Red Hat® Summit 2023 represents an opportunity to share experiences and impact as we plot the future of open technology.
Discover new perspectives on the current and future technology landscape with insights from open source leaders.
Learn how Red Hat customers and partners are using open source to address business challenges.
Matt Hicks was named President and Chief Executive Officer of Red Hat in July 2022. In his previous role, he was Executive Vice President of Products and Technologies where he was responsible for product engineering for much of the company’s portfolio, including Red Hat® OpenShift® and Red Hat Enterprise Linux®. He is one of the founding members of the OpenShift team and has been at the forefront of cloud computing ever since.
Prior to joining Red Hat 16 years ago, Hicks served in various roles spanning computer engineering, IT, and consulting. He has worked with Linux and open source for more than 25 years, and his breadth of experience has helped him solve customer and business problems across all areas of IT.
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.
Stefanie Chiras is Senior Vice President of Partner Ecosystem Success at Red Hat, leading Red Hat’s global partner ecosystem engagement, and she plays a critical role in articulating the value of Red Hat's product portfolio within the ecosystem, defining the strategy for partnering with Red Hat for customer success.
Prior to Red Hat, Chiras served as Vice President of Offering Management at IBM Cognitive Systems. As part of the Cognitive Systems brand team, she led worldwide business for the systems and software portfolios, AIX, IBM i, Linux®, and the cloud stack. She has extensive experience in both business and technology, including technical roles that range from silicon technology to system architecture.
Ashesh Badani is Senior Vice President, Head of Products at Red Hat, where he leads the company’s broad hybrid cloud portfolio. This includes product development and go-to-market strategies for Red Hat® OpenShift®, Red Hat OpenStack® Platform, Red Hat Virtualization, and Red Hat developer tools. Under Badani’s leadership, the company expanded Red Hat OpenShift from an award-winning Platform-as-a-Service solution to the industry’s leading enterprise Kubernetes platform, with 1,000+ customers spanning all regions and industries.
Previously, Badani served as Director of Product Management and Product Marketing of Integration and Application Platform Products at Sun Microsystems. He has more than 20 years of experience in the technology and finance industries at both established and emerging companies.
Kaete is the Director of Product Marketing for Red Hat Ansible Automation. She has been part of the Ansible business unit for the past seven years. Prior to joining Red Hat, she was the Product Marketing Manager for a DevOps implementation training and consulting company.
Walter Bentley is the Director of Community Strategy for Red Hat Ansible Automation. Moving into this role, Walter was able to return to his roots where he started his Ansible journey back in 2014. He has the privilege of representing the Ansible community on a leadership level within Red Hat.
Walter spends his time helping to fulfill the community’s needs and create opportunities to support their overall success. His passion is to evangelize the energy and connecting power of automation by encouraging everyone using Ansible to feel included within the community.
Walter has more than 20 years of experience in many areas including online marketing, financial services, insurance, aviation, education, technology, and the food industry. He loves presenting and speaking regularly at conferences like Red Hat Summit, AnsibleFest, and participating in webinars, blog posts, and technical reviews. His first book, OpenStack Administration with Ansible, was released in 2016.
Matthew Jones is a Distinguished Engineer and Chief Architect of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and was one of the original developers for Ansible working on Ansible Tower. He has more than 20 years of experience building highly scalable software systems across startups and enterprises.
Richard Henshall is Director of Ansible Product Management at Red Hat and responsible for the Ansible Automation Platform strategy. Before joining Red Hat, Richard was an Ansible customer with 16 years of experience in financial services IT across a range of operational, design, and architecture roles.
Tom is Vice President and General Manager for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and its business strategy. His focus is to help customers automate the delivery of infrastructure and application services to their business with Red Hat hybrid cloud solutions. During his 9 years at Red Hat, Tom has led the Certified Cloud Service Provider program and was a leader of the Cloud Practice in the Consulting Services organization. He has more than 25 years of software industry experience, taking emerging technology solutions to the enterprise market with a track record of successfully establishing and maintaining lasting customer relationships. Tom joined Red Hat through the acquisition of ManageIQ where he was an original employee and Principal responsible for global field operations.
Bernhard Eschermann is Chief Technology Officer of Process Automation, Head of Process Control Platform, and a member of the Group Technology Leadership team for ABB since 2013. He joined ABB in 1993 and has held a variety of management positions within the company. Prior to his current role, he served as General Manager of Power Semiconductors for ABB from 2006 through 2012. From 2001 to 2006, he was Managing Director for ABB’s Corporate Research Center in Switzerland. Other roles included responsibility for R&D organizations in Substation Automation and Power Electronic systems. Outside of ABB, he is a board member of OPC Foundation and serves on the Innovation Council of Innosuisse, the Swiss federal agency for the promotion of innovation projects. He is also a member of Swiss Academy of Technical Sciences (SATW) and a member of the board of Hasler Foundation and Metall Zug AG.
Christian Uebber is the CTO of ETAS. ETAS embedded operating systems and middleware run billions of vehicles. Christian’s passions are high performance software development and developer productivity, which is often a challenge for the automotive industry. Before his current role, Christian worked 5 years as Chief Software Architect for Advanced Driver Assistance at Robert Bosch GmbH, where he led the transformation from a classical multiproject to a highly automated continuous delivery organization.
Dr. Ruchir Puri is the Chief Scientist of IBM Research, an IBM Fellow, and Vice President of IBM Corporate Technology. He led IBM Watson as CTO and Chief Architect from 2016-2019 and has held various technical, research, and engineering leadership roles across IBM’s AI and Research businesses.
Dr. Puri is a Fellow of the IEEE, and has been an ACM Distinguished Speaker, an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer, and was awarded 2014 Asian American Engineer of the Year. Ruchir has been an adjunct professor at Columbia University, NY, and a visiting scientist at Stanford University, CA. He was honored with the John Von-Neumann Chair at Institute of Discrete Mathematics at Bonn University, Germany.
