Red Hat Summit: Connect 2025

Ashesh Badani is the Senior Vice President and Chief Product Officer at Red Hat. In this role, he is responsible for the company’s overall product portfolio and business unit groups, including product strategy, business planning, product management, marketing, and operations across on-premise, public cloud, and edge. His product responsibilities include Red Hat® Enterprise Linux®, Red Hat OpenShift®, Red Hat Ansible Automation, developer tools, and middleware, as well as emerging cloud services and experiences. Previously, Badani was Senior Vice President of Cloud Platforms, where he helped solidify the company as a hybrid cloud and enterprise Kubernetes leader. Under his leadership, Red Hat has also expanded 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. Badani started at Red Hat overseeing product line management and marketing for the Red Hat JBoss® Enterprise Application Platform middleware portfolio. Badani has played a significant role around strategy, analysis, and integration for key Red Hat acquisitions—including StackRox in 2021, CoreOS in 2018, and FuseSource in 2012—to bolster the company’s integration portfolio. Prior to joining Red Hat, 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.

Leigh Day is Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Red Hat. Day started at Red Hat in 1999 as employee number 139, and was an integral part of the Marketing team that launched Red Hat into the enterprise with Red Hat Enterprise Linux in 2001.  She then advanced into a pivotal leadership role—building an in-house Marketing Communications and Brand function responsible for simplifying, unifying and amplifying Red Hat’s unique messaging-voice to deliver noteworthy experiences for Red Hat customers and partners. In her role as CMO, Day established precision marketing as a standard practice at Red Hat, enhancing the Marketing team’s focus on the customer experience through data-driven and responsive strategies. Under Day’s leadership, Red Hat launched Red Hat Summit in 2005, which has become the industry’s premier open source technology conference, in addition to many successful marketing programs like Command Line Heroes, redhat.com, Open Source Stories, Co.Lab, and more. She also led the Marketing team for more than 20 acquisitions at Red Hat, helping to expand awareness of our portfolio as it grew and evolved.

Brent Holden is the Senior Director, Global Field Chief Technology Officer at Red Hat, where he leads the Field CTO team who works with many of Red Hat's Fortune 500 customers as they innovate using open-source technologies and Red Hat’s emerging technology portfolio. With over twenty five years of industry experience Brent specializes in automation, cloud and distributed computing. He was an adjunct faculty member at Boston University as part of the Hariri Institute of Computing from 2014-2017. Brent holds a B.S.e in Computer Engineering from the University of Connecticut.

Marjet Andriesse is a seasoned leader, with over 25 years of vast international experience in driving customer satisfaction, sales, and revenue growth.  She has been instrumental in successful transition and organizational management for technology and professional services firms across Europe and Asia. As general manager and vice president of Red Hat in Asia Pacific, Marjet is responsible for the next phase of the company’s growth in the region, as well as leading initiatives to enable customer success with open hybrid cloud technology. Marjet also manages engagement with enterprise customers and emerging technologies sales and support capabilities. Throughout her career, Marjet has been a passionate advocate for workplace diversity and has been acknowledged for her forward thinking leadership. This includes her role as Chair of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) council for Red Hat APAC and has been recognized as one of the Techleaders for the inaugural SG100 Women in Tech in 2020.

Prem Pavan is a seasoned business leader in the technology industry, having led and grown businesses across Asian markets for over 23 years. At Red Hat, Prem is responsible for the overall business management of Southeast Asia and Korea region. He was previously Vice President at LivePerson (a Customer Experience AI Company), responsible for driving the go-to-market strategy, growth and operations across Asia. Prem was also a VP & MD at Citrix, delivering profitable growth, productivity, market expansion and customer, partner & employee satisfaction. He also held previous roles as Head of business at Kofax and Software AG with a focus on Asia and Southeast Asia, respectively. Prem is especially passionate about evangelizing new trends in Human Centric AI, Future of Work, Digital Transformation and Leadership. He is a frequently invited speaker for a variety of industry and technology forums. Prem has made Singapore his home since 2004. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering, and an MBA in Information Management.

Guna has been in the IT software industry for over 25 years in various leadership roles. Currently, he is the general manager for Singapore at Red Hat, where he leads sales and business development activities in the country. Over the years, Guna has been extensively involved in the implementation of complex solutions such as hybrid multi-cloud platforms, customer experience and supply chain across the world in various industries ranging from financial services, government, manufacturing and retail. Prior to joining Red Hat, Guna was the General Manager for Cloud & Cognitive Solutions at IBM Singapore. He also held leadership positions at JDA Software and Oracle. Guna graduated from the National University of Singapore with a Bachelor's degree in Engineering (Honors). He maintains an active presence in the local cloud community as VP of the SCS Cloud Chapter, and as the Vice-Chairman of the SGTech Cloud & Data Chapter. Guna is also an active NS Volunteer recognized with the National Commendation Medal and as a NS Man of the Year.

Military Expert 7 (ME7) Guo Jinghua assumed the appointment of Commander, SAF C4 and Digitalisation Command (SAFC4DC) in the DIS on 18 Aug 2025. As Commander SAFC4DC, he served with the Guardians of SAFC4DC to operate and sustain the core connectivity, cloud infrastructure, platforms, software and AI capabilities of the SAF. SAFC4DC is also responsible to raise-train-sustain the software, AI and cloud vocations of the SAF. Prior to his current appointment, ME7 Guo served as the Head of DIS Plans/DIS Chief Digitalisation Officer, where his team drove the master planning, acquisition and architecting the build-up of DIS capabilities for mission areas in Intelligence, Digitalisation, Psychological Defence and Electronic Protection. ME7 Guo has a Bachelor of Science in Biotechnology (First Class Honours) from University College London, and a Master of Philosophy in Biological Sciences from the University of Cambridge. He was a Sloan Fellow at the Stanford Graduate School of Business where he obtained a Master of Science in Management in 2018.

Laurence Liew is a distinguished AI innovator and thought leader who has played a pivotal role in shaping Singapore's AI landscape. As the Director of AI Innovation at AI Singapore, he spearheads groundbreaking initiatives that are transforming Singapore into a leading AI-First nation. With over 30 years of experience in technology leadership, Laurence is the
architect of several nationally significant programs, including: The 100 Experiments (100E) programme, which bridges the gap between academic AI research and industry implementation, The award-winning AI Apprenticeship Programme (AIAP), which has become Singapore's premier AI talent development initiative, LearnAI, a comprehensive national initiative that has exposed over 200,000 Singaporeans to AI through various programmes. On the international stage, Laurence co-chairs the Global Partnership on AI's (GPAI) Innovation and Commercialisation Working Group, focusing on the broad adoption of AI by SMEs worldwide. His expertise is sought after by countries looking to develop their AI capabilities, with several nations adopting AI Singapore's programmes through the AIAP-X initiative. Prior to AI Singapore, Laurence held key leadership positions at major technology companies, including serving as General Manager at Revolution Analytics (acquired by Microsoft). His entrepreneurial success and technical expertise in high-performance computing, open-source software, and AI have established him as a respected voice in the technology industry. Laurence is the author of "AI-First Nation: A Blueprint for Policy Makers and Organisation Leaders," which provides practical insights for organizations and nations embarking on their AI journey. He is a compelling speaker who combines deep technical knowledge with practical business acumen, making complex AI concepts accessible to diverse audiences.

Philbert is the Executive Director, Senior Vice President and Head of Digital Industry Singapore (DISG) – the joint office between the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), Enterprise Singapore (ESG) and Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), with the mission to make it easy for technology companies and talent to grow and thrive with Singapore. DISG draws on the strengths of EDB, ESG and IMDA to attract and foster globally competitive technology companies to create new products and services from Singapore, for Asia and beyond. Prior to this, Philbert did 2 overseas stints in the US, first in Houston then in Washington DC. Philbert was part of the 31st Senior Management Program which concluded in August 2024.

Anthony is an engineer, architect and passionate advocate for open source technologies, dedicated to solving complex, real-world business challenges through innovative solutions. He currently serves as a Regional Application Platform Specialist at Red Hat, with a focus on the Red Hat OpenShift Platform, AI/ML and OpenShift Virtualization.

Abhishek Singh is a Principal Specialist and ASEAN Compute Modernization lead at Amazon Web Services, based in Singapore. As a seasoned technology sales leader, he specializes in driving technology-led transformation initiatives, helping organizations optimize their infrastructure through modern computing solutions. His current focus areas include arm64 (Graviton) architecture, Kubernetes orchestration, and AI/ML workloads on GPUs. A passionate technology enthusiast, Abhishek constantly embraces new tech trends while maintaining a balanced life through basketball sessions with his son. He is also deeply committed to coaching and mentoring, sharing his extensive experience to nurture the next generation of tech leaders. His unique combination of technical expertise and people-focused approach makes him a valuable voice in the technology transformation landscape.

Boon Chong is a seasoned IT leader with 20+ years’ global experience leading innovative IT solutions, digital transformation, AI, Cloud strategy and driving technical excellence across diverse industries.

Danielle is a Business and Technology leader with 20+ years of success strategising and leading Global FSIs and startups in various Transformation and large business initiatives. In her last stint, she was a Delivery Head for a successful Digital Transformation, transforming an incumbent bank with traditional ways of working, legacy systems to an award winning Challenger Bank. She had evangelised product innovation through design thinking, new agile ways of working with modern and scalable technology platforms and importantly, cultural change. This pure Digital Only Bank has the Third Highest Net Promoter Score within a year of launch. Having joined Red Hat’s APAC Transformation Office, Danielle’s vision is to help leaders and organisations globally build a workplace based on open culture, open practices and open source technology for the future. She believes that these are the ingredients to be a successful market leader.
 

Gineesh Madapparambath is an automation and platform consultant who helps organizations design and implement end-to-end automation strategies. He has authored books on Ansible and Kubernetes, drawing on over two decades of experience in IT service management and consultancy. Gineesh specializes in Ansible Automation Platform, Kubernetes, OpenShift, and Terraform, working with enterprises across industries to streamline operations, modernize infrastructure, and accelerate application delivery. Beyond his work, he is an active community contributor and editor at multiple technology blog platforms, including techbeatly.com.

Gulshan has held multiple Customer and Partner facing roles in Red Hat’s journey of ~10 years. He has worked as Red Hat Certified Instructor & Consultant, then moving to Partner Solution Architect role and now he is a Specialist Solution Architect of RHEL in APAC. He is passionate about delivering solutions based on Open Source Technologies, mainly Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Linux based technologies such as Ansible and OpenShift . He has a rich experience in designing solutions for business applications use cases.

Jaikrit Negi is a Cloud Native Architect at Portworx, a Pure Storage company, with 24 years of IT experience across various industries including financial services, telecommunications, and the public sector. In his current role, he works with customers and partners enabling them in making informed decisions around building modern cloud-native data platforms. He is a knowledgeable professional in the areas of Digital Transformation, DevOps, Platform Engineering and Multi-cloud adoption for enterprises, and is an Executive Discussion Leader who frequently speaks at conferences, technology events, and industry workshops on cloud and cloud-native technologies adoption. In the past, he held regional roles with various multinational companies like Dell Technologies, Oracle, Hewlett Packard driving consulting and product business.

Jenish Vyas is a Regional Sales Engineering Manager at EnterpriseDB, with deep expertise in PostgreSQL and enterprise database solutions. He partners with organizations across regions to drive digital transformation, optimize data architecture, and deliver scalable, secure, and high-performance solutions that align with business goals. His insights help businesses innovate efficiently.

Karthik is a passionate technology advocate and accomplished presales leader with more than 26 years of IT experience, including 15 years at Dell Technologies. He specializes in consultative solution selling, partnering with large enterprise customers across diverse industries to architect and deliver innovative solutions tailored to their business needs. His expertise spans compute, storage, network, virtualization, hyper- converged infrastructure and data protection solutions. He is also proficient in technologies such as GenAI, Multi-Cloud, Data modernization, Disaster recovery, Cyber recovery, Application modernization, Edge computing to name a few. Renowned for his collaborative mindset, Karthik is a trusted advisor helping customers define and achieve their short-, mid- and long-term technology strategies. He holds a master's degree in computer applications and has previously worked at renowned MNCs like Wipro, Fujitsu, Veritas/Symantec and Sun/Oracle. He currently resides in Singapore with his wife and two kids.

As an experienced Senior Sales Engineer, Kelvin focuses on helping customers protect, secure & manage data in a Kubernetes environment and has been doing Kubernetes for the past 10 year . He has 20+ years of experience as an IT consultant and helps to lead complex technical discussions and proof of concept while supporting partners in account related activities.

Manu Joy is a Cloud Services Black Belt at Red Hat. He is a seasoned architect specializing in designing public and private cloud solutions for application modernization, migration, virtualization and AI. He has a strong history of successfully enabling enterprises across the APAC region in accelerating their cloud journey. Manu is a certified architect on Red Hat, AWS, Azure, and GCP.

Nicholas Chia spends his day engaging his audiences in both enterprise and community spaces about Red Hat automation capabilities. He has a strong passion for driving technological innovation. With over many years of experience in the industry where he developed a deep expertise in supporting business partners, sales and presales teams, providing technical solution design, and delivering exceptional results for businesses and their customers. Throughout his career, he has had the privilege of collaborating with renowned Partners such as IBM, HPE, Microsoft, AWS, and many others, where he provided subject matter expertise in utilizing cutting-edge technologies to solve complex challenges. By leveraging his extensive knowledge on Ansible Automation Platform, he has helped empower businesses to achieve their goals, enhance operational efficiency, and stay ahead in today's competitive landscape.

Industry veteran with over 20 years’ experience across EMEA and Asia, working for companies including Microsoft, Google, and VMware.
Paul has been at the pinnacle of cloud services since its inception back in 2010, leading a European technical team building the foundations for Microsoft Office 365 to executing the GTM strategy in 2011 for Azure in EMEA when it was an incubation technology. He currently leads the Migrate and Modernization GBB Team, with deep connections to the Microsoft Product Engineering teams, and a charter to help customers modernize their environment to capitalize on the AI opportunities ahead.

Rachel Ma is an OpenShift Specialist Solutions Architect at Red Hat, supporting customers across Southeast Asia and Korea. She leverages her expertise in Kubernetes, cloud-native platforms, and hybrid cloud design to help enterprises build, secure, and scale OpenShift environments, boosting developer productivity and operational efficiency.

SJ is responsible to drive the Sales for Red Hat Enterprise Linux in South East Asia & Korea. SJ Brings vast experience in the Infrastructure and Security portfolio. SJ has previously worked as Cloud lead in VMware responsible for driving the VMware Cloud business.  SJ Passion about the technology and being a customer advocate has been well recognized in the industry.

Siva leads the Tech Sales team covering partner ecosystems across the Asia Pacific countries. Prior to this role, he led the IBM Synergy tech sales initiatives. Before expanding his coverage to APAC he held various positions in Southeast Asia running the Emerging markets pre-sales teams, assisting to establish Red Hat entities across various cities and also held the position of Chief Technologist for Southeast Asia. Siva has been with Red Hat for over 19 years and has been involved in open source technologies for more than 22 years. He has helped many enterprises (and ecosystem partners) including financial services clients, telcos and public sector organizations as a key architect to embrace Red Hat’s open source
software solutions.

Surbhi Barania is a Sales Specialist for Accelerated Compute ASEAN at Amazon Web Services, based in Singapore. With more than 15 years in the technology industry across diverse geographies, she has partnered with organizations to drive large-scale modernization programs and harness the transformative potential of data and AI. Her current focus lies in enabling the adoption and scaling of AI platforms powered by GPUs and accelerated computing. Beyond work, Surbhi enjoys an active life with her husband, daughter, and their energetic dog. Together, they love spending time outdoors—at the beach, by the pool, or on long walks.

Suresh Eswaran is the CTO of Hybrid cloud services(part of IBM Consulting) supporting the ASEAN region. His primary focus is to provide digital & AI transformation architecture and strategy and develop implementation methodology and accelerators financial institutions. In his current role he is responsible for assessing and recommending approaches to implement an Open API ecosystem and a cloud convergence strategy and setting up the cloud operating model that will enable financial institutions to evolve rapidly in the digital ecosystem and help organizations to exploit the benefits of moving to cloud. Prior to this he has led Architecture and technology transformation strategy initiatives at a Citibank N.A for over 9 years. He is a versatile technologist and a full stack Architect who has worked on designing solutions across technology stacks and platforms with focus on providing seamless integration , collaboration, and cloud computing to reduce TCO and improve system resiliency. He has about 20 years of IT industry experience and 17 years providing technology solutions to bank.

Jun Peng is a Specialist Solutions Architect at Red Hat, focusing on OpenShift Virtualization across the ASEAN region. Experienced in both the private and public sectors through previous experiences in MNCs and government, he brings strong communication skills and a cross-disciplinary perspective to his current role at Red Hat.