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.

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.

Gaurav is an engineer who wears multiple hats in the community, from software engineering to community management to product marketing. He is passionate about building innovative communities and impactful software. His interests and experience lie in community building, project management, cloud native technologies, microservices, artificial intelligence, and product development. In the past, he has been a community engineer at Layer5, an LFX mentor at Meshery, and a CNCF contributor.

Why I am excited to be an ambassador: I envision bridging geographical gaps, fostering collaboration, and sharing insights across boundaries through engaging technical and non-technical content. Innovation is at the heart of my approach. As a CNCF Ambassador, I plan to cultivate an environment where fresh ideas flourish. By hosting workshops, facilitating discussions, and encouraging creative thinking, I aim to inspire groundbreaking solutions, and drive the advancement of cloud native practices.

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 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’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’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.