currently working as a product and development owner of cloud native FinOps at Tencent Cloud, where I founded the open-source project Crane, which helps users optimize their cloud costs. I am also auther of “The Journey of Kubernetes Production Adoption Success”, translator of “Cloud FinOps”, and speaker on various cloud native topics including Cloud Native Campus in geektime.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I am excited to be an ambassador because I love cloud native and I want to share my passion and knowledge with others. I think cloud native is the future of software development and it can bring many benefits to users, developers, and businesses. I want to help the cloud native community grow and thrive by contributing to open-source projects, writing books and articles, and organizing events. Being an ambassador will give me more opportunities to connect with other cloud native enthusiasts and learn from their experiences. I hope to inspire more people to join the cloud native journey and make a positive impact on the world.

I’m Jim Angel. I love solving problems and working with incredible people! I’m primarily involved with upstream Kubernetes (SIG-Release and SIG-Docs). Currently working on restarting our local Austin meetup and a Texas KCD. You can follow my latest projects at jimangel.io

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: It’s awesome to get to know so many great people and work with leading technology that’s responsible for changing multiple industries. The community that keeps Kubernetes open and welcome is a special thing, and I hope to maintain such standards myself. I also enjoy helping connect the folks using open source tooling with the resources they need to be successful, and being an ambassador keeps me connected.

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!

Juliano is a passionate Software Engineer at Dynatrace Austria with extensive experience in cloud-related technologies. He is specialized in OpenTelemetry and is always working with Kubernetes, Helm, Containers, Jenkins, and other related tools. As one of the maintainers of the CNCF project OpenTelemetry Demo, Juliano has helped to create a distributed system that demonstrates the implementation of OpenTelemetry in a near real-world environment. With a strong belief in the power of community, Juliano co-founded the Cloud Native Computing Linz meetup. He actively participates in the tech community and is always willing to share his knowledge and insights with others. When not working, Juliano likes to spend his time with the family traveling around Austria and sightseeing new places.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I strongly believe in the power of the community and how it can help everyone grow, not just professionally, but as a whole. I’m extremely excited about being able to help growing the CNCF community and raising it awareness wherever I go. I love learning and sharing what I learn. The atmosphere and environment of openness created by CNCF is something that I take with me in every interaction I have. I’m super excited and thankful in becoming a CNCF Ambassador.

Kateryna is a Platform engineer and member of the Traffic team at Spotify. Throughout her career she has been passionate about open source and cloud native technologies, in past years her focus was on shaping and maintaining Spotify’s relationship with the Envoy proxy community. Apart from being an active Envoy contributor, she is also a member of the Envoy security team, the Envoycon Program Committee, a mentor in Linux Foundation Community Bridge program and an Envoycon speaker. At Spotify, she has been leading the effort of growing the contributor base and helping users with smooth adoption of Envoy.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: CNCF community had a big impact on me, it helped me grow and gain deep expertise in Traffic domain. I learned a lot from collaborating with amazing talented individuals from around the world. Now i feel it is time to pay back to the community by sharing the passion and expertise for cloud native and open source technologies. I am excited to help others grow within CNCF ecosystem and to connect with ambassadors, domain experts and to learn from them.

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!

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.

Lee Calcote is the Founder of Layer5, where the community helps organizations harness and exploit the value of service meshes. Previously, Calcote stewarded technology strategy and innovation across SolarWinds. He led software-defined data center engineering at Seagate, delivering predictive analytics and modern systems management. Calcote held various leadership positions at Cisco, where he created Cisco’s cloud management platforms and pioneered new, automated, remote management services.

In addition to his role at Layer5, Calcote serves in various industry bodies, including as a SIG chair in Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), and formerly, participated in the delivery of Redfish 1.0 in the Distributed Management Task Foundation (DMTF), and Docker Benchmark 1.0 in Center for Internet Security (CIS). He is a startup advisor, Docker Captain, Cloud Native Ambassador, O’Reilly author, and speaker in the cloud native ecosystem.

Calcote is a maintainer of open source projects, including Meshery, Service Mesh Interface, and Service Mesh Performance. Calcote holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, a master’s degree in Business Administration from California State University, Fresno and retains a list of industry certifications.

Meetup: Cloud Native Austin

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

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.

Lin is the Director of Open Source at Solo.io. She has worked on Istio service mesh since the beginning of the project in 2017 and serves on the Istio Steering Committee and Technical Oversight Committee. Previously, she was a Senior Technical Staff Member and Master Inventor at IBM for 15+ years. She is the author of the book “Istio Ambient Explained” and has more than 200 patents to her name.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I am an open-source enthusiast and firm believer in CNCF as a vendor-neutral foundation for many of the fastest-growing cloud native projects ever since my very first KubeCon in Seattle in 2016. I appreciate much my first speaking opportunity at KubeCon 2017 in Berlin, which I think likely wouldn’t have happened if CNCF had not given adequate consideration to speaker diversity. I owe my career growth partially to KubeCon and open source projects such as Istio, for which I made over 8500 contributions over the past 6 years. By becoming a CNCF ambassador, I want to give back to the cloud native community by welcoming and including new members, and promoting and enhancing the CNCF brand and some of the CNCF projects that I have expertise in.

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.

Max is Co-Founder and Cloud Native Advocate at Liquid Reply. He is Co-Chair of the CNCF Environmental Sustainability Technical Advisory Group and served 3 years at the Kubernetes release team. His focus is on designing and building cloud-native solutions on/with Kubernetes anywhere and the platform engineering to simplify the current challenges of complex systems. He runs the Munich Kubernetes Meetup as well as the Munich and Ukraine Kubernetes Community Days.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Being an ambassador is a sign that working with the community and being part of the community is a high value, empowering anyone to join and be part of it. And as ambassadors, we are potentially the enabler to guide people but also motivate others to share their experiences to create a synergy. I’m also excited to meet other ambassadors in person and maybe create new ideas and events.

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.

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 like hacking through software engineering problems. Over the past 3-4 years, I have been developing solutions for software reliability. I love everything around cloud-native, open source, and security. I have also founded Women in Cloud Native community for women who are interested in learning more about Cloud Native and those who are willing to learn, collaborate and support each other to grow Website – https://womenincloudnative.com/ Personal Blog – https://nancychauhan.in/

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I look forward to contributing to the CNCF community as an ambassador and keep doing things I was doing before. Meeting other like-minded ambassadors and motivating each other to contribute, support, and inspire others excites me

Neependra is the Founder and Principal Consultant at CloudYuga. He provides training in Cloud Native Technologies like Kubernetes, Prometheus and others. He authored the first Kubernetes introduction course for the CNCF on Edx. Currently he runs the Kubernetes & Cloud Native Online meetup and one of the organiser of KCD Bengaluru. He writes blogs and hands-on lab at https://cloudyuga.guru .

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I am excited to be an ambassador to do more events in Bengaluru and India in general. Be an ambassador would give me opportunities to collaborate with folks across to globe to bring the best content out for community.

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.

Orlin Vasilev aka Orlix is a Senior Community Manager and Engineer(maybe a Dev Rel or even kind a Dev Advocate) at VMware running the communities and maintainer for Project Harbor and Velero. CNCF Ambassador v1 and driving the biggest Meetup Group ~1300 members in Bulgaria. Multiple times KubeCon CfP review board member and co-chair. SysAdmin/Dev/SRE/System engineering roles for over 15 years! Located in Bulgaria, Europe! Father of two – a fantastic girl and a boy! Passionate snowboarder, DIY and semi-professional BBQ Pitmaster and baker!

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Being ambassador makes your part of the most fantastic crowd in the Tech World these days. As Ambassador v1 allowed me to drive the meetup and many other local activities with universities and helping put people in general with Cloud Native technologies.

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.

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!

Rohit Ghumare is a recognized Google Developer Expert specializing in Google Cloud Modern Architecture, a testament to his adeptness in contemporary cloud solutions. He is the driving force behind several community-centric initiatives, orchestrating events as the organizer of DevOpsDays Bengaluru, KCD Mumbai, Google Cloud Mumbai, and the Cloud Native Thane community group. Through these platforms, he not only showcases his profound expertise but also fosters a collaborative ecosystem for knowledge exchange. A prolific writer, Rohit has authored a plethora of blogs and insightful pieces on CNCF projects, including, but not limited to, Backstage, Istio, Kubernetes, Cilium, Envoy, Prometheus, and Kiali. This extensive coverage underscores his profound understanding and engagement with cutting-edge cloud-native technologies. Besides penning down his knowledge, Rohit is dedicated to sharing his insights through the “Cloud Native Talks” podcast, which he hosts, and through global conferences and local meetups where he’s presented multiple talks. He has also been a program committee member for Kubecon co-located events. Links: devopsguys.in

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Being appointed as an ambassador presents a remarkable opportunity to further extend the outreach of my engagement within the tech community, particularly in the realms of DevOps and Cloud Native technologies. It will help me to give back to the community by sharing insights from experts located all over the world.

Sai is currently working as Senior Solutions Architecture Specialist, APJ at HashiCorp and is based out of Singapore. Sai started his career in Networking and had 17 years of experience in private/public cloud infrastructure solutions for highly regulated security-conscious industries such as Banking, Financial Services Industries, Aviation, ISPs and Public Sector organizations across APJ Region. Previously He was part of the Field Engineering team at solo.io, Professional Services Consultant (APJ) at chef.io. He focuses on modernizing infrastructure automation and microservices application networking from Edge to Service Mesh at scale, where the tech stacks are built on HashiCorp Vault, Consul, Boundary, Terraform, Chef, Istio, Envoy Proxy, eBPF, Cilium, GraphQL built for Kubernetes, VMs & Cloud.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Singapore and ASEAN Region need more active and organized meetups around cloud native community. The activities are behind compare to US, EMEA and ANZ Region. As an ambassador, I will continue to create more awareness and advocate CNCF projects in Singapore and ASEAN Region. I am also participating for the KubeDay Singapore as one of the event chairs, and continue to contribute. I’m very proud of being CNCF Ambassador and representing CNCF in Singapore and APAC Region.

Hello, my name is Saim Safdar, working as a Developer Relations Manager at Rafay Systems, host of the cloud-native podcast (https://www.youtube.com/@cloudnativefm), co-founder of Cloud Native Islamabad (https://community.cncf.io/islamabad/), Organizer of KCD Pakistan (https://www.cncf.io/blog/2023/03/10/from-community-group-to-event-a-kcd-pakistan-experience/). Maintainer of the cncf Sandbox project, Paralus (https://www.paralus.io/).

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I love sharing my Open Source jourey with others, currently there’s a desparate need of mentorship within the community, as cloud native eco-system constantly equipped with new tooling, students, tech pro, difficult to find and map existing knowledge to work with OS and communities, I’m hoping my time as an Ambassador, I’ll get on-board and shortened the loop for code to contribution to outreaching new OS tooling to the world.

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.

Senthil works as a Software Architect, building cloud native AI/ML platforms. He specialises in Cloud native software development, Machine Learning, MLOps, Distributed Systems and Edge Computing. He has 20+ years of experience spanning Telecom, Cloud, Containers, Kubernetes, ML and MLOps. He is a Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA), Maintainer of Open-Source project “kube-fledged”, Tech Blogger, Speaker and Organizer of Kubernetes Community Days Chennai. He likes contributing to Open source, building Tech communities, exploring new technologies and mentoring Students.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: The cloud native ecosystem is vast and is made up of a plethora of technologies and methodologies. Becoming a CNCF ambassador will help in bringing more focus and structure to my contribution to the community. I’ll have immense opportunities to work closely with CNCF and other Ambassadors. The Ambassador standards of excellence would serve as a north star in making my community contribution more effective. I can rely on support and guidance from CNCF to learn new ways of connecting and collaborating with the community.

Dr. Shane Wang is an engineering director of Cloud Native China at Software and Advanced Technology Group in Intel. He and his team have been working on open source cloud software for many years since 2012, including Kubernetes, Istio, Envoy, containerd, serverless, edge, Ceph and OpenStack etc. He is an individual director of OIF foundation, alliance committee chair of SODA foundation, a TOC member of Mulan open source community, and one of the standing committee members of Open Source Development Committee in China Computer Federation (CCF), and one of Tencent Cloud Valuable Professionals. He organizes and runs cloud native meetups with China partners primarily in Shanghai and Beijing, focusing on Kubernetes, Istio and Envoy technologies.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Because with that I can organize regular meetups better in China with the local community including Tetrate, DaoCloud, Alauda, Alibaba and Tencent etc. bridging between CNCF and many China-based open source communities, I can drive more engineering contributions to CNCF projects and engagements with China customers for adoption. I’m also able to contribute more technical materials to CNCF Webinars and Blogs, etc. and pursue more presentation opportunities at CNCF conferences e.g. KubeCon China.

KCD France Organizer & Director of Technical Product Management at Kasten by Veeam, I specialize in all things Cloud Native, obviously Kubernetes, but also Storage, Network, Compute, Observability, Security, Infrastructure, etc. From datacenters to applications, from business to operations, I enjoy talking about every aspect of our connected world.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I’m excited to represent the CNCF as an Ambassador to help others find their path through Cloud Native technologies and get started in the space. There is a technology for everyone, and there is a space for everyone, no matter to skill level, no matter you interest. If you don’t know where to start, come talk to me, I’ll be happy to get you oriented!

Victor is a passionate Sr. Staff Software Engineer in the Samsung Open Source Group with nearly 18 years of experience in building solutions that are easy to use, scale and adapt. He is a regular speaker at technical conferences in LATAM Open Source communities. Co-chair of the CNF Working Group in the CNCF, and Co-founder of the OpenStackGDL, Cloud-Native El Salvador and Guadalajara communities. Active contributor to CNCF, LFN and Open Infrastructure projects and fervent supporter of the DevOps culture.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: Besides the benefits that open source brings to the companies, fundamentally is people who fuel the innovation. Thanks to CNCF Ambassador program, I can be able to amplify the Latin America voice sharing their success local histories and distinct challenges faced by the region.

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

I am a software engineer at Tencent Cloud Mesh team, specializing in the cloud-native field with a focus on Service Mesh and API Gateway technologies. I am an active contributor to the open-source community and currently maintain several CNCF projects, including Envoy, Istio, Aeraki-Mesh, and Merbridge. I had the honor of attending as a speaker at KubeCon 2023 Shanghai and am the founder of the Envoy Gateway China community, where I strive to build connections in the open-source realm. In my spare time, I share my knowledge through blog posts on www.liuxunzhuo.com and also work on recording video tutorials, with a passion for helping others and promoting cloud-native technologies.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: As an ambassador, I am thrilled about the opportunity to further engage with the cloud-native community and contribute to its growth and development. I am excited to share my knowledge and experience in CNCF technologies, and help others understand and adopt these technologies. Being an ambassador also allows me to learn from others, stay updated with the latest trends, and continuously improve my skills. Moreover, I am passionate about promoting open-source culture and believe that being an ambassador will provide a great platform to do so. Lastly, I look forward to fostering connections and collaborations within the community, which I believe is the essence of the open-source movement.

Serverless addict / Software creator / Open-Source enthusiast / Community host. Creator and maintainer of community CloudNative-Serverless-Meetup (Follow: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cloud-native-serverless-meetup/) and newsletter: https://www.learnsomesoftwareinfrastructurethismonth.com/ (Subscribe it if you like, and don’t forget check the confirmation email in inbox, it is double opt-in). Photographer, Music lover, have a taylor made in walnut, and I love Icewine. Find me on Twitter: @pymhq ; More in http://yimingpeng.com/

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I am thrilled to be joining the CNCF Ambassador program. As someone who is deeply passionate about building and promoting infrastructure, particularly in the realm of Cloud Native technologies, I feel grateful for the opportunity to deepen my connections with the community and share my knowledge and experience with open-source users around the globe. By being part of this program, I hope to make a broader impact and bring even more value to CNCF. Additionally, I am eager to learn more about the needs of users and help them understand how they can effectively use cloud native and container technology to solve their problems.

Yoshiyuki Tabata is a Senior OSS Consultant at Hitachi, Ltd, responsible for API Security, especially Authentication/Authorization. As an authentication and authorization expert, he mainly consults on authentication and authorization infrastructure and API infrastructure, for example designing and building API/SSO systems in the financial, public, social, and industrial fields. He’s also a contributor to API-related OSSs such as Keycloak and 3scale and develops features based on feedback from actual projects he consulted. He’s also a conference speaker of API-related events and an author of some books and web articles about Identity and Access Management.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I usually consult with our customers on authentication and authorization infrastructure and API infrastructure (I have experience building systems for finance and government using Keycloak and Kubernetes), and it seems that the adoption rate of the CNCF family in general systems is still low in Japan. Also, in systems that adopt the CNCF family, there are many systems with weak security due to placing too much emphasis on developer experience and agility. Therefore, as a CNCF ambassador, I would like to use the knowledge I have cultivated through many projects (not only the knowledge as a security consultant but also the knowledge as a Keycloak contributor and a conference speaker) to spread the word about a better and safer CNCF ecosystem.