Abby Kearns

A true tech veteran, Abby Kearns’ 18-year career has spanned product marketing, product management, and consulting at a mix of Fortune 500 and startup companies. Abby was most recently on the product management team at Pivotal, focusing on Pivotal Cloud Foundry. Previously, Abby led a product management and product marketing team at Verizon that focused on cloud services.

Andy Updegrove

Angela Brown

Angela Brown manages The Linux Foundation’s global conferences, with responsibilities including market research, attendee and sponsorship acquisition, and event marketing and production. She has been producing and marketing events of all types and sizes for over 15 years, primarily in the IT sector. Angela started her career with Red Herring (fka Dasar, Inc.) in 1994, quickly taking over responsibility for the planning of their global IT conferences and C-level summits. Before coming to The Linux Foundation in 2007, she also produced conferences and events at the Sheraton LA Harbor Hotel and the Pan Pacific San Francisco, as well as for OpenDoor Events.

Arpit Joshipura

Arpit Joshipura brings over 25 years of networking expertise and vision to The Linux Foundation, with technical depth and business breadth. He has instrumented and led major industry disruptions across enterprises, carriers, and cloud architectures, including IP, broadband, optical, mobile, routing, switching, L4-7, cloud, disaggregation, SDN/NFV, and open networking, and has been an early evangelist for open source. Arpit has served as CMO/VP in startups and larger enterprises, including Prevoty, Dell/Force10, Ericsson/Redback, ONI/CIENA, and BNR/Nortel, leading strategy, product management, marketing, engineering, and technology standards functions.

Brian Behlendorf

Brian Behlendorf is the Executive Director of Hyperledger. He was a primary developer of the Apache web server, the most popular web server software on the Internet, and a founding member of the Apache Software Foundation. He has also served on the board of the Mozilla Foundation since 2003 and the Electronic Frontier Foundation since 2013. He was the founding CTO of CollabNet and CTO of the World Economic Forum. Most recently, Brian was a Managing Director at Mithril Capital Management LLC, a global technology investment firm.

Chris Aniszczyk

Clyde Seepersad

Clyde Seepersad is responsible for the training and certification arms of The Linux Foundation. The goal of the team is to provide high-quality training and skills development to the open source community. Over the past decade Clyde has held senior leadership positions in the education space, most recently as head of operations at 360training.com and before that as a senior executive of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, a global leader in education.

Prior to his involvement in education, Clyde was a Principal at the Boston Consulting Group, a global strategic consultancy known for its cutting-edge thinking and value creation for clients. He started his career in the public sector, working within the Ministry of Finance in Trinidad and Tobago. He holds an MBA and a Masters in Economics from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

Dan Cauchy

Dan Cauchy is the General Manager of Automotive at The Linux Foundation. He is responsible for the overall management and execution of the Automotive Grade Linux project, an industry effort to build an open source automotive reference platform backed by leading car manufacturers around the world.

Dan has over 22 years of experience spanning the automotive, telecom, networking, and mobile business verticals. Prior to his current position, Dan was the Vice President and General Manager of MontaVista’s Automotive Business Unit (acquired by Mentor), responsible for P&L and worldwide execution of MontaVista’s automotive software strategy, sales, marketing, products, and services. During this period, Dan served on the Board of Directors of the GENIVI Alliance and was responsible for the creation of the GENIVI Compliance Program, a group that he chaired for its first three years, which led to the release of the GENIVI Specification, a widely adopted standard in the automotive industry. While at MontaVista, Dan previously held the position of VP of Marketing and BD, where he was responsible for the development and execution of MontaVista’s global marketing strategy, which led to an acquisition by Cavium.

Based in Silicon Valley, Dan has extensive startup experience. He was the Director of Product Management at Atrica (acquired by Nokia-Siemens Networks), a carrier Ethernet equipment provider startup. Prior to Atrica, Dan was the Director of Architecture and Strategy at BlueLeaf Networks, a tunable laser optical networking startup (now Picarro). He also previously held senior management positions and engineering leadership positions at Cisco Systems, Newbridge Networks (acquired by Alcatel), and Nortel.

Dan earned a Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering (with a computer engineering major) from the University of Ottawa. He holds three patents in the areas of routing and networking, with several others pending.

Dan Kohn

Dan Kohn is Executive Director of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, which sustains and integrates open source technologies like Kubernetes and Prometheus. He also helped create and launch The Linux Foundation’s Core Infrastructure Initiative as an industry-wide response to the security vulnerabilities demonstrated by Heartbleed.

He previously served as CTO of several startups, including Spreemo, a healthcare marketplace, and Shopbeam, a shoppable ads company. Earlier, he was a general partner at Skymoon Ventures, a seed-stage venture capital firm that created startups in semiconductors and telecom infrastructure.

Dan helped manage a number of telecoms firms controlled by Craig McCaw and started his career as founder and CEO of NetMarket, one of the first Internet companies. In 1994, he led the development of the first music store on the web, conducting the first secure commercial transaction after building the first web shopping cart. Dan lives in Manhattan with his wife and two sons.

Heather Kirksey

Jamie E. Smith

Smith has dedicated her twenty year career to serving in various senior government and industry roles at the exciting crossroads between communications, marketing, policy, technology, national security and women’s empowerment.

Smith previously served simultaneously as the Global Chief Communications Officer at the Bitfury Group and CEO of the Global Blockchain Business Council (GBBC). Prior to that she served as Executive Vice President at Edelman, Special Assistant to and Spokeswoman for President Barack Obama and Deputy White House Press Secretary, Director of Public Affairs for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and General (Ret.) James Clapper, Communications Director for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation under its then Chairman John D (Jay) Rockefeller IV, Spokeswoman and Traveling Press Director for Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2008 Presidential Campaign, Communications Director for former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and The Albright Group, LLC. and Policy Aide to Congresswoman Nita M. Lowey (D-NY).

Smith speaks regularly around the world – from the United Nations to the European Parliament to The World Economic Forum to SxSW and has appeared on CNBC, Fox Business, the BCC and Business Insider. Smith serves as the Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum’s Future Council on Blockchain, and on the advisory boards of Coindesk and the GBBC. She spends her spare time volunteering in her local community for the Capitol Area Food Bank.

Jim Zemlin

Jim Zemlin’s career spans three of the largest technology trends to rise over the last decade: mobile computing, cloud computing, and open source software. Today, as executive director of The Linux Foundation, he uses this experience to accelerate innovation in technology through the use of open source and Linux.

At The Linux Foundation, Jim works with the world’s largest technology companies, including IBM, Intel, Google, Samsung, Qualcomm, and others to help define the future of computing on the server, in the cloud, and on a variety of mobile computing devices. His work at the vendor-neutral Linux Foundation gives him a unique and aggregate perspective on the global technology industry.

Jim has been recognized for his insights on the changing economics of the technology industry, and he is a regular keynote speaker at industry events. He advises a variety of startups, including Splashtop, and sits on the boards of the Global Economic Symposium, Open Source For America, and Chinese Open Source Promotion Union.

Karen Copenhaver

Karen Copenhaver is legal counsel to The Linux Foundation. She was previously a partner in Choate, Hall & Stewart LLP ‘s Business & Technology practice, focusing on technology transfer and licensing of intellectual property, with a specific emphasis on open source business models.

Kate Stewart

Kate Stewart is a Senior Director of Strategic Programs, responsible for the Open Compliance programs encompassing the SPDX, FOSSology, OpenChain, and other compliance related projects. Kate was one of the founders of SPDX, and is currently the specification lead. Since joining The Linux Foundation, she has also launched Real-Time Linux and Zephyr Project.

With almost 30 years of experience in the software industry, she has held a variety of roles and worked as a developer in Canada, Australia, and the US and for the last 20 years has managed software development teams in the US, Canada, UK, India, and China. She received her Master’s in computer science from University of Waterloo and Bachelor’s of computer science (co-op program) from the University of Manitoba.

Laura Kempke

Mark Hinkle

Mark is the Executive Director of the Node.js Foundation, one of The Linux Foundation’s largest and fastest growing projects. Previously he was the Linux Foundation’s VP of Marketing, working to promote projects, events, and training initiatives.

Before joining The Linux Foundation, Mark was Senior Director, Open Source Solutions for Citrix, where he managed the company’s Open Source Business office and involvement in the Apache CloudStack and Xen Project communities. He also drove the strategy and execution of open source marketing efforts for Cloud.com, leading to its acquisition by Citrix in 2011, and grew the Zenoss open source software project to more than 100,000 members, which fueled its ascent into the Inc. 500 fastest growing businesses in the U.S.

With nearly 20 years of experience, Mark is a marketing and open source expert, experienced in growing open source communities, spawning demand for emerging technologies, and creating catalysts for user-led adoption of new technologies and services.

Mike Dolan

Michael Dolan is VP of Strategic Programs supporting open source projects and legal programs at The Linux Foundation. He has set up and launched dozens of open source and open standards projects covering technology segments including networking, virtualization, cloud, blockchain, Internet of Things, big data and analytics, security, containers, storage, and embedded devices.

Mike is also involved in OpenChain and SPDX, and runs open source legal programs such as The Linux Foundation’s annual Legal Summit and Open Compliance Summit. Prior to joining The Linux Foundation, he spent eight years at IBM in roles across systems, services, and software.

He received an M.B.A. from Case Western Reserve University, a J.D. from Cleveland State University, and a B.S. in economics from John Carroll University. Mike is a member of the Ohio State Bar Association.

Mike Woster

Mike Woster is the Chief Revenue Officer of The Linux Foundation and was a founding executive team member. He joined the Foundation in 2008, when it had only a handful of employees.

Mike and his team have been the engine for growth and sustainability at The Linux Foundation. He has developed a unique strategy to expand the Foundation from a membership organization exclusively focused on the kernel to a high-growth business that provides strategic advice and key networking opportunities to businesses leveraging open source; delivers Linux and open source training and certification; hosts open source projects; and builds developer ecosystems for corporations and community developers. He maintains strong relationships with a vast network of technology thought leaders and C-suite executives at startups and Fortune 100s.

Mike developed and executed the organizational growth strategy and hired the executive team to scale and grow the business. He also built and operated the projects business, the training and certification business, the IT services business, oversaw finance and operations, and served as an officer of six legal entities.

Prior to joining The Linux Foundation, Mike started at Intel in 2002, when he was chosen for a highly selective management rotation program. He thrived at Intel, achieving rapid promotions and earning numerous performance awards. He rotated from assignments in Oregon, California, and Chicago, and spent a year as the Siemens Business Development Manager in Munich, Germany.

Mike earned his M.B.A. from Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management and graduated cum laude with a B.S. in computer science and honors engineering from Texas A&M University. He is an advisor and investor in multiple startup firms and previously served as a member of the Board of Directors for the Drupal Association.

Phil Robb

Phil Robb’s experience spans more than 30 years of work on the leading edge of software and networking technology, beginning with the launch of the personal computer in the early 1980s. He began working with open source in 2001 at Hewlett Packard, where he formed and led the company’s open source program office to create and guide the open source strategy and processes for the company.

Today, as Vice President of Operations, Networking & Orchestration, for The Linux Foundation, Phil uses his breadth of business, technical, and open source experience to guide leading networking and telecom organizations to participate in and leverage open source projects to deliver rapid, disruptive innovation to their customers.

After joining The Linux Foundation in 2013, Phil launched the OpenDaylight project. He also was instrumental in the formation and launch of OPNFV. Most recently, he was responsible for the formation and operational oversight of the ONAP technical community.

Philip DesAutels

Building on 25 years of industry experience managing the interface of technology and society, Philip DesAutels is a rare mix of­ a technologist who understands how to enable business value and an entrepreneur who knows how to leverage the transformative power of technology.

He came to The Linux Foundation in 2014 with wide-ranging experience inside and outside the technology industry. As CTO of LogMeIn’s Internet of Things platform, Philip was responsible for all aspects for strategy, technology, and the launch of the Xively product. Philip also spent nearly 10 years at Microsoft driving .Net evangelism and adoption. He was a Co-founder of Ereo, a cloud-based image analysis and search service, and Chief Scientist at Excite@Home. Philip served on the research team of the W3C, where he worked on security, trust, and privacy issues.

He actively applies his skills a technologist with numerous socially focused organizations across the globe. Philip lives in Waltham, Massachusetts, with his wife Michele, whom he met while they both served as Peace Corps volunteers in Uzbekistan.

He holds a Ph.D. in industrial marketing from LTU in Sweden, B.S. and M.S. degrees in industrial engineering from RPI, and is a graduate of the North Bennet Street School’s preservation carpentry program. He is a consummate tinkerer and an apple farmer.

Russell Farnell

Russell Farnell is responsible for overseeing finance, human resources, and operations at The Linux Foundation. His background spans more than 20 years of finance and accounting experience working at a number of organizations in the marketing industry.

Most recently, he worked at the digital marketing agency AKQA, where he ran US finance and operations. During his tenure, the company grew 20 percent year on year over a 10-year stretch to become one of the most awarded and respected agencies in the industry.

He holds a B.A. in chemistry from Oxford University and is based in San Francisco.