Nick Lippis

Nick Lippis is an authority on corporate computer networking. He has designed some for the largest computer networks in the world. He has advised many Global 2000 firms on network strategy, architecture, equipment, services and implementation including Hughes Aerospace, Barclays Bank, Kaiser Permanente, Eastman Kodak Company, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Liberty Mutual, Schering-Plough, Sprint, WorldCom, Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks and a wide range of other equipment suppliers and service providers.

Mr. Lippis is uniquely positioned to comment, analyze and observe computer networking industry trends and developments.

Ernest Lefner

Ernest co-founded ONUG with Nick Lippis after realizing that the user community needed to take control of their own destiny and expedite the network transformation. At the time he was VP of the Internetwork Engineering organization at Fidelity Investments and under his leadership Fidelity hosted the first ONUG in Boston in February 2013.

A 12-year veteran of Fidelity, Ernest was responsible for leading the team that engineered world class network, security, and application delivery services driving value to the customer beyond infrastructure management. Ernest also managed the Network and Voice service portfolio as well as Global Network Operations LAN/WAN teams and has held various technical and leadership roles.

Mark Tierney

I’m the Co-Founder and Co-Host of The Tech Fugitives Show. The show covers IT news with a dash of science. Mix in some humor and it becomes… “Tech Talk that doesn’t Suck!”

Preeti is a Principal Product Manager for Microsoft’s Cloud and AI Security group. With over 12 years of experience with Microsoft, Preeti has delivered multiple Bing and .NET products. In her current role, Preeti is responsible for Azure Sentinel ecosystem and community charter. She’s passionate about delivering great customer and developer experiences. Preeti is an active contributor to the ONUG Automated Cloud Governance working group, driving the Cloud Security Notification (CSNF) initiative.

Janet Van is a Product Manager at IBM Cloud and owns the IBM Cloud Security and Compliance Center product. The Security and Compliance Center focuses on providing unified visibility across IBM Cloud and its partners as a cloud security posture management tool for central security and compliance management. Her role as the product focal is to own the product life cycle management across teams (development, design, research, tech sales, support, marketing, etc) and to set the long-term vision, priorities and strategic roadmap for the offering. Alongside, she is also driving overall user experience and quality in the offering and managing the go-to-market activities. Previously, she started her technology career as a software developer within CIO at IBM. During her time within the CIO, she deepened her roles in technical delivery in product offerings supporting IAM and MFA security infrastructure at an enterprise level, globally within IBM. With each new role, she has always strived to explore and broaden her passion working across business and organizations to deliver and improve product and customer experience. Outside of work, Janet is a dog-mom who who enjoys spending time with her heeler pups and hiking state parks across North America.

Cloud Security Engineering leader responsible for security engineering and security innovation. Enables new and untried technologies, running proof of concepts, designing and engineering security configurations, enabling the business to leverage new technology safely. Led the creation of Cigna’s security assurance framework which ensures that the security vision is consistently executed. Current research focus on the domains of security data lakes, multi-cloud security and automated Cloud governance. ONUG CSNF Speaker and Contributor.

Karl Miller is a US Navy veteran and works as Director of Product Management for OCI Security Products covering internal and external security. He has more than 20 years of experience in multiple areas of cyber security including cryptography, identity & access management, and Operations. For the past 6 years, he has concentrated on securing cloud services and customer workloads. He holds patents in federated authentication and currently resides near Atlanta, GA, USA.

Don Duet

Don is an accomplished leader in successfully developing and executing business and technology strategy.

Don is co-founder and CEO of Concourse, an emerging leader in public cloud management and governance services, as well as a Senior Advisor at McKinsey Corporation.

Don spent 28 years at Goldman Sachs, during which time he held senior leadership roles in Technology in New York, London, Hong Kong and Tokyo. Don led the global technology division for Goldman from 2012 to 2016 and was named a partner of the firm in 2006 and Managing Director in 2000. Don was the CIO for Asia Pacific from 2001 to 2006 and served on the Asia management committee. Since relocating to the US in 2006, Don co-chaired the IBD Technology Investment Committee and was a member of the firm’s Firmwide Risk, Market Risk and Business Standards committee.

Don played an integral role in creating Goldman’s business systems architecture, algorithmic trading and risk management platform as well as leading strategic firm wide investments in VDI, Data architecture, AI and Cloud / Software Defined Infrastructure. He also created and led the teams responsible for the development of Symphony and Orbit which were subsequently spun out of the firm as broader industry platforms.

Within the technology industry, Don has been an active and vocal proponent of Open Source and Open Standards communities including acting as a founding board member of the Open Compute Project.

Don and his family reside in New York City where he is actively engaged in education and arts, serving on the board of the New York Foundation for the Arts, Columbia University School of Professional Studies, Marist College board of trustees and Teaching Matters.

Phil is the Chief Information Security Officer and Vice President of Google Cloud where he oversees a team of security industry experts and leaders in the Google Cloud Office of the CISO. As CISO of Google Cloud, Phil is focused on ensuring the company’s security and compliance, and engaging customers, partners and stakeholders on security and risk matters.

Prior to joining Google Cloud, Phil was a Partner at Goldman Sachs where he held multiple roles over a long career, initially as their first Chief Information Security Officer, a role he held for 17 years. In subsequent roles he was Chief Risk Officer for the firm’s operational risks, an operating partner in their private equity business and a senior advisor to the firm’s clients and executive leadership on cybersecurity, technology risk, digital business risk, and operational resilience. In addition to this, Phil was a Board Director of Goldman Sachs Bank (USA).

Before Goldman Sachs, Phil held multiple Chief Information Security Officer as well as senior engineering roles across a range of finance, energy and technology companies.

Outside of Google, Phil serves on the boards of the NYU Tandon School of Engineering and the NYU Stern Business School Volatility and Risk Institute. He also serves on the Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board of NIST and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Phil earned a BSc (Hons) in Computer Science from the University of York and an MSc in Computation and Cryptography from the Queen’s College at Oxford University. He was awarded the designation of Chartered Engineer in 1995 and Chartered Scientist in 2002 and was elected a Fellow of the British Computer Society in 2005.

As Group VP, North America Cloud Security Engineering, Johnnie leads a team of cloud security experts and advisors who help customers securely deploy and operate on Oracle Cloud. She has spent more than 20 years bringing security technologies to market, most recently for Microsoft’s Enterprise Cybersecurity Group. She has, in prior roles, led product, business development and marketing for industry leaders Gigamon, Juniper Networks, Varonis and Check Point software. In earlier years, she designed cellular infrastructure networks for Motorola Inc. Johnnie’s work has been featured in trade, business press as well as security conferences.

Konstantas holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland College Park.

I am an experienced IT leader who is passionate about information security. My experience and work involve developing innovative programs to cost effectively address IT security risk for enterprises.

I am also the founder and co-host of the Defensive Security Podcast, intended to help information security professionals grow and learn from publicly disclosed security breaches in order to better defend their own organizations.

Ann Johnson is Corporate Vice President of SCI Business Development at Microsoft. She oversees the investment and strategic partner strategy roadmap for security, compliance, and identity for one of the largest tech companies on our planet to help organizations become operationally resilient on their digital transformation journey and unlock capabilities of Microsoft’s intelligent cloud and next generation AI. She is a member of the board of advisors for FS-ISAC (The Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center), an advisory board member for EWF (Executive Women’s Forum on Information Security, Risk Management & Privacy), and an advisory board member for HYPR Corp. Ann recently joined the board of advisors for Cybersecurity Ventures. For more about Microsoft’s Cybersecurity Solutions, visit the Microsoft Security Site, or follow Microsoft Security on Twitter at Msft Security Twitter or Msft WDSecurity Twitter. You can also hear her talk with some of the biggest influencers in cybersecurity each week on Afternoon Cyber Tea with Ann Johnson.

Fabio Maino is a Distinguished Engineer at Cisco’s Enterprise Networking CTO team. He’s exploring the boundaries between application and network where he is focusing on making the network easy to be consumed by cloud native applications.

Global Head of Cloud Strategy and Technology at Virtual Clarity, a DXC Technology company

Rens Troost leads DXC Technology’s Cloud Right™ initiative, having joined DXC with the acquisition of Virtual Clarity. Rens is global head of cloud strategy and technology and a founder of Virtual Clarity. A hands-on leader in the strategy and practice of enterprise digital transformation, he focuses on unlocking the business value of IT in both advisory and executive roles. He is equally at home in the largest mission-critical financial IT environments and in building high performing startups from the ground up.

At Virtual Clarity Rens and his team built a highly effective specialist business focused on whole stack technology transformation for complex enterprises, with a strong but not exclusive focus on financial services, leading to the 2019 sale of the business to DXC. His prior career includes roles at UBS, Lehman Brothers, Moore Capital Management and NAME Inc. Rens has served on a number of public company boards in executive and nonexecutive capacities including NAME.COM, SMTP.COM and SharpSpring, and he mentors emerging technology leaders.

Rens holds a degree from Columbia University in New York and lives in London.

Yesim Akdeniz is a senior Managing Director in Citi technology organization and has been responsible to driving significant
transformation across the technology infrastructure landscape over the last 5 years. She has been part of the core leadership team
that has driven 30%+ savings across the operating expense, while significantly modernizing Citigroup’s technology capabilities,
enhancing customer experience, business agility and managing risk.

Citi technology organization supports business operations in 100+ countries that Citi operates in, across multiple lines of business
spanning both Institutional and Retail businesses. The technology engineering organization is designing and deploying industry
leading solutions across the Citi footprint as the bank continues to leverage product and business model innovation to maintain and
increase Citi’s competitive edge in the market place. Yesim is at the forefront of the innovative thinking that CATE (Citigroup
Architecture and Technology Engineering) is delivering.

She has held several senior management positions across Citigroup technology, Yesim has a Masters in Business Administration,
Wilmington College and a Bachelors of Art in Computer Science, East Carolina University.
As one of the senior most women in technology and co-chair of Enterprise O&T Women Leadership Council at Citigroup, Yesim is
actively involved with various ‘Women in Technology’ initiatives, including the Women’s Bond Club and Citigroup sponsorship
programs. Additionally, Yesim was awarded the top 100 CIOs award by the CIO magazine in 2010,
http://www.citigroup.com/citi/press/2010/100603e.htm, and she was inducted into the 42nd Annual YWCA Academy of Women
Leaders on in 2016.

Previously was at Cisco for +20 years, Soni has extensive experience in marketing and driving industry transformation through disruption and commercializing innovative technologies

Steve Mullaney brings 30 years of marketing, product management, and engineering experience in network infrastructure and security to Aviatrix. Most recently, Steve was the CEO of Nicira Inc., a network virtualization and software-defined networking company, from 2009 until it was acquired in 2012 by VMware for $1.26 billion. Nicira invented the concept of offering software-based services running on top of networking hardware. Mullaney became the senior vice president and general manager of VMware’s Networking and Security business unit following Nicira’s acquisition.

Prior to Nicira, he served as vice president, marketing, and interim CEO for Palo Alto Networks. During his tenure, Mullaney oversaw the company’s invention of the next-generation firewall market category, which helped cement Palo Alto Networks’ reputation as a thought leader and cybersecurity innovator.

Steve also held executive positions at Blue Coat, Force10, Cisco, Growth Networks, ShoreTel, Bay Networks and SynOptics, and began his career as a design engineer at GTE Government Systems. Steve holds a BSEE from the University of Rhode Island

Jeff Gray

Jeff Gray is the CEO and co-founder of Gluware, the leading provider of Intelligent Network Automation for the Cloud Era. As CEO, he oversees business operations and strategy, as well as the development of enterprise-leading intent-based network automation technologies adopted by the largest and most complex Fortune 500 and Global 2000 enterprises from Pharma to Finance. Gray is credited with bringing the industry’s first SDN orchestration platform to market and achieving significant blue-chip enterprise adoption. He has been a networking industry leader for two decades, starting with the commercial development of innovative high-bandwidth networking solutions as a student at California Polytechnic State University.

Richard Evers is the Global Director of Network Services at WSP. He has approximately 20 years of IT experience spanning large enterprise IT, and service provider environments. After spending close to a decade with Verizon as a technical engineer, he joined WSP in 2013 helping to standardise its network architecture globally, and lead a network transformation. Richard is currently responsible for network solution architecture, engineering, and operations covering LAN, WAN, Remote Access, Cloud Networking, and Network Security. Richard holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Information Systems from Sheffield Hallam University. Outside of work his passions are CrossFit and international travel.

Ralph Munsen is the Executive Vice-President and Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Warner Music
Group (WMG).

In his role, Ralph provides leadership for all aspects of the company's worldwide technology operations
including, strategy, information security, infrastructure engineering and operations. He also oversees
development of innovative and secure application solutions, systems, and platforms that serve the
creative and commercial needs of WMG’s record labels, divisions, artists, and business partners.

With over twenty years of media and entertainment experience, Ralph joined WMG in 2016. Prior to
joining WMG, he held senior roles at Accenture, EMI Music, Clear Channel/ iHeartMedia, and Hachette
Book Group, where he served a five-year term as CIO. Ralph was most recently Global Managing Partner
of Delivery for GroupM, the media investment giant. He is a graduate of Union College.

Amir Khan is a computer networking visionary who founded and led Viptela’s market-leading, cloud-first, Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) business before the acquisition by Cisco. As prescient as he was in identifying the $8B opportunity for SD-WAN, Amir recognized that network hampered the cloud journey and founded Alkira in 2018 with Atif Khan to reinvent networking for the cloud era. Amir’s vision is to deliver the cloud network as a utility. As CEO/Founder, he has led Alkira’s delivery of the industry’s first on-demand, as-a-service, point and click, unified multi-cloud networking service that enables cloud architects to design, build, and deploy a global multi-cloud network in minutes. Alkira enables enterprises to implement 50% less firewall capacity, and reduce TCO by up to 40%. Before Viptela, Amir held leadership roles at Cisco, Juniper, and Nortel. He holds 4 patents. Amir earned an MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Mississippi.

Richard Batelaan is Executive Vice President of North America Operations for Lumen. In this role, he is responsible for North America’s operations strategy and planning, network planning and access management, network implementation, field operations, service delivery, service assurance and advanced services operations.

Richard has nearly 30 years of experience in the telecommunications and information technology industries. Prior to joining Lumen, Richard held several leadership roles with AT&T. He also served as Chief Operations Officer for Cbeyond, Inc., BroadRiver Communications and BellSouth.net.

Richard has a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology and a master’s degree in information networking from Carnegie Mellon University.

Richard believes that an amazing digital experience helps businesses realize Lumen’s value. “It’s easy to recognize challenges; the secret is finding the hidden opportunities that will help us all emerge stronger than before.”

At home in Atlanta, Georgia, Richard enjoys playing golf and spending time with his family.

Chris Wade

Chris co-founded Itential in 2014 to simplify and accelerate the adoption
of network automation and to transform network operations practices.
Using a model-based approach, Chris leads the innovation and
development of the company’s flagship software portfolio of dynamic
network automation applications.

Previously was at Cisco for +20 years, Soni has extensive experience in marketing and driving industry transformation through disruption and commercializing innovative technologies