Speakers

With over 30 years’ experience in the software industry and 25 years in the telecom sector, Fran joins Red Hat to lead the Global Telco organization to accelerate Red Hat’s open source leadership in the telecommunications network environment. Prior to joining Red Hat, Fran served in executive technology and business executive roles with several globally renowned organizations - including Nokia, Vodafone Group, Alcatel-Lucent, and NEC. He most recently led the Core Networks business at Nokia with responsibility for the company’s end-to-end 5G offerings as well as Nokia’s Cloud Infrastructure portfolio which was transitioned to Red Hat in 2023.

Honoré joined Red Hat as Vice President, Industry Verticals & Edge with a primary focus on Telco, Media, Entertainment and Edge.  Most recently, she was asked to lead the global TME Partner Ecosystem Success function and team.  In this role, she has global responsibility for the success of the Telecom, Media, Entertainment and Edge ecosystem of partners including NEPs, ISVs, OEMs, Global System Integrators and Hyperscalers. Honoré and her team work to ensure rapid deployment of cloud native applications at scale leveraging Red Hat’s open, hybrid cloud technologies - 5G, OSS/BSS, cloud RAN, and cloud networking- from core to cloud to edge and far edge.Prior to Red Hat, Honoré was Vice President, Global Market & Business Development for VMware’s Telco and Edge Cloud Business unit. In this role, she was tasked with building and leading VMware’s telco vertical GTM strategy and execution including the ecosystem of partners that serve this market.  She also held market and business development leadership roles driving healthcare, public sector, and SLED. Honoré is a seasoned technology executive having held senior positions in sales, business development, marketing, strategy and operations in both software and hardware companies including Cisco/NetSolve, Nortel, N.E.T. and AT&T. Her cross-functional roles have had a particular focus on transformational vertical industries, adoption of emerging technologies, and building, developing and scaling ecosystem models to support these industries and technologies.Throughout her career, Honoré has received numerous industry awards, including Global Business Telecom magazine’s Top 50 Women in Telecom and was named to CRN’s Women of the Channel list for 2023!  She is a strong advocate for women in technology – for which she received the PBWC (Professional Business Women of California) Industry Leader Award.  She also serves as Red Hat’s executive sponsor for GSMA’s Diversity4Tech program.Honoré resides in Colorado with her husband, two dogs, four horses and a small herd of Texas Longhorns. She is an avid skier and working volunteer for the Steamboat STARS program – which provides therapeutic activities for individuals with special needs, in a natural and healthy environment. 

As the Global VP of Business Development for Telco at NVIDIA, Chris works across the telco ecosystem to drive the growth of NVIDIA’s hardware and software solutions around the world. Coordinating across NVIDIA and partners, Chris helps to create telco-specific offerings that leverage AI/ML, Gen AI, 5G/6G, Edge/Cloud Computing, AI Factories, and Advanced Networking. Prior to joining NVIDIA, as the COO of FogHorn, Chris led the go-to-market efforts across business development, technical sales, strategic partnerships, 3rd party distribution, marketing, advertising and public relations globally, including the strategic planning for the firm and working directly with Telcos around the world to integrate FogHorn’s Edge AI/ML and Analytics solutions on top of their 5G networks. Previously, Chris spent over 30 years at AT&T and its predecessor companies, leading some of its most important growth areas, serving as President of AT&T’s IoT Solutions organization, building AT&T’s IoT business from a startup into one of the most successful IoT operations in the world. He was also the Senior Vice President of AT&T’s Integrated Solutions and Consulting organization—selling and delivering end-to-end solutions to customers and supporting the partner ecosystem across AT&T’s entire product portfolio. Chris serves on Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business board. Chris was also a Founder and Executive Advisory Board Member of the Together for Safer Roads coalition and was Chairman of the Board for GSMA’s IOT program for over 7 years. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Marketing and a Master of Business Administration from Indiana University.  His personal passions are family, skiing, dining out, and travel. 

Ayesha Temuri is an enterprise data officer at Telenor Pakistan, reporting to the CEO office. She is part of the leadership team rolling out Telenor’s AI, ML and data transformation strategy initiatives. She started this work by identifying Telenor’s current state, focusing on five areas of transformation She also improved governance by building an operating model to implement the five pillars of data strategy across three areas -  people, process, and technology. With her 20 years of experience with top international consulting organizations, Ayesha is integral to  collaborative partnerships with both licensed and open source data platform companies, and owner of the mission around AI and GenAI goals. Ayesha has a masters degree in data science from Bologna Business School – BBS University of Bologna, Italy. She resides in Spain and has two children.She was recently recognized by Constellation Research as an AI150 leader for 2025.

Chris Wright is Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Global Engineering at Red Hat. He leads a team that guides Red Hat’s technology vision, co-creates technologies, and collaboratively implements change to ensure the success of Red Hat’s ecosystem of associates, customers, communities, and partners.Wright’s organization includes: Office of the CTO, Ecosystem Engineering, Product Security, PnT Experience, Product Engineering, Customer Experience & Engagement, and Technology Strategy & Incubation.During his 25+ years as a software engineer, Wright has worked in the telecommunications industry and beyond on high-availability and distributed systems. He also has experience in the Linux® industry on security, virtualization, and networking. Wright has been a Linux developer for more than 15 years, with most of this time spent working deep in the Linux kernel. He is passionate about open source software serving as the foundation for next-generation IT systems.

Nikos Anastopoulos is a Technology Management Partner at Intracom Telecom, working within the Office of the CTO. His focus includes sustainable and energy-efficient telco networks, cloud-native transformation of telco networks, and the application of AI in these domains. Previously, he served as the Product Manager for the NFV Resource Intelligence (NFV-RI) solution, concentrating on improving the energy and resource efficiency across different telco network parts. Nikos holds a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens and has prior experience in research within the fields of computer architecture and high-performance computing.

Chris is the CEO at STL Partners and is a key contributor to both consulting and research at the firm. He has over 30+ years’ experience in strategy and growth —25 in  telecoms and technology  working with telcos, data centre providers, and tech companies. Before co-founding STL Partners in 2004, he consulted for telecoms companies such as Verizon Business and Orange.  He was also an equity analyst at JP Morgan.  He holds an MA in English Language and Literature from Oxford University.

Arturo leads the 5G Innovation and Technology Lab, formerly AT&T Foundry, in which he manages and supervises innovation activities related to the 5th generation of mobile communications, thus creating solutions for emerging markets, including IoT, software development and technology tests.Prior to this position, Arturo was the Technology Lab Senior Manager at AT&T Mexico, where he was responsible for its deployment and location platforms tests, as well as the implementation of cloud for IoT. He also collaborated for Nextel de Mexico and Nextel International Holdings (NII) as Senior Manager of Nextel’s Technology Lab. Hewas also in charge of Field Operations Support Coordination.Arturo has over 20 years of experience in the industry, leading divisions such as Cellular Implementation and worked in Operations and Maintenance Management in Erisson Mexico.Arturo has a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering for Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), and has postgraduate’s degree in many innovative areas such as: Computer Center Administration and Finance for Information Technology, both in Universidad Iberoamericana andanother in Business Innovation for Anahuac University and Videogaming Programming in Artek Institute. 

Jérôme Birot is the Vice President of Platform Technology & Services within the CUSTOMER TECHNOLOGY EXCELLENCE Office at TELUS. His main responsibilities range from strategy evolution, deployment and implementation all the way to service assurance across his portfolio for consumers, businesses and IOT. This includes the transformation of the network to Cloud native and the push for automation. Before TELUS, Jérôme also worked for various network vendors and other service providers in Canada 

Wouter Bouvy is an experienced Product Owner with a demonstrated history of working in the telecom and healthcare industry. He has been with VodafoneZiggo for the last five years and currently holds the role of Product Owner Cloud Native Core Platform.  Wouter has a wide are of interest in information technology and is a forerunner in trying and adopting new technologies.

Ather Chaudhry brings over 25 years of experience in AI, Cloud, Telecom, and Media, with a demonstrated track record in driving business transformation across telecom and media industries. His expertise spans fixed and wireless networks, IP video services, and deploying Cloud and AI to elevate business operations and technology. He has held leadership roles across service providers (T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon), technology vendors (Cisco, Ericsson, Nokia), and enterprise (NASA).

Currently, as the Global Head of Partner Solutions for Telco, Media, and Edge at Red Hat, Ather leads a team co-creating Cloud and AI solutions with a diverse ecosystem of partners, supporting sales efforts for telco clients worldwide. He holds an M.S. in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Connecticut. Additionally, he serves as an adjunct MBA professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, is a frequent industry speaker, has chaired the Broadband Forum, and holds multiple patents in high-performance computing and communications. Ather resides in Dallas with his family.

Experienced and results-driven leader with a proven track record in driving digital transformation within the telecom industry. Expertise in leveraging cloud-native technologies, automation, and analytics to optimize network and IT operations, enhance customer experience, and deliver innovative solutions. Presently steering and directing the converged technology operation of a fully containerized/virtualized, cloud-native digital service provider. Collaborating with stakeholders in adopting a pragmatic approach in improvising on digital strategy, design, and transformation to achieve customer and service excellence. Successfully led the operationalization of a greenfield 5G telco on a fully containerized private cloud.

Aji is in the development and execution of strategic initiatives related to Cloud RAN products in collaboration with key industry partners. He is responsible for driving product strategy, business development, and market making for Cloud RAN solutions, working closely with server hardware vendors, container-as-a-service providers and webscale companies. Previously, Aji served as the CTO for Mobile Networks in the Middle East Africa market.

Hanen Garcia is Global Telco Solutions Manager at Red Hat, with more than 20 years of experience in the telecommunications industry building network solutions and value-added services for large telecom operators. In his current role, he is driving solutions to support telecommunications service providers during their network transformation journey.Prior to joining Red Hat, he worked at Ericsson as an innovation specialist designing cutting-edge solutions for mobile networks. Hanen holds an M. Eng. in innovation management from the ÉTS in Canada and an M.Eng. in telecommunications from Polytech in France.

Professional with over 15 years of expertise in the technology sector, excelling in technology management, software development, project leadership, presales, and product marketing. He has a proven track record of driving innovation and leading high-impact teams across both public and private sectors.10+ years of leadership experience in technology initiatives, steering cross-functional teams to success.Currently leading the Iquall Innovation Labs, where he drives digital transformation initiatives focused on AI, 5G, and machine learning, advancing cutting-edge projects that push technological innovation and industry growth.As VP of Technology & Engineering, drove advanced DevOps practices to enhance operational efficiency and scalability while leading high-performance teams and delivering tailored client solutionsSuccessfully led significant public sector projects, including predictive transport systems and smart city infrastructure.Adept at aligning technical strategies with business goals to foster sustainable growth and innovation

Expert Telecom Solution Architect with 19 years of hands-on experience designing, implementing, and optimizing multi-platform solutions in the realms of generative AI, automation, open source, and innovative telecommunications platforms. Currently focused on driving the next generation of wireless infrastructure and advancing the future of Telecommunications and Automation.

Jason Hunt is a Distinguished Engineer with IBM. He has over 28 years of experience working on solution architecture & engineering with large enterprise clients, focused in telecommunications.  Jason co-authored Artificial Intelligence for Autonomous Networks, holds several patents, and is an IBM Quantum Ambassador.

Rimma Iontel is a Chief Telco Architect at Red Hat.  She is responsible for supporting Red Hat’s global ecosystem of customers and partners in the Telecommunications industry and also represents the industry in the CTO Organization.  Since joining Red Hat in 2014, she’s been assisting customers and partners in their network transformation journey, helping them leverage Red Hat open source solutions to build future-proof telecommunication networks capable of providing modern advanced services to the consumers in an efficient, sustainable, and cost-effective way. Rimma has over twenty years of experience working in the telecommunications industry. Prior to joining Red Hat, she spent fourteen years at Verizon working on Next Generation Networks initiatives and contributing to the first steps of the company’s transition from legacy networks to the software defined cloud infrastructure.

Brandon Larson is the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Mavenir’s Cloud, AI & IMS Business Strategy. He joined Mavenir from Tango Networks, where he served as their Chief Strategy Officer. He is also a former employee of Mavenir, having previously run the Sales Engineering organization for the America’s region where he was instrumental in many key Mavenir projects, including the world’s first IMS VoWiFi, VoLTE, and RCS 5.0 service launches. Brandon has diverse experience having held roles in sales, marketing, product line management, and program management previously at Nokia and Ciena. Brandon started his career as a Nuclear Engineering Officer in the U.S. Navy. He is a graduate of Navy Nuclear Power School and received his nuclear engineer certification from the Department of Naval Reactors. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering with High Honors from Rutgers University.

Peter Linder, the Head of Thought Leadership at Ericsson in North America, is dedicated to helping you understand 5G/6G more clearly and in-depth. With over 30 years of experience at Ericsson, and double master's degrees from Chalmers University in Sweden, he is well-equipped to guide you.  He has split his career between global/US, tech/business, and line/cross-functional management roles. He follows Formula 1 racing closely in his leisure time, loves to travel the world, photography, and enjoys competition in any shape and form.

Lisa Littlefield is a Principal Product Marketing Manager in the Telecommunications vertical at Red Hat. With her extensive product marketing experience in telecommunications, cable, media, and entertainment, she focuses on AI and edge platform solutions that support customer innovation, helping to monetize new use cases through industry transformation. 

Mark Longwell is the Director, Telco and Edge Alliances in the Hybrid Platforms Business unit, with a focus on Telco partners. Mark joined Red Hat in 2016.At Red Hat, Mark focuses on leveraging his extensive Linux partnering experience to work with Red Hat's Global Telco and Edge partners on various go-to-market activities, CNF and VNF Certifications on Red Hat technologies, and technical/sales enablement activities.In his spare time, Mark likes to hike and follow Liverpool Football Club.  Mark lives in Boston, MA.Specialty areas:CNF/VNF CertificationIncluding other Red Hat certificationsTelco Partnering and OnboardingGlobal alliancesRAN, ORAN  and 5G Core in the Telco market spaceAll things alliances and business development related in the Telco space

Manish is an accomplished telecom industry veteran with 20 years of industry expertise. He has held various leadership roles in Fortune 100 companies leading technology initiatives from incubation to operationalization that transformed businesses and increased enterprise value.  Manish is an expert in leading large and global teams, developing end-to-end technology solutions, and creating/managing strategic partnerships that directly improve enterprise value. He is skilled in analyzing industry trends, assessing threats and opportunities, and developing fact-based actionable plans targeted towards business owners and CEOs to increase enterprise value and fulfill companies business missions. Manish is an inventor of 60 patents issued by the US patent office.

John McCready leads the Business Development function for Dell’s Telecom Systems Business. Prior to joining Dell, Mr. McCready was the Chief Strategy Officer at Ribbon Communications, a company focused on Optical Transport products as well as VoIP infrastructure and SaaS solutions for Enterprise and Carrier customers.  He has spent most of his 35-year career working in Product Management and Strategy in the Communications industry.

Rob McManus is a Principal Product Marketing Manager at Red Hat. McManus is an adept member of complex matrix-style teams tasked to define and position telecommunication service provider and partner solutions with a focus on network transformation that includes 5G, vRAN and the evolution to cloud-native network functions (CNFs).

Tom Moran has worked in the technology and telecommunications industry for over 20 years, in roles ranging from service design and architecture to product marketing and consulting. He spent a number of years in leadership roles at Savvis, Centurylink, and Lumen in the US before moving to Europe in 2018 as part of the Level 3 acquisition. He now works for Colt as a Senior Technology Strategist and Consultant and is based in Amsterdam.

Shujaur Mufti is a Senior Manager in Red Hat's Telecommunications, Entertainment and Media (TME) Partner Organization. He is responsible for managing a global team of technical professionals, Partner SAs, to develop and deploy Cloud technologies utilizing Red Hat products and services, architecting a full stack of end-to-end solutions including partner products, from ideation to production with joint offers, globally and in close collaboration with Red Hat Geo/Regional and product stakeholders.     Shujaur has over twenty years of experience working in the telecommunications industry. Prior to joining Red Hat in 2022, he spent fourteen years at T-Mobile US leading high performing engineering teams, enabling 3GPP/non-3GPP architectures and technologies in the Telco 4G/5G domain. In addition, he led NFV Cloud strategy contributing to the company’s transition from legacy networks to the software defined cloud infrastructure. Shujaur has been granted over 50 Technology Patents in the US, Europe, and other foreign countries. Due to his thought leadership and influence in the Telco industry, he has been selected as IBM Industry Diamond for Telecom, Media, and Entertainment.

John Overton is the CEO and founder of Kove IO, Inc., responsible for introducing the world's first Software-Defined Memory offering, Kove:SDM™.  Once considered impossible, Kove:SDM™ delivers infinitely scalable memory, and unleashes new Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning capabilities while also reducing power consumption by up to 50%. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Dr. Overton co-invented and patented pioneering technology using distributed hash tables for locality management.  This breakthrough technology created unlimited scaling, and enabled the advent of cloud storage, scale-out database sharding, among other markets.  While at the Open Software Foundation in the late 1980s, Dr. Overton wrote software used by approximately two-thirds of the world's workstation market. Dr. Overton has more than 65 issued patents world-wide, has peer-reviewed publications across a number of academic disciplines, and holds post-graduate and doctoral degrees from Harvard and the University of Chicago.

Rajendra is a co-founder of Avanseus and currently leads the strategy and business development function globally for Avanseus. Avanseus develops and markets artificial intelligence-driven enterprise applications. The primary focus is to deliver AI-based applications for telecom and enterprise network operations. Rajendra is an IT/telecom consulting and go-to-market expert with more than 25 years of experience in telecom and previous roles with Nokia, IBM, and Amdocs. Rajendra holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree.

Trevor is the Senior Manager for Operations and Cybersecurity at Bell. He leads teams of System Administrators, DevOps, SecDevOps, DBA, and security professionals supporting infrastructure, application, and virtualization (cloud) for enterprise stakeholders and internal systems across Canada. His experiences include operations, PS, security, cloud, and leadership as well as evolving and growing skill sets in critical thinking using big data and AI. He holds an MBA in Organizational Leadership, a Master of Electronic Commerce, and a Bachelor of Arts in Information Technology. Trevor is also certified in research ethics and workplace mental health leadership. 

Vinodh Raghunathan is the Director of NEX OS/CaaS commercial readiness and to drive NEX product enabling strategy and execution with major commercial Operating System Vendors.  Vinodh works closely with our colleagues across Intel in different business units on the commercial consumption of Intel technologies in the rapidly evolving OS/CaaS landscape. Vinodh has worked in Intel for 18 years in roles spanning from Technology Development to partner ecosystem sales. Vinodh has a PhD in Chemistry and Nanotechnology from the University of Washington, Seattle and prior to Intel had a short stint at GlaxoSmithKline plc as a principal scientist.  Vinodh lives in the Bay area with 2 kids—20 and 11 years old. 

Azhar is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at ng-voice responsible for Engineering, Products and Technology for the company. Azhar has over 30 years of experience with Telecommunications technologies. Most recently, he was the Global Chief Technologist and Architect at RedHat, where he worked with operators worldwide on cloud and virtualization strategies and deployment. Prior to RedHat, Azhar also spent 17 years at Cisco, where he led software product management, engineering, and solution delivery teams. Here at ng-voice, he currently leads our product portfolio, delivery, product vision and the technology stack.

Alok Shah is the Vice President of Strategy, Business Development, and Marketing for the Networks Business at Samsung Electronics America, where he has sales responsibility for strategic customers, steers strategy and planning, leads all aspects of corporate communications, and monitors regulatory and public policy for Samsung’s North American Networks division. Previously, Alok led technical marketing, including consumer messaging, market requirements, and regulatory impact, for Samsung’s US Mobile division. Alok, who joined Samsung in 2011, has expertise in technical marketing, product management, and engineering in the wireless industry. Prior to Samsung, Alok served as Senior Product Marketing Manager at Freescale Semiconductor, where he managed multiple network processor product lines, and Principal Technology Analyst at Vanu, Inc., where he was responsible for developing technology strategies, partner ecosystems, and market and competitive intelligence for a disruptive mobile infrastructure vendor. Alok previously worked in various engineering and product management roles at Vanu and Motorola. Alok holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

With over two decades of experience in the telecommunications industry, Poohmipat has held key roles in leading digital transformation initiatives across the SEA and Oceania region. Current Position: Principal Architect leading Core Network and Cloud Infrastructure strategy and roadmap for One New Zealand. Previously an Account Technology Strategist at Microsoft for Telecommunication and Retails, Industrial X Senior Technology Consultant at Accenture Cloud Software and Services Domain Sales Manager at Ericsson, and Customer Solution Architect at Nokia, he played a pivotal role in advancing 5G technology, including cloud-native core and containerized infrastructure, to drive industry-wide digital transformation.

Throughout his 25+ year career at Cisco, Omar Sultan has consistently demonstrated his ability to guide the company into new markets and develop emerging technologies. His expertise spans professional services, optical networking, security, data center networking, data center compute, SDN, web-scale architectures, and infrastructure automation. Currently, he leads a global product management team, focusing on building automation and AI solutions.

As Principal Product Marketing Manager, Volker Tegtmeyer develops global content strategies that show how Red Hat and partner solutions can help telecommunications service providers meet their business and technology challenges. Solutions that help service providers in their digital transformation journey and cover broad areas from 5G, AI/ML, OSS/BSS, telco cloud, and automation to new solutions that help tackle sustainability goals. Volker has more than 20 years of experience in the telecommunications industry, having previously worked in various roles at Siemens, Nokia, Cisco, and Akamai. 

Bill Wright is the head of AI/ML business development and technical strategy for global verticals at Red Hat. He is also a member of the Red Hat AI ILT, and participates in the ETSI ENI working group, to establish standards for the use of AI/ML in mobile network operations.He was the former Director of Product Management at Affirmed Networks, where he led their efforts in virtualization, management tools (ASAP) and security planning. Prior to this, he worked at VMware with Sanjay Aiyagari, where they conducted pioneering research with technology partners in the use of virtualization for network functions. They eventually disrupted the networking industry by delivering the first production NFV deployment at a multinational mobile operator, effectively kickstarting a new multi-billion dollar market.He lives in San Francisco with his wife Dahlia, son Nico, and an oversized French Bulldog named Sophie.