
Abby Kearns

Andy Updegrove
Andy Updegrove is a partner and founder of Gesmer Updegrove LLP, a Boston-based technology law firm, and has represented and helped structure more than 135 worldwide standard-setting, open source, promotional, and advocacy consortia over the past 25 years. He has also represented hundreds of both emerging and established technology companies, and is the founder and editor of the popular website http://www.consortiuminfo.org and the widely read Standards Blog.

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.
VP of Events
Arpit Joshipura
Arpit Joshipura is an executive leader and open source software evangelist across carriers, cloud and enterprise IT – spanning networking, orchestrations, operating systems, security, AI, edge, hardware and silicon. He was recently voted among the Top 5 Movers and Shakers in the Telecom Industry. At the Linux Foundation, Arpit leads open source networking, orchestration & edge/IOT, including LF Networking projects (ONAP, OPNFV, ODL, FDIO, OvS, DPDK, OpenSwitch, Akraino/Edge/IOT, etc.) as well as major industry disruptions including VNFs to CNFs (Cloud Native Network functions), 5G, AI, etc. Arpit brings 30 years of networking expertise and vision to The Linux Foundation, with both technical depth and business breadth. He has orchestrated 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 in CMO, VP, and Engineering roles within both startups and larger enterprises.
General Manager, Networking, Edge & IOT
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.
Executive Director, Hyperledger
Calista Redmond
Calista Redmond is the CEO of the RISC-V Foundation with a mission to expand and engage RISC-V stakeholders, compel industry adoption, and increase visibility and opportunity for RISC-V within and beyond the Foundation. Prior to the RISC-V Foundation, Calista held a variety of roles at IBM, including Vice President of IBM Z Ecosystem where she led strategic relationships across software vendors, system integrators, business partners, developer communities, and broader engagement across the industry. Focus areas included execution of commercialization strategies, technical and business support for partners, and matchmaker to opportunities across the IBM Z and LinuxOne community. Calista’s background includes building and leading strategic business models within IBM’s Systems Group through open source initiatives including OpenPOWER, OpenDaylight, and Open Mainframe Project. For OpenPOWER, Calista was a leader in drafting the strategy, cultivating the foundation of partners, and nurturing strategic relationships to grow the org from zero to 300+ members. While at IBM, she also drove numerous acquisition and divestiture missions, and several strategic alliances. Prior to IBM, she was an entrepreneur in four successful start-ups in the IT industry. Calista holds degrees from the University of Michigan and Northwestern University.
CEO, RISC-V Foundation
Chris Aniszczyk
Chris Aniszczyk brings 20 years of experience as The Linux Foundation’s Vice President of Developer Relations, COO of Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and Executive Director of the Open Container Initiative (OCI). He focuses on working with the developer community to advance open source projects at scale. Previously Chris served as Twitter’s head of open source, where he led a team of developer advocates and was responsible for Twitter’s open source engineering, strategy, and culture. He co-founded the TODO Group which is the defining corporate open source program management practices across the industry. He has also contributed to Gentoo/Fedora Linux and served on the Eclipse Foundation’s Board of Directors and the Java Community Process Executive Committee. An engineer by trade, Chris brings a passion for both open source and community development to the organization.
VP of Developer Relations
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.
General Manager, Training and Certification
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.
General Manager, Automotive
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.
Executive Director, CNCF
Heather Kirksey
Heather Kirksey works with the community to advance the adoption and implementation of open source NFV platforms.
Before joining The Linux Foundation, she led strategic technology alliances for MongoDB. Earlier in her career she held various leadership positions in the telecom industry, including running a partner program for CPE, doing solutions marketing for the IP division at Alcatel-Lucent, and working in business development and numerous standards activities.
While at Broadband Forum she helped create and launch TR-069; served as BroadbandHome Technical Working Group Chair; served on the Board; and oversaw collaborative activities with ATIS, 3GPP, OSGi, ITU-T, OMA, IETF, Small Cell Forum, UPnP Forum, Home Gateway Initiative, and other groups.
Heather received her master’s degree in English literature from the University of Texas, Austin.

Jamie E. Smith
Smith served as 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. She was also 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 and was the Spokeswoman and Traveling Press Director for Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2008 Presidential Campaign. Jamie also served as Communications Director for former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and The Albright Group, LLC., and was Policy Aide to Congresswoman Nita M. Lowey (D-NY). Most recently she served simultaneously as the Global Chief Communications Officer at the Bitfury Group and CEO of the Global Blockchain Business Council (GBBC). She has also served as Executive Vice President at Edelman Worldwide.
Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)
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.
Executive Director
Karen Copenhaver
Karen Copenhaver is a strategic advisor 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.
Strategic Advisor
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.
Senior Director of Strategic Programs
Lisbeth McNabb
Lisbeth McNabb is an experienced innovation and high-growth executive, a Public Company Board of Director, with results in B2B2C, Ecommerce, Brands and Consumer Package Goods, Media, Education, Retail and Technology industries. Her experience includes Match.com and PepsiCo marketing and innovation, finance and operations, big data analytics, and integrated marketing digital execution and revenue monetization successes.
Lisbeth is the CFO COO of The Linux Foundation, the organization of choice for the world’s top developers and companies to build and advance open technology. She is an expert at driving finance, strategy, operations, analytics and revenue strategies at the high-growth scaling inflection stage. Her professional background includes 20+ years in innovation in growth and emerging stage businesses at Illuminate Education, founder DigiWorksCorp and w2wlink, American Airlines, AT&T and Sodexo.
Lisbeth is a member of the National Association of Corporate Directors and Women Corporate Directors, a board of director, audit chair of Nexstar Media Group, a media company $4.6B market value, and an advisory board member of Southern Methodist University and University of Nebraska Business Schools.
She is a former advisor to American Airlines, ClubCorp, 4Word, SitterCity, Tandy Brands and several technology start-ups.She frequently speaks on innovation, recurring revenue, AI/Analytics and integrated digital marketing.and has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, CMO and CIO magazines.
She received her B.S. at University of Nebraska and M.B.A. from Southern Methodist University Cox School of Business. She was honored in 2015 as NACD Top 50 Director 2013 as Digital Director 50, Financial Times Agenda Magazine, 2011 as Distinguished Alumnae by SMU Cox School of Business and Top 25 Women in Business, and 2014 as Top 25 Women in Technology, by Conde Nast’s Dallas Business Journal.
CFO/COO
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.
VP of Strategic Programs
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.
Chief Revenue Officer
Robin Ginn
Robin Ginn is the Executive Director of the OpenJS Foundation, the neutral home for open source JavaScript projects driving broad adoption and development of key JavaScript solutions and related technologies.
As Executive Director, Robin advances the Foundation’s mission to drive adoption and ensure sustainability in the JS and web development ecosystem.
Robin brings technology, strategic marketing and business development experience to the Foundation. Over the span of her career, Robin has led major initiatives advancing open source technologies, community development, and open standards.
Robin spent more than 10 years at Microsoft where she was at the forefront of the company’s shift to openness. She co-founded @OpenAtMicrosoft and was instrumental in Microsoft’s contribution and involvement in the Node.js Project. During her tenure at Microsoft, Robin led strategic business and marketing initiatives for Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc., Microsoft Azure, and Microsoft Healthcare in AI & Research. In addition, Robin was a driving force behind go-to-market strategies that introduced AI and machine learning projects commercially.
Prior to Microsoft, Robin held leadership roles at both Edelman and WE Communications and was instrumental in campaigns focused on technology policy, data privacy, corporate citizenship, and community engagement.
Robin earned her B.A. from Washington State University.
Executive Director, OpenJS Foundation
Shubhra Kar
Shubhra is a passionate technology leader with nearly eighteen years of experience in open source, cloud, enterprise architecture, DevOps, IoT and Realtime Monitoring and Analytics. Shubhra’s career spans early stage startups to NASDAQ-listed companies generating nearly $10B+ in annual revenue. He is a bottoms up Product leader, with previous lives of developer, enterprise architect, management consultant, pre-sales director, and chief evangelist before finding his calling in product management.
He comes to the Linux Foundation from Joyent/Samsung, where as VP of Products, he ran multiple product lines – primarily services like Multi-Cloud Kubernetes, Machine Learning, Serverless and Monitoring/Analytics/Logging/Tracing. Previous to Samsung, Shubhra served as VP of Product and Marketing at startups like InfluxData (#1 Time Series platform in the world) and StrongLoop (acquired by IBM) and is also the current Marketing Chair of the Node.js Foundation. He has also held management and technical leadership positions at CA Technologies and Infosys (India’s first startup to bluechip success story).
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