Event Speakers

Alan Shimel
Alan Shimel
Founder, CEO & Editor-in-Chief
Techstrong Group

As founder, CEO, and editor-in-chief of Techstrong Group, Alan manages a broad array of businesses and brands including Techstrong Media, Techstrong Live, Techstrong Research, Devops.com, Security Boulevard, Techstrong TV, and Techstrong Learning. To do so and succeed, Alan has to be attuned to the world of technology, particularly DevOps, cybersecurity, cloud-native and digital transformation.

With almost 30 years of entrepreneurial experience, Alan has been instrumental in the success of several organizations.

Shimel is an often-cited personality in the security and technology community and is a sought-after speaker at conferences and events. In addition to his writing, his DevOps Chat podcast, TechStrong TV and Digital Anarchist audio and video appearances are widely followed.

Alan attributes his success to the combination of a strong business background and a deep knowledge of technology. His legal background, long experience in the field and New York street smarts combine to form a unique personality.

Mr. Shimel is a graduate of St. John's University with a Bachelor of Arts in Government and Politics, and holds a JD degree from NY Law School.


Caroline Wong
Caroline Wong
Chief Strategy Officer
Cobalt

Caroline Wong is the Chief Strategy Officer at Cobalt. She has 15+ years of cybersecurity leadership, including practitioner, product, and consulting roles. Caroline authored the popular textbook, Security Metrics: A Beginner's Guide. She teachers cybersecurity courses on LinkedIn Learning and hosts the Humans of InfoSec podcast.


Gary Gruver
Gary Gruver
President
Gruver Consulting LLC

Gary Gruver is an experienced executive with a proven track record of transforming software development and delivery processes in large organizations. As the R&D director over the HP LaserJet FW team (~800), he led productivity improvements of 2-3X. Then, as VP of QA, Release, and Operations at Macy’s.com, he managed the journey toward continuous delivery. His current passion is helping as many people as possible achieve similar results through consulting, webinars, presentations, and books. Gary’s consulting approach is unique in that he stays engaged with organizations during their journeys to provide guidance when they hit specific challenges and to learn about what is and isn’t working during as many different transformations as possible. This experience enables him to help clients avoid common mistakes and share approaches that have been proven to deliver business results for a variety of companies. He is the author of Engineering the Digital Transformation, Starting and Scaling DevOps in the Enterprise and co-author of Leading the Transformation: Applying Agile and DevOps Principles at Scale and A Practical Approach to Large-Scale Agile Development: How HP Transformed LaserJet FutureSmart Firmware.


Robin Yeman
Robin Yeman
Executive Space Domain Lead
Carnergie Mellon SEI

Robin's expertise spans over twenty-eight years in software engineering with a focus on digital engineering, DevSecOps and the Agile building of large complex solutions across multiple domains from submarines to satellites. She advocates for continuous learning with multiple certifications including SAFe Fellow, SPCT, CEC, PMP, PMI-ACP, and CSEP. She is a Systems Engineering PhD candidate at Colorado State, researching best practices to deliver complex safety-critical solutions using Agile and DevSecOps.

She provides mentoring, guidance and coaching support and conducts training classes to enable digital transformation for customers and teams. Robin's key areas of focus include systems thinking, digital engineering, DevSecOps and Agile. She has also led several efforts in Agile program execution and continues to lend her expertise in the development of safety-critical systems using digital engineering, DevSecOps, and Agile techniques and processes for management, scheduling and technical performance.


Marc Hornbeek
Marc Hornbeek
CEO
Engineering DevOps Consulting

Marc Hornbeek, a.k.a., DevOps-the-Gray is CEO and Principal Consultant at Engineering DevOps Consulting, Author of the book Engineering DevOps, Ambassador, Author and instructor for The DevOps Institute, Blogger on DevOps.com, CloudNativeNow.com and SecurityBoulevard.com. Marc is a globally recognized strategic consultant who applies engineering practices, holistically, for Continuous Testing, DevOps, DevSecOps and SRE digital transformations. Marc has led more than 90 transformations for enterprises, manufacturers, service providers and government institutions. He is an IEEE Outstanding Engineer, and an IEEE Life member. His education includes engineering and executive business degrees and multiple certifications from the DevOps Institute.

https://ciolook.com/marc-hornbeek-unveiling-the-blueprint-to-success-in-the-era-of-digital-transformation/

https://devops.com/author/marc-hornbeek/


Mitchell Ashley
Mitchell Ashley
Chief Technology Advisor
The Futurum Group

Mitch Ashley is a technology executive and entrepreneur who is an advisor, analyst, product creator and tech leader, bringing 30+ years in cybersecurity, cloud, AI, product development, software engineering and networking. Mitch is Chief Technology Advisor with The Futurum Group and CTO of Techstrong Group’s tech media platforms covering digital leadership, DevOps, cybersecurity, AI, cloud native, cloud infrastructure, platforms and ITSM.

As a CTO, CIO, and VP of Engineering, Mitch led the creation of award-winning cybersecurity products utilized in the private and public sectors, including the U.S. Department of Defense and all military branches. Mitch also led business and technology for managed PKI services (broadband, Wi-Fi, IoT, energy management and 5G industries), product certification test labs and a service locator SaaS (93m transactions annually). Mitch led the engineering and technology deployments of the first video-on-demand and Internet cable services, a national broadband network and multiple banking and telecom applications.

Mitch hosts multiple award-winning video and podcast series, including DevOps Unbound, CISO Talk and Techstrong Gang available on Techstrong.tv and TechstrongPodcasts.com. Mitch frequently appears as a tech expert, speaker, panelist, moderator and interviewer. He publishes his research on FuturumGroup.com and TechstrongResearch.com and writes for multiple online publications.


Amanda Razani
Amanda Razani
Custom Content Editor
Techstrong Group

With over 15 years of experience as a professional writer, editor and project coordinator, Amanda’s work can be found in magazines, newspapers, books, blogs and podcasts around the world. She has been recognized as a Top 20 Under 40 Professional and is regularly invited to tech conferences to report on the latest tech announcements. Amanda draws her inspiration from constant learning, reading, volunteering and networking. She is a proud wife and momma, and Angelo State University graduate who currently resides in Texas.


Baruch Sadogursky
Baruch Sadogursky
Principal Developer Advocate
Gradle

Baruch Sadogursky (@jbaruch) did Java before it had generics, DevOps before there was Docker, and DevRel before it had a name. He started DevRel at JFrog when it was ten people and took it all the way to a successful $6B IPO by helping engineers solve problems. Now Baruch keeps helping engineers solve problems but also helps companies help engineers solve problems. He is a co-author of the "Liquid Software" and "DevOps Tools for Java Developers" books, serves on multiple conference program committees, and regularly speaks at numerous most prestigious industry conferences, including Kubecon, JavaOne (RIP), Devoxx, QCon, DevRelCon, DevOpsDays (all over), DevOops (not a typo) and others. After a tenure of eleven years in JFrog DevRel, Baruch is the Principal Developer Productivity Engineering Advocate at Gradle.


Cosme Cardoso
Cosme Cardoso
CEO
WED Technology

Is interested in the evolution of IT practices, particularly the transition from DevOps to AIOps. I have a focus on the integration of AI in IT operations to enhance automation, predictive analytics, and self-healing systems. User is likely engaged in areas involving continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD), automation tools, and the application of AI to improve operational efficiency. I'm also interested in the future direction of IT, particularly the move toward autonomous operations and human-machine collaboration.


Francis Cordon
Francis Cordon
Chief Customer Officer
Causely

Francis Cordon is an observability and cloud-native technologies domain expert and seasoned technology leader. He currently is Chief Customer Officer at Causely. His experience includes customer success leadership at Quantum Metric and IBM Turbonomic, resiliency and performance architecture at BNY Mellon, and sales engineering at Dynatrace.


Michela Federico
Michela Federico
FE Lead
Unbabel

Born in a small southern Italian village, I was raised near the Italian city of love (Verona) and finally landed in the UK. Here, I developed a pure obsession for Korean dramas while starting my career as a software engineer. I met my now-Pakistani husband, and we live a happy, chilled life with our baby cat, Sprinkle. In the past couple of years, I've been specializing in microfrontends architectures and DevOps as a culture, with a particular focus on DevX and platform engineering. I'm an advocate of the continuous mindset, which pushes me to always learn new things and connect with people in the industry to grow even faster. This helps me mentor and set a direction for my team of FE engineers.


Axel Labruna
Axel Labruna
DevSecOps & Cloud Head
Baufest

My name is Axel and I'm from Argentina, where I live with my two dog childs, Thor and Poroto (I know, he should've been named Loki, long story!). Love playing with them, go for a walk and grab a coffee or have mate (argentinian drink :D ) in some park and read. Also series, films, friends, tech. Oh almost forgot! I'm an (almost yet) computer engineer who loves to code and automate, nowadays very into Digital Transformation, Cloud and DevSecOps!


Julio Arruda
Julio Arruda
AI Impact Lead
GFT Technologies

8 Years Microsoft MVP, First Brazilian GitHub Star, Global AI Impact Lead at GFT

https://youtube.com/@julioarruda


Darren House
Darren House
Co-Founder and Chief Technical Officer
NXT1

Darren House is Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at NXT1, empowering Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and other software builders to securely launch and manage SaaS faster and more cost-effectively. Previously, Darren established RockIT Labs and served as CTO of RockITek. There, he led the development of TheKeyosk, a leading-edge security key managed service, and ultimately, NXT1 LaunchIT. Prior to co-founding NXT1, he served as a Senior Security Specialist for Amazon Web Services. Darren is a seasoned technology executive with over 20 years' experience, and has held various leadership roles including CTO, Director of Solutions Management, Technologist, Architect, and network and systems engineering, showcasing his diverse expertise in the technology industry.


Larry Maccherone
Larry Maccherone
Dev(Sec)Ops Transformation Architect
Contrast Security

Larry Maccherone is a thought leader on DevSecOps, Agile, and Analytics. At Comcast, Larry launched and scaled the DevSecOps Transformation program over five years. In his DevSecOps Transformation role at Contrast, he's now looking to apply what he learned to guide organizations with a framework for safely empowering development teams to take ownership of the security of their products. Larry was a founding Director at Carnegie Mellon's CyLab, researching cybersecurity and software engineering. While there, he co-led the launch of the DHS-funded Build-Security-In initiative. Larry has also served as Principal Investigator for the NSA's Code Assessment Methodology Project which wrote the book on how to evaluate application security tools, and received the Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Labs Fellow award.