Luis Jorge Romero

Director-General, ETSI

Luis Jorge Romero is Director-General at ETSI and was first elected as ETSI’s Director-General 8 years ago. Mr. Romero has 30 years’ experience in the telecommunications sector. Previously he has held diverse Director positions in Spain, Morocco and Mexico, predominantly with Telefónica. As Global Director for International Roaming and Standards, and Director of Innovation and Standards, he oversaw Telefónica's participation in global standardization activities and participated directly in the work of the Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) Alliance and in the GSM Association (GSMA). Before joining ETSI, he also held the position of Director-General of Innosoft and was also a partner and board member of the Madrid-based Innology Ventures.

Matt Beal

Group Technology Director, Strategy & Architecture, Vodafone Group Services

Beth Cohen

NFV/SDN Product Strategist, Verizon

In her role at Verizon, Beth is working on developing Software Defined Network and Edge products leveraging the Verizon global network. She has been responsible for the launch of several leading-edge products include Secure Cloud Interconnect, which allows companies to connect to cloud services over private networks, and Virtual Network Services, which is a market leading SDN product. She has been working in the Open Source community contributing to the Edge Working Group for the OpenStack Foundation, the End User Advisory Group for the LFN (Linux Foundation Networking) and most recently the CNTT (Common NFVi Telco Taskforce), a joint effort by GSMA and LFN. She has been involved in cutting edge technology since her days at BBN, the pioneering inventor of the Internet, where she created some of the earliest managed network services products.

Bill Ren

Chief Open Source Liaison Officer, ICT Infrastructure Open Source GM, Huawei

Bill Ren holds an EMBA and Master Degree from Peking University, and a CS Bachelor Degree from Shanghai Jiaotong University. Since joining Huawei in 2000，Bill served as an Intelligent Network Research and Development Engineer, Product Manager and Architect of India Branch, General Manager of Business OSS, Vice President of Network OSS, Vice President of Network OSS Strategy and MKT, Vice President of Solution MKTG, etc. We have accumulated rich experience in R&D, marketing and product management. Mr. Ren Xudong（Bill Ren）serves as the General Manager of ICT Infrastructure Open Source Business at Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd, and as the chief liaison officer of Huawei. In this role，he is fully responsible for the implementation of open source solutions for operators/enterprises in the network automation industry, using open source means to build industrial ecology, expand industrial space, build a healthy and harmonious industrial environment, and support the success of the company's business.

Anders Rosengren

Head of Architecture & Technology Business Area Digital Services, Ericsson

Anders Rosengren is head of Architecture & Technology in Business Area Digital Services. Ericsson Digital Services provides solutions that realize our customers’ digital transformation including software and services in the areas of monetization and management systems (OSS/BSS), telecom core (packet core and communication services), and cloud & NFV (Network Functions Virtualization) infrastructure. In his role Anders is responsible for defining and securing implementation of Network & Implementation Architecture across the Digital Services portfolio, defining Technology Strategy and development as well as Standardization and Open Source strategy and execution. Anders Rosengren joined Ericsson in 1989 and spent the first years of his career as a developer and project manager in ASIC & HW development. He has since held various leadership positions in the company leading R&D work in both HW and SW for Telecom Core and IP products as well as leading strategic technology and architecture teams on company level in Telecom Core, Cloud, IP, NMS/OSS and Radio product areas. Anders has international experience, leading multi-country R&D units across Europe, US and Asia. Anders holds an MSc in Electronic Engineering from the Institute of Technology in Lund, Sweden.

Heather Kirksey

Vice President, Ecosystem & Community, The Linux Foundation

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.

Lincoln Lavoie

Sr. Engineer & Industry Lead, UNH InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL)

Lincoln Lavoie is a senior engineer at the University of New Hampshire Interoperability Laboratory, responsible for the NFV, Gfast, DSL, Wi-Fi, and GPON programs and services offered by the lab. He currently serves as the technical chair of the Broadband Forum and the chair of the Linux Foundation Networking project’s certification committee. Lincoln has worked in the broadband industry for the past 15 years, with a focus on access technologies, and most recently the migration to virtualization technologies. Lincoln received his Master of Science in Electrical Engineer from the University of New Hampshire in 2008.

Dr. Junlan Feng

Chief Scientist, China Mobile Research Institute

Junlan Feng, Chief Scientist at China Mobile General Manager of AI and Intelligent Operation R&D Center. Dr. Feng has led R&D of China Mobile on artificial intelligence and big data since September 2013. She had been the architect of IBM Big Data from January 2013.1 to August 2013 and a principal researcher at AT&T Labs Research from August 2001 to January 2013. Dr. Feng received her Ph.D. on Speech Recognition in 2001 from Chinese Academy of Sciences. She is an IEEE senior member, an IEEE speech and language committee member and IEEE industry committee member. She is a reviewer for major data mining, speech, and natural language international conferences and journals. She has chaired and organized multiple conferences in these fields. Dr. Feng has over 50 professional publications and has been granted 33 U.S and international patents.

Jason Shepherd

CTO, IoT & Edge, Dell Technologies

Jason Shepherd is responsible for CTO evangelism, standards enablement, strategic ecosystem development and solution planning for the Dell Technologies IoT Solutions Division. His proven track record as a thought leader in the IoT market is evidenced through his leadership of efforts building up the award-winning Dell IoT partner ecosystem and establishing the vendor-neutral, open source EdgeX Foundry project to facilitate greater interoperability in IoT edge computing. Jason has spent his career at both Dell and tech startups in roles spanning CTO, engineering and marketing. He holds 14 granted and 11 pending U.S. patents.

Arpit Joshipura

General Manager of Networking, The Linux Foundation

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.

Melissa Evers-Hood

Sr. Director, Google OS Division, Intel Corporation

Melissa Evers-Hood is the Chair of the LF Edge Governing Board and Sr. Director of Cloud Software Engineering within the Open Source Technology Center in the Software and Services Group at Intel Corp. She has managed Chrome OS, Android development, Graphics, Media, Audio amongst other responsibilities. Joining Intel 14 yrs ago, Melissa has worked in Finance, Product and Program management, as well as Engineering management. A passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion, Melissa has engaged in program development and individual mentoring since the beginning of her career. Prior to Intel, Melissa worked at Dell in planning and at ExxonMobil in engineering in New Jersey and Texas.

Dan Kohn

Cloud Native Computing Foundation

Dan 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.

Will Townsend

Sr. Analyst, Moor Insights & Strategy & Forbes Contributor

Will is a senior analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy focused on carrier equipment providers, carrier services and enterprise networking. He brings over 25 years of technology industry experience in a variety of product, marketing, channel, business development and sales roles. Most recently, Will served as a management consultant for an early 4G marketing services company as well as Dell EMC and BigCommerce, focusing on sales enablement activities supporting both direct and partner sales functions. Will participated in the meteoric growth of Dell in the early to mid-1990s. He was a business development professional with the objective to accelerate the adoption of mobile broadband embedded in Dell notebook PCs by managing the relationships between AT&T in the U.S. and Telus in Canada. He also helped launch the iconic Dell Dimension consumer desktop platform. After Dell, Will joined Compaq and held global product management and marketing leadership positions in both the enterprise and consumer desktop client PC businesses in the run-up to the company’s #1 market share position. Prior to Compaq, Will held product marketing positions with Cyrix Semiconductor for the 6×86 microprocessor. He also serves as a traveling mentor for the nonprofit Bpeace and has assisted numerous entrepreneurs with sales and marketing consultation in Guatemala. Will earned a BA in Economics from The University of Texas at Austin and an MBA from Texas State University

Amy Wheelus

Vice President - Network Cloud, AT&T

Amy Wheelus leads AT&T’s Network Cloud platform architecture, development, design, planning and engineering as well as the asset lifecycle management, tenant care, quality assurance and cloud security functions. Amy is a technologist who has held a variety of leadership positions within AT&T. A few of her many contributions to AT&T include leading teams that helped: deliver the first virtualized network functions and services on a network cloud using AT&Ts industry leading ECOMP platform; deliver Airship, an industry first fully declarative, fully containerized, under cloud platform; expand AT&T’s VoLTE (voice over LTE) service; plan and deliver AT&T’s Ultra Long Haul Transport network; construct over 1 million square feet of web hosting data centers; and modernize AT&T’s central office infrastructure. Additionally, Amy contributes to her community and the field of engineering through her volunteer efforts. She currently serves on the board of directors and executive committee for Tech Titans and is engaged in their STEM Workforce initiatives. Amy received her Master’s of Business Administration from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University. She also holds a Bachelor’s of Industrial Engineering degree from The Georgia Institute of Technology. Amy lives in Dallas, Texas, and enjoys traveling, mentoring youth, and all spectator sports.

Thomas Nadeau

Technical Director, NFV, Red Hat

Tom is Technical Director for NFV at Red Hat where he leads a team of engineers focusing on the many areas of Open Source Networking including SDN, NFV, data plane acceleration, and container networking efforts. In addition, Tom leads the NFV Partner Engineering team which is focused on supporting Red Hat's Telco/SP customers. Tom works across Red Hat’s products and business to strengthen and sure up its networking technologies around these products by working on M&A, partner and company strategy. He serves on the Linux Foundation Edge Board and Networking Technical Advisory Council (TAC), and has previously held similar roles in the OPNFV and OpenDaylight projects. Tom is an Apache Software Foundation Committer and is co-Maintainer of The Public Yang Repository on GitHub.

Pierre Lynch

Lead Technologist, Ixia

- ETSI NFV ISG TST working group chair - Lead Technologist, Ixia - In the test industry for the past 20 years - Working at Ixia for the past 11 years, always in the product management team for wireless test products - Most of my experience has been with mobility testing: GSM, UMTS, LTE, etc - I am co-chair of the Operations working group of the Small Cell Forum - Bachelors degree in Applied Computer Science (Université de Moncton), Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering (University of New Brunswick) - My mom thinks I am a nice guy 🙂

Erik Nordmark

Co-founder & Chief Architect, ZEDEDA

Experienced Specialist with a demonstrated history of working in the computer software industry. Skilled in various Internet technologies. Strong professional with a Technical Licentiate focused in Computer Science from Uppsala University and an MSCS from Stanford University.