Region & Country

Valued speakers who focus on the geopolitical and cultural aspects of different regions and countries, exploring topics like regional development, international relations, and cultural identity

Princess Saven

Princess Saven

Princess is the founder of Poolfi, a platform helping communities across Nigeria coordinate money seamlessly and transparently. Her work sits at the intersection of financial inclusion, product design, and community-rooted fintech, drawing on firsthand field research with communities to understand how money actually moves outside formal banking systems. Trained in Medical Laboratory Science before moving into product design and startup building, she is currently viewing informal financial systems as infrastructure worth building for. She writes and speaks on the data gaps in informal finance, and is currently building toward speaking engagements at forums focused on financial inclusion in emerging markets.

Princess is the founder of Poolfi, a platform helping communities across Nigeria coordinate money seamlessly and transparently. Her work sits at the intersection of financial inclusion, product design, and community-rooted fintech, drawing on firstha... Show more

Dhiraj Sriram

Dhiraj Sriram

I'm a Staff Software Engineer at HelloFresh in Berlin, building the shared React Native modules behind our iOS and Android apps. I care deeply about usability, accessibility, and performance the parts of software people feel but don't notice. I'm currently focused on helping teams adopt AI coding agents safely with the right guardrails to ensure stability.

I'm a Staff Software Engineer at HelloFresh in Berlin, building the shared React Native modules behind our iOS and Android apps. I care deeply about usability, accessibility, and performance the parts of software people feel but don't notice. I'm cur... Show more

Oluwaseyi Oluwawumiju

Oluwaseyi Oluwawumiju

Oluwaseyi Oluwawumiju
Oluwaseyi Oluwawumiju is a dynamic Technical Consultant, Public Speaker, and Author, affiliated with Covenant Technologies, a Microsoft Certified Partner based in Lagos, Nigeria. With over 25 years of professional experience, he is recognized as a leader in the IT industry, specializing in Microsoft infrastructure, data, and artificial intelligence solutions.

Oluwaseyi is a Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT), a Most Valuable Professional (MVP) in Office Services & Apps, and the MCT Regional Lead for Nigeria. He also serves as the Manager of Data & AI at Wragby Solutions & Technologies Limited, where he drives cutting-edge innovations in AI, data analytics, and cloud technologies. As a Fellow of the Institute of Information Management Africa (FIIM Africa), he holds one of the highest honors for excellence in data and information management.

At Covenant Technologies, Oluwaseyi plays a pivotal role as a senior consulting partner, helping organizations maximize the value of their Microsoft technologies, including Azure, Microsoft 365, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, and AI-powered solutions. His expertise extends beyond technical implementations, focusing on empowering businesses to leverage IT for strategic growth.

Prior to joining Covenant Technologies, Oluwaseyi was a Senior Technical Consultant and Support Manager at 1st Intellit Solution, where he led outsourcing teams and spearheaded the development of innovative client systems.

Driven by his passion for IT evolution in Africa, Oluwaseyi is a prominent advocate for cloud technologies and modern workplace solutions across West, East, and Central Africa (WECA). His campaigns for adopting tools like SharePoint, Yammer, Office 365, Azure, and Microsoft Teams have significantly influenced medium and large organizations. The growing response from the Nigerian market and beyond highlights the transformative impact of his efforts in fostering a modern IT ecosystem across Africa.

Oluwaseyi Oluwawumiju Oluwaseyi Oluwawumiju is a dynamic Technical Consultant, Public Speaker, and Author, affiliated with Covenant Technologies, a Microsoft Certified Partner based in Lagos, Nigeria. With over 25 years of professional experience, h... Show more

Marko Sluga

Marko Sluga

NGINX Evangelist @ F5 | Guiding your journey from Open Source to Enterprise

NGINX Evangelist @ F5 | Guiding your journey from Open Source to Enterprise Show more

Michael Benezra

Michael Benezra

Michael Benezra is Partner, North America at Crewstone International, where he has led $280M+ in private equity transactions across consumer, financial services, life sciences and commercial real estate. He is also CEO of Signal87 AI, which builds AI tools for government service contractors. Previously he served as Consul for Innovation & Economic Affairs at the Consulate General of Israel to New England, working with governors, state economic development teams and federal officials on trade and investment. He holds an M.A. in Government from Harvard.

Michael Benezra is Partner, North America at Crewstone International, where he has led $280M+ in private equity transactions across consumer, financial services, life sciences and commercial real estate. He is also CEO of Signal87 AI, which builds AI... Show more

Jeffrey T. Fritz

Jeffrey T. Fritz

Jeff Fritz is a principal program manager in Microsoft’s CoreAI Division where he leads development of live video and online content for Aspire, Blazor and other .NET technologies. Jeff is the executive producer of the .NET Conf series of online events and is a Twitch and YouTube partner. You can catch Jeff writing .NET Code with GitHub, Visual Studio, and Azure on his video stream called 'Fritz and Friends' at twitch.tv/csharpfritz

Jeff Fritz is a principal program manager in Microsoft’s CoreAI Division where he leads development of live video and online content for Aspire, Blazor and other .NET technologies. Jeff is the executive producer of the .NET Conf series of online eve... Show more

Sven Hennessen

Sven Hennessen

Sven Hennessen is Co-Managing Director at vensas GmbH and has been building software professionally for almost 20 years — long after his first programming experiments in the early nineties, tweaking the velocity of exploding bananas in the QBasic classic "Gorillas".

He’s spent his career deep in the .NET ecosystem, distributed systems, and modern frontend development, always with a strong focus on how software is actually built and used in real projects. Sven enjoys sitting at the intersection of business and technology, translating between people living in both worlds.

In his sessions, he shares hands-on stories from architecture consulting, cloud migrations, and continuous deployment — focusing on what worked, what didn’t, and why. Known for his pragmatic mindset and clear communication, Sven prefers solutions that are simple enough to explain, yet solid enough to scale.

Sven Hennessen is Co-Managing Director at vensas GmbH and has been building software professionally for almost 20 years — long after his first programming experiments in the early nineties, tweaking the velocity of exploding bananas in the QBasic cla... Show more

Aliho Gilbert

Aliho Gilbert

Aliho Gilbert is a Machine Learning and Android development enthusiast passionate about applying AI to solve real-world problems. He currently serves as the President of the IndabaX AI Club at Kabale University, where he leads initiatives to build capacity in AI/ML. Gilbert has worked on projects ranging from RAG-powered chatbots and AI for agriculture to AI in healthcare applications. He is also a Zindi Ambassador, helping grow Africa’s data science and AI community. His mission is to empower developers to build impactful, AI-driven solutions optimized for low-resource environments.

Aliho Gilbert is a Machine Learning and Android development enthusiast passionate about applying AI to solve real-world problems. He currently serves as the President of the IndabaX AI Club at Kabale University, where he leads initiatives to build ca... Show more

Torben Leth

Torben Leth

Senior Software Engineer @ Continia Software A/S
15+ years of experience in CAL/AL development for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.
Passionate electronics enthusiast and organizer of Denmark’s largest LAN event.
Creator of #BC4Ubuntu.

Senior Software Engineer @ Continia Software A/S 15+ years of experience in CAL/AL development for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Passionate electronics enthusiast and organizer of Denmark’s largest LAN event. Creator of #BC4Ubuntu. Show more

Sandra Pretzer

Sandra Pretzer

Sandra has her roots in online marketing and key account management and has worked in these areas as a teamlead in startups in an international environment. In 2016, she discovered OKR as her “gateway drug” to the world of agility and took on the role of OKR Master within the company. Excited by this new take on team dynamics and collaboration, she made herself redundant by digitizing and optimizing her job and went into freelancing in 2019. Since then, she has been supporting teams and organizations of all sizes with OKR introductions, developing and working with strategy and corporate goals, developing effective collaboration models and coaching team leads in their role.

Sandra has her roots in online marketing and key account management and has worked in these areas as a teamlead in startups in an international environment. In 2016, she discovered OKR as her “gateway drug” to the world of agility and took on the rol... Show more

Shiva Kalyan Reddy Giri

Shiva Kalyan Reddy Giri

Shiva Kalyan Reddy is a Senior Software Engineer with experience building and modernizing enterprise web and mobile applications, particularly in financial-services environments. His work spans full-stack development, API architecture, cloud platforms, enterprise modernization, and generative AI. He has hands-on experience with LLM APIs, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), vector databases, semantic search, prompt engineering, real-time AI applications, and AI-assisted software development. He is especially interested in production readiness, secure data handling, scalability, maintainability, and ensuring that engineering teams understand and take ownership of the systems they build and operate.

Shiva Kalyan Reddy is a Senior Software Engineer with experience building and modernizing enterprise web and mobile applications, particularly in financial-services environments. His work spans full-stack development, API architecture, cloud platform... Show more

Santosh Durgam

Santosh Durgam

Santosh Durgam is a data engineering & analytics leader with 20+ years building governed, high-scale data platforms across retirement/401(k), broader financial services, and healthcare. He leads cross-functional teams that deliver production-grade data lakes, lineage-aware pipelines, and ML-enabled analytics on cloud—translating governance into measurable business outcomes.

Recent speaking includes SQL Saturday Minnesota 2025, where he presented “From Ingestion to Insights: Building Robust Data Pipelines in AWS” to an in-person community audience. He has also contributed to international research forums and science conferences, and is invited to speak at ICDPN-2025 (International Conference on Data Processing & Networking), engaging practitioners and scholars on data engineering, governance, and analytics at scale. Santosh actively publishes/curates work via Google Scholar and shares practical playbooks for data quality, metadata/lineage, and operating models that connect data platforms to financial decisioning.

Beyond delivery, Santosh serves the community as a peer reviewer of scholarly work on data/ML methodologies and as a judge/mentor for select industry and academic competitions, reinforcing peer validation and public recognition. He champions modern data culture—mentoring engineers and product leaders, and advocating automation (incl. AI agents) to elevate reliability, speed, and auditability in regulated environments. Santosh recently completed his Executive MBA, sharpening strategy and value-creation at the intersection of data, risk, and growth

Santosh Durgam is a data engineering & analytics leader with 20+ years building governed, high-scale data platforms across retirement/401(k), broader financial services, and healthcare. He leads cross-functional teams that deliver production-grade da... Show more

Kelly Morrison

Kelly Morrison

Kelly Morrison is a native of Georgia with a BS in mathematics and a PhD in computer engineering. He has over 30 years of software experience in various industries, including the television, education, retail, and agriculture sectors. He also wrote a monthly column for "Digital Output" magazine under the pen name "Armand Tarantino". He is currently employed as a solutions architect at CGI.

Kelly Morrison is a native of Georgia with a BS in mathematics and a PhD in computer engineering. He has over 30 years of software experience in various industries, including the television, education, retail, and agriculture sectors. He also wrote a... Show more

Andrea Iacono

Andrea Iacono

Andrea is a software engineer with a broad experience in several industries ranging from e-commerce to industrial automation, from public administration to Web TV / music. His interests are in algorithms, data and AI.

Andrea is a software engineer with a broad experience in several industries ranging from e-commerce to industrial automation, from public administration to Web TV / music. His interests are in algorithms, data and AI. Show more

Rakesh Darge

Rakesh Darge

Rakesh is an accomplished technologist and leader with over 24 years' experience in building & architecting modular Cloud ERP experiences. He is a Microsoft MVP in Business Applications and 4th time Fasttrack Recognized Solutions Architect. This is a testament to his expertise and contributions to the community in the field of business applications and low-code & no-code.

Rakesh is a Global Customer Success Architect at Tata Consultancy Services (Business Applications + Generative AI). He is responsible for designing Dynamics 365 Finance & SCM ERP, and leveraging Gen AI. He has expertise in a wide range of technologies, including Bizapps, Power Apps, and Azure.

Rakesh is passionate about leveraging Generative AI & Autonomous Agents for business applications that enhance business growth and innovation. He strongly believes in giving back to the community. He frequently shares his insights and expertise through speaking engagements, blogs, and community involvement. With his passion for empowering others, Rakesh has mentored and empowered many learners.

Rakesh is an accomplished technologist and leader with over 24 years' experience in building & architecting modular Cloud ERP experiences. He is a Microsoft MVP in Business Applications and 4th time Fasttrack Recognized Solutions Architect. This is a... Show more

Riccardo Binetti

Riccardo Binetti

Riccardo started his career as an embedded developer, but switched to backend development as soon as he discovered (and fell in love with) Elixir.

He enjoys dad jokes, yak shaving, good coffee, and making music both in usual and strange ways (from Game Boys to live coding).

Riccardo started his career as an embedded developer, but switched to backend development as soon as he discovered (and fell in love with) Elixir. He enjoys dad jokes, yak shaving, good coffee, and making music both in usual and strange ways (from... Show more

Kaustubh Hiware

Kaustubh Hiware

Kaustubh is a Senior Backend Engineer who has led multiple cross-platform initiatives at Mercari, Japan’s largest e-commerce marketplace. He has 6 research publications, in the domain of Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, and Artificial Intelligence - all before AI was cool. He has a keen interest in B2B SaaS businesses, and ran a podcast interviewing startup founders in Japan.

He has presented at conferences, community events, and internal engineering training sessions on topics including software engineering, resilience, open source, and AI. Originally from India and now based in Japan, he enjoys exploring the intersection of technology, systems thinking, and human collaboration.

Kaustubh is a Senior Backend Engineer who has led multiple cross-platform initiatives at Mercari, Japan’s largest e-commerce marketplace. He has 6 research publications, in the domain of Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, and Artificial I... Show more

Brian Lockwood

Brian Lockwood

Brian Lockwood is a Senior Systems Software Engineer at NVIDIA on the NVIDIA Kubernetes Accelerator (NKX) team. He is the lead developer of the NodeWright operator, which runs on hundreds of NVIDIA's internal Kubernetes clusters spanning thousands of nodes, and one of the core developers on AICR. He previously worked on NVIDIA's Linux team, and before NVIDIA he worked at several ML and data-analytics startups in roles across data engineering, platform engineering, MLOps, and Big Data.

Brian Lockwood is a Senior Systems Software Engineer at NVIDIA on the NVIDIA Kubernetes Accelerator (NKX) team. He is the lead developer of the NodeWright operator, which runs on hundreds of NVIDIA's internal Kubernetes clusters spanning thousands of... Show more

Tal Hason

Tal Hason

I’m a Senior Software Engineer and Release Engineering Lead at Red Hat, driving the release lifecycle for OpenShift Virtualization. With over 15 years of experience in IT, I specialize in building automated pipelines, GitOps-driven architectures, and production-ready CI/CD workflows that scale. Passionate about open source, Kubernetes, and cloud-native infrastructure, I thrive on solving complex challenges and leading high-impact initiatives. From designing self-healing systems to speaking at global conferences, I turn innovation into real-world solutions and empower teams to deliver faster and smarter.

I’m a Senior Software Engineer and Release Engineering Lead at Red Hat, driving the release lifecycle for OpenShift Virtualization. With over 15 years of experience in IT, I specialize in building automated pipelines, GitOps-driven architectures, and... Show more

Ryan Djurovich

Ryan Djurovich

Ryan Djurovich has been speaking at engineering & infrastructure conferences, events, and podcasts for over 10 years, and has been programming for more than 27 years. He started an Open Source CMS in 2003 and began automating infrastructure in 2008. An avid Go and TypeScript programmer, Ryan has worked as an engineer and leader at companies such as Cloudflare, Xero, and Flippa. In 2024, Ryan founded Nadrama, with a mission to make infrastructure easy. In 2026, Ryan created Podplane.dev - an open source Kubernetes distribution & PaaS.

Ryan Djurovich has been speaking at engineering & infrastructure conferences, events, and podcasts for over 10 years, and has been programming for more than 27 years. He started an Open Source CMS in 2003 and began automating infrastructure in 2008. ... Show more

Aryan Jogia

Aryan Jogia

Aryan is a senior security researcher specialising in the intricate dance of offensive evasion and defensive bypass. With nearly six years of focused experience, including a tenure with the Government of India, he dissects modern AV and EDR systems by targeting their core architectural assumptions on Windows and nix platforms. His deep work in malware development and low-level programming fuels the creation of advanced tooling for red team engagements, where he has successfully navigated fortified environments. An avid contributor to the community, Aryan has shared his findings at venues including WildWest Hackin' Fest, The Hack Summit, and CarolinaCon, and has led technical training sessions at BSides events. His research extends to pioneering fuzzing implementations and automation, constantly pushing the boundaries of what's possible in security research.

Aryan is a senior security researcher specialising in the intricate dance of offensive evasion and defensive bypass. With nearly six years of focused experience, including a tenure with the Government of India, he dissects modern AV and EDR systems b... Show more

Piyush Verma

Piyush Verma

Piyush Verma is a SaaS entrepreneur. Over the last decade, he has focused on and built software observability and big data SaaS companies.
Previously, he built a time series data warehouse capable of handling billions of cardinalities. In his past roles, he has worked as an SRE and CTO for consumer-facing software companies.

Piyush Verma is a SaaS entrepreneur. Over the last decade, he has focused on and built software observability and big data SaaS companies. Previously, he built a time series data warehouse capable of handling billions of cardinalities. In his past r... Show more

Renato Chu

Renato Chu

Renato é formado em administração pela FGV-EAESP com foco em estratégia corporativa e possui MBA pela POLI-USP em Data Science. Chu é co-fundador da MindMiners, onde atuou por 11 anos como CEO, empresa que se tornou líder no Brasil em software para pesquisa de marketing digital. Agora, fundou a Samskit - um SaaS AI-Native para vendas B2B. Iniciou sua carreira no mercado financeiro, em M&A no banco de investimento UBS.

Renato é formado em administração pela FGV-EAESP com foco em estratégia corporativa e possui MBA pela POLI-USP em Data Science. Chu é co-fundador da MindMiners, onde atuou por 11 anos como CEO, empresa que se tornou líder no Brasil em software para p... Show more

Ulli Hinze

Ulli Hinze

Ulrich helps software companies build cost-effective, secure, and resilient SaaS offerings on AWS. He is also part of the AWS's OpenSearch community and supports customers in building their search and analytics workloads using Amazon OpenSearch Service. Before joining AWS, Ulrich spent over 10 years in different software engineering roles.

Ulrich helps software companies build cost-effective, secure, and resilient SaaS offerings on AWS. He is also part of the AWS's OpenSearch community and supports customers in building their search and analytics workloads using Amazon OpenSearch Servi... Show more

Denis Akpagnonite

Denis Akpagnonite

Denis is a DevOps Architect and Software Engineer based in Lomé, Togo. He builds and operates bare-metal Kubernetes clusters for sovereign digital infrastructure, working daily with Ansible, Kubespray, and the full cloud-native stack without a managed control plane in sight. At the application layer, he designs fine-grained authorization models with OpenFGA for multi-tenant platforms under data residency mandates. He organizes the Cloud Native Community Group in Lomé, teaches distributed systems and machine learning at local universities, and is the author of a book on Machine Learning. Currently exploring research in distributed systems architecture, Denis is an open-source contributor who believes Africa should build its own cloud-native expertise not just consume someone else’s.

Denis is a DevOps Architect and Software Engineer based in Lomé, Togo. He builds and operates bare-metal Kubernetes clusters for sovereign digital infrastructure, working daily with Ansible, Kubespray, and the full cloud-native stack without a manage... Show more

Nils Lesieur

Nils Lesieur

Je me suis essayé à beaucoup de sports collectifs. Petit, c’était le football ! Puis, un célèbre numéro 23 m’a attiré, entraîné vers le basket, puis ce fut le volley. J’aimais la beauté de ces sports et surtout leurs ballets de sauts. En déménageant à Toulouse pour des études de Chimie, j’ai eu un vrai coup de cœur pour ce qui est resté ma grande passion : le rugby. C’est aussi, à Toulouse que j’ai découvert le handball, sport roi dans les universités françaises et qui partage avec le rugby, la même recherche de l’intervalle.

Les sports individuels ne m’ont jamais attiré, j’aimais partager les victoires, les défaites, la difficulté d’un entraînement, atteindre quelque chose que je ne pourrai viser seul. Certes, j’aimais m’entraîner seul, acquérir plus de technique, répéter les gestes pour plus de maîtrise, plus de réflexes mais en pensant à l’aventure, aux résultats d’une équipe.

Cela me guide encore beaucoup aujourd’hui dans ma vie de coach. J’accorde beaucoup d’importance à l’équipe qui est au service d’un produit, d’un service : beaucoup d’importance aux interactions au sein de l’équipe, au cadre mis en place ou à mettre en place.

Je me suis essayé à beaucoup de sports collectifs. Petit, c’était le football ! Puis, un célèbre numéro 23 m’a attiré, entraîné vers le basket, puis ce fut le volley. J’aimais la beauté de ces sports et surtout leurs ballets de sauts. En déménageant ... Show more

Bastien Beurier

Bastien Beurier

Co-Founder & CTO at Nango, 2 x YC founder, former Uber platform engineer.

Co-Founder & CTO at Nango, 2 x YC founder, former Uber platform engineer. Show more

Nataliya Ershova

Nataliya Ershova

She leads a team of Machine Learning engineers, connects Corporate Venture Capital funds with startups, and executes market entry strategies for corporate clients.
With 20 years of experience across European, Asian, and Latin American markets, she brings a combination of business strategy, people leadership, and applied neuroscience to the tech world.
Economist and ICF-certified neuroscience coach with a master's degree in journalism who has reinvented her own career four times across three countries.

She leads a team of Machine Learning engineers, connects Corporate Venture Capital funds with startups, and executes market entry strategies for corporate clients. With 20 years of experience across European, Asian, and Latin American markets, she b... Show more

Anastasiia Zvenigorodskaia

Anastasiia Zvenigorodskaia

• 14+ years in tech - as a software developer, co-founder and COO, and now Product Lead at AI BLOX.
• Strong development background, business analytics expertise, and an AI-driven approach
• Open-source advocate & Public speaker

• 14+ years in tech - as a software developer, co-founder and COO, and now Product Lead at AI BLOX. • Strong development background, business analytics expertise, and an AI-driven approach • Open-source advocate & Public speaker Show more

Thuy Pham

Thuy Pham

Thuy is an entrepreneur and business executive with international experience across Vietnam, India, Cambodia, Ghana, Nigeria, and the United States. Her work spans fintech, blockchain, banking, digital transformation and innovation that connect technology with real-work impacts. Throughout her career, she worked with startups, financial institutions and government agencies to develop innovation ecosystems, and support inclusive economic growth. She co-founded FADO Go, a blockchain ecommerce company that provides loyalty solutions to businesses. Currently, she leads the development of a large-scale cultural infrastructure project that combines culture, education, technology and community engagement through collaboration between government and private-sector partners in Vietnam. The initative explores how emerging technologies can strengthen public trust, cultural participation, and long-term sustainability.
As a speaker, Thuy has spoken at blockchain and innovation conferences in Vietnam and internationally, advocating for decentralization and real-world applications that improve everyday life.

Thuy is an entrepreneur and business executive with international experience across Vietnam, India, Cambodia, Ghana, Nigeria, and the United States. Her work spans fintech, blockchain, banking, digital transformation and innovation that connect techn... Show more

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