Currently, within the Group CTO team, Clauberg is responsible for Deutsche Telekom's Aggregation, Transport and IP architecture. In addition, he is responsible for the Cloudification of Network Functions within the DT group. He has more than 30 years of experience in the IT and Telecommunications industry. Before joining Deutsche Telekom, he had various international leadership roles at Cisco Systems. He represents Deutsche Telekom in the Telecom Infrastructure Project, Open Networking Foundation and New IP Agency Board of Directors. He also acts as Advisory Director for the MEF Board.

Chris Rice, Senior Vice President of AT&T Labs, Domain 2.0 Architecture and Design, is responsible for delivering the architecture and design of AT&T's software-centric network. This transformation uses software-defined networking and network functions virtualization to deliver products and services to the customer. Prior to this role, Chris was the Vice President of AT&T Labs, leading the research and advanced development for the software-centric network. Since joining AT&T in 1995, Chris has contributed expertise and focus on wireless and broadband communication systems. He worked on satellite and broadband data communication systems. He also led development efforts for a digital radio-based, pico-cellular basestation, which provided in-building, mobile voice communication on standard cellular phones.

Roz Roseboro has more than 20 years' experience in market research, marketing and product management. Her research focuses on how innovation and change are impacting the compute, network and storage infrastructure domains within the data centers of telecom operators. She monitors trends such as how open source is impacting the development process for telecom, and how telco data centers are transforming to support SDN, NFV and cloud. Roz joined Heavy Reading following eight years at OSS Observer and Analysys Mason, where she most recently managed its Middle East and Africa regional program, and prior to that, its Infrastructure Solutions and Communications Service Provider programs. She spent five years at RHK, where she ran the Switching and Routing and Business Communication Services programs. Prior to becoming an analyst, she worked at Motorola on IT product development and radio and mobile phone product management.

Roz holds a BA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and an MBA in marketing, management, and international business from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. She is based in Chicago. 

Josh Goodell is currently leading the initiative to redefine the AT&T Business Solutions core network product offering. Through this initiative, Mr Goodell will deploy AT&T's first software defined networking capabilities to enable fully automated service delivery while driving signifigant cost out of the business.

Prior to leading Network on Demand, Mr Goodell led AT&T Wi-Fi which operates the nation's largest Wi-Fi network. He was responsible for delivering network solutions to wide-ranging industry sectors including hospitality, retail, stadiums, universities, healthcare and airports. These solutions help AT&T meet the demand of customers expecting a fast, reliable connection on all of their devices, at all times, wherever they happen to be.

Prior to heading the AT&T Wi-Fi Team, Mr. Goodell served as Associate Vice President responsible for Chief of Staff support for the President and CEO of AT&T Business Solutions. In this role, he provided strategic and tactical support for the organization serving AT&T's business customers worldwide, including every Fortune 1,000 company and tens of thousands of small and medium-sized businesses.

Previously, Goodell led a Core Network Organization where he managed technicians who installed, maintained, and repaired AT&T's network in California's San Francisco Bay Area.

He also served as the Executive Director of Customer Service where he created and executed initiatives to improve the customer experience across Consumer, Network, Small Business, Collections and Operator Services.

Goodell previously led Call Center Force Operations where he was responsible for force management strategies throughout California and Nevada.

Preceding this, Goodell was a Sales Director overseeing Consumer Call Centers in Los Angeles and Orange County, California.

In addition to his AT&T responsibilities, Goodell has served on the Board of Directors for Junior Achievement in Northern California.

A native of California, Goodell earned Bachelor Degrees in Biology and Psychology from the University of California, at Irvine, in 1995.

Nick Feamster is a professor in the Computer Science Department at Princeton University and the Deputy Director of the Princeton University Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP). Before joining the faculty at Princeton, he was a professor in the School of Computer Science at Georgia Tech. He received his Ph.D. in Computer science from MIT in 2005, and his S.B. and M.Eng. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2000 and 2001, respectively. His research focuses on many aspects of computer networking and networked systems, with a focus on network operations, network security and censorship-resistant communication systems.

Dr. Vallin contributes more than 20 years of network and service management experience to Tail-f, a Cisco company specializing in OSS and NMS systems, and network management standards. He has presented at a wide variety of international network engineering and management conferences. Before Tail-f, he worked as an OSS solutions architect at DataDuctus. Dr. Vallin also served as a network management specialist at Ericsson and a research engineer at the University of Linköping.

Martin Zander works with corporate development, M&A and strategic investments. He has been working in the telecom and the wireless semiconductor industry since 1999, and has held a variety of product management and marketing and sales positions with mobile phones, wireless chipsets and multimedia service layer products. Martin is currently engaged in two major activities for Ericsson as program lead for the Ericsson-Cisco partnership announced in November 2015 and under establishment/implementation, and with aligning and driving the strategy development of the companywide efforts in IoT for the Ericsson Group.

Timothy Winters works with companies from all over the world to develop broad-based, flexible testing strategies to cost effectively meet network interoperability requirements for the Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), Routing and Home Networking. He is the United States Government IPv6 (USGv6) and IPv6 Ready Logo technical lead for the UNH-IOL. In this role, he oversees various aspects in testing of IPv6 technology, deals with various multi-vendor IPv6 testing scenarios and acts as a liaison between students and vendors during device testing and development. He was instrumental in the UNH-IOL's designation as an ISO-17025 USGv6 accredited laboratory. Timothy has more than 12 years of experience as a UNH-IOL leader and his involvement with cutting-edge technologies has led to outstanding achievement. He is an expert in routing protocols: Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) and Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM), as well as helping deploy the Moonv6 network in the early days of IPv6 as a connectivity specialist and deployment advisor. Passionate about innovation, Timothy has taken the lead for the IPv6 Forum's IPv6 Ready Logo Programs. In addition, he assisted with ISOC World IPv6 Launch by creating the criteria for home networking equipment manufactures to participate. His ongoing collaboration with industry forums including the North American IPv6 Task Force, IPv6 Forum, IPv6 Ready Logo Committee, IPSO, Unified Communications Forum and SIP Forum demonstrates his dedication and persistence in developing new standards, as well as assisting commercial services providers, network equipment vendors and government agencies cost effectively speed go-to-market time for products.

Steve's coverage at Heavy Reading includes the Internet of Things (IoT) and related technologies, focusing on the evolution of the mobile Internet and its impact on digital life. Steve joins Heavy Reading with more than two decades of experience as a strategy, marketing and technology advisor, analyst, speaker and commentator on the mobile Internet and the emerging IoT space. He previously worked with Motorola in Germany, the U.K. and the U.S., where he led technology roadmapping, strategy, product and business development teams that developed 2G, 3G and 4G cellular devices for the global market. In addition, Steve is an entrepreneur who has founded two companies: KeySo Global LLC, an analysis and advisory firm specializing in strategy, marketing and innovation, with a focus on mobile technology; and My City Tag LLC, a digital city services platform with an initial market focus on parking. Steve holds a First Class B.A. Honors degree in Business from Kingston University, England.

Jim leads Heavy Reading's research on the impact of NFV on the control plane and application layers at the core and edge. This includes the evolution path of SIP applications, unified communications (UC), IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), session border controllers (SBCs), Diameter signaling controllers (DSCs), policy controllers and WebRTC. Jim is also focused on the network and subscriber impact of Big Data and Analytics. He authors Heavy Reading's NFV and SDN Market Trackers. Other areas of research coverage include Subscriber Data Management (SDM) and fixed-line TDM replacement. Jim joined Heavy Reading from Nortel Networks, where he tracked the VoIP and application server market landscape and was a key contributor to the development of Wireless Intelligent Network (WIN) standards. Additional technical experience was gained with Bell Canada, where he performed IN and SS7 network planning, numbering administration, technical model forecast creation and definition of regulatory-based interconnection models. Jim is based in Ottawa, Canada.

Mary Stanhope is responsible for the strategic positioning and go to market of Global Capacity's network products and services. She has more than 23 years in the technology industry focused on meeting the needs of the market. From the introduction of SMS text and prepaid wireless to the development of online communities and launch of Ethernet, she has been a pioneer for architecting change in how businesses and people communicate. She was recognized by Global Telecom Business in the 50 Women to Watch in Telecoms list and in the Fierce Telecom Top 10 Women list in Wireline.

Gerry Flynn leads Verizon's Wireless Standardization work in industry forums and partnership projects and is a key part of Verizon's Advanced Technology Strategy team. He is the primary GSMA contact for Verizon's participation in programs and working group projects and is a member of the GSMA Product and Services Management Committee. Gerry and his team are currently focused on the future evolution of LTE Network architecture and 5G for IP-based services and applications. During his more than 30 years of wireless industry experience, he has managed a combination of technical, business, regulatory and operations positions of increasing responsibility.

Upinder Saini is a senior executive with more than 20 years of experience in the wireless and cable industry. He is recognized as a thought leader for delivering innovative, multi-screen, digital experiences in entertainment and communications services in Canada. He is currently responsible for developing product strategy, roadmaps and operational plans for all consumer wireless products representing $5 billion in revenue. Upinder has a proven track record of leading large teams to deliver innovative and high-value products to support new revenue streams, acquire new customers and manage customer churn. Prior to joining Rogers in 1999, he was with Bell Mobility for four years where he was responsible for data product development and content development. During this time, he led the launch of several new services, including Bell Mobility's wireless web.

Chris McReynolds is responsible for the ethernet, cloud and transport services globally and has been with Level 3 for eight years in various product management and corporate strategy roles.

Patrick is the Founder and Principal Analyst of HardenStance Ltd, a leading analyst firm providing best in class research, analysis and insight in telecom and IT security. A lot of Patrick's research is focused on best practise for telecom operators in securing their own networks and providing security services to end customers. In recent years his research has focused increasingly on the security opportunities and threats presented by the telecom sector's efforts to evolve to more software controlled networking including the evolution in network security requirements from 4G to 5G. Patrick has worked in the telecom sector for over 25 years, including in strategic planning roles for Motorola as well as for Nortel's mobile infrastructure business. Prior to forming HardenStance Ltd in January 2017, he worked for eleven years at Heavy Reading, the last three as Heavy Reading's Chief Analyst.

Sachin Katti is an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Stanford University and also the Co-Founder and ex-CEO of Kumu Networks, which is commercializing his research on full duplex radios. He received his PhD in EECS from MIT in 2009. His research focuses on designing and building next-generation high-capacity wireless networks by combining techniques from information and coding theory, RF systems and networking. His research has won numerous awards, including the 2008 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award - Honorable Mention, the George Sprowls Award for Best Doctoral Dissertation in EECS at MIT, the IEEE William Bennett Prize, the Best Student Paper Award at ACM SIGCOMM 2012, USENIX ATC 2013, the Sloan Fellowship, the NSF Career Award as well as Okawa, Hoover, Packard and Terman Faculty Fellowships.

Ray Watson is VP of Global Technology at Masergy. He brings over 17 years of expertise in IT strategy, application solution design and next-generation network architectures. Ray has enabled numerous global enterprises to transform their IT infrastructures to improve business outcomes. Ray is an industry thought leader in IT transformation and a frequent speaker on topics such as hybrid networking, SDN, NFV, cloud connectivity and advanced security. Prior to joining Masergy, Ray worked at Airband Communications and Broadwing Communications.

Juan F. Gorricho leads the data and analytics strategy development and execution for Partners, one of the top credit unions in the country, exclusively serving the more than 150,000 cast members of The Walt Disney Company. He has more than 20 years of experience in the data and analytics space, including multiple publications and speaking engagements all over the world. In his prior roles with Disney, Juan led multiple multi-million dollar projects to implement business intelligence and analytical solutions for key lines of business such as labor operations and merchandise.

Jason Porter currently leads AT&T's cyber security business.  He is responsible for driving growth and profitability for the AT&T Security portfolio, consisting of network, premise, cloud and mobile security products, threat management and consulting.  He leads a large team consisting of Sales, Product, Marketing and Consulting leaders.

Since joining AT&T in 2002, Jason has held various leadership positions in Engineering, Strategy, Operations and Marketing spanning consumer and business.  He maintains a track record of successfully introducing and maturing emerging technologies and business units as well as transforming businesses.

Previously, Jason Porter was Vice President of DevOps for AT&T Partner Solutions where he was responsible for driving profitability and growth of the AT&T Partner Exchange channel.  He and his team launched over 25 products, reduced cycle times by 75% and transformed the user experience to earn one of the highest Net Promoter Scores in the industry.

Prior to that role, Jason Porter was AVP, Business Development for AT&T Business Solutions, responsible for evaluating and forming strategic cloud partnerships to extend AT&T's market share, develop differentiating features and scale the As a Service business.

Jason also was the AVP of Mobility Service Operations for AT&T Global Network Operations.  He was responsible for the health, maintenance and growth of voice and data services for over 80 million worldwide wireless subscribers.  In this role, Jason successfully introduced products and services such as the 3G MicroCell, Location Based Services, and devices including the iPhone, the iPad, and the Kindle.

Prior to his role in AT&T Mobility, Jason was Director of U-verse Operations, responsible for crafting and executing a strategy to introduce a first ever technology and grow it to a scalable solution.  He created and executed an "Incubation Center" concept founded in the end-to-end customer experience, maximizing rapid learning and establishing operational discipline in a nascent environment.  Jason's leadership in U-verse resulted in numerous patents, awards, and enabled the growth of the first million U-verse customers.

Jason holds a bachelor's degree in Engineering from The United States Military Academy at West Point and an MBA from Regis University.  He served in the Army as an Armor Officer, leading a Tank Platoon and a Mortar Platoon.  He and his wife, Tiffany, have three children and currently reside in Frisco, Texas.

Nick Feamster is a professor in the Computer Science Department at Princeton University and the Deputy Director of the Princeton University Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP). Before joining the faculty at Princeton, he was a professor in the School of Computer Science at Georgia Tech. He received his Ph.D. in Computer science from MIT in 2005, and his S.B. and M.Eng. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2000 and 2001, respectively. His research focuses on many aspects of computer networking and networked systems, with a focus on network operations, network security and censorship-resistant communication systems.

Asfaw Negeri has many years of experience in end-to-end wireless solution design and deployment, strategic New Product Introduction (NPI) and business readiness planning and development. He has in the past worked for Ericsson, Sprint and WeDo Technologies.

Matt Caulfield is the architect of Cisco's Media Data Center solution for running video workloads on OpenStack. From content providers to service providers, he is an expert in the intersection of cloud and media. He works closely with Cisco's broadcast, post-production and video distribution customers to address their unique use cases in a hybrid cloud environment. Before joining the [email protected] team, Matt spent six years working with Cisco's video group developing high-performance encoding and streaming software.

Jason Thibeault is the Executive Director of the Streaming Video Alliance, a worldwide consortium of businesses dedicated to shaping the future of online video through best practices, guidelines and functional/technical requirements. In this role, Jason is focused on managing the day-to-day operations, acting as its chief evangelist and growing the membership base. Prior to the SVA, he spent eight years at Limelight Networks in a variety of capacities.

Rajeev Raman is the Senior Director for Infinite Video, Cisco's cloud video offering, and a member of the Video Software and Solutions leadership team. Rajeev was most recently Founder and CEO of 1 Mainstream, a SaaS platform for media companies and service providers to launch and monetize content services on a variety of connected devices. Prior to 1 Mainstream, Rajeev led all aspects of product management at Roku, Inc. Earlier in his career he was CEO and Founder of mywaves, and Entrepreneur In Residence at Menlo Ventures.

Jeff Brown is responsible for product development, product management and all marketing functions for Windstream's wholesale business unit, and is also actively involved in Windstream's SDN and NFV efforts. Prior to joining Windstream in 2013, Jeff held leadership positions working in the service provider and cable MSO space, including VP-level roles at Covad and Sprint.

Mr. Lawson-Shanks has been at the forefront of designing and deploying industry leading solutions in both the UK and the US for over 25 years. Prior to joining EdgeConneX, Phill was CTO of Virtacore responsible for datacenter build-out, network core architecture and systems to accommodate the migration and consolidation of thousands of clients and infrastructure. Phill’s team also designed and deployed the world’s largest VMware based Public Cloud. At Alcatel-Lucent Phill served as Chief Strategy Officer were he led their effective transition to the cloud, virtualizing many of their programs and creating meaningful time and cost savings. Phill joined SAVVIS as VP and GM of Hosting to re-establish the Managed Hosting business as well as introduce the ‘virtual server’ product. As Founder, VP and GM of Digital Media at MCI (now Verizon Digital Media Services), Phill created the division and received several related patents in the process. Phill holds 8 active Technology Patents secured worldwide including 4 in the U.S. and 4 in Europe.

Rodney M. Elder is a 22-year veteran of the computer communications industry. He has extensive background in advanced networking technologies, specifically global and metropolitan Ethernet. He is a MEF Forum Carrier Ethernet v2.0 certified professional. He brings experience starting and creating new emerging products and services, such as high-speed LAN Interconnect at MFS Datanet; award-winning, easy-to-use VoIP IP-PBX at Allied Telesys; and segment-defining BLEC solutions. He was Co-Founder of ARC. Rodney began his business career working for Royal Dutch Shell Oil in Houston at its world headquarters information technology center.  During his military career in the United States Air Force as a Technical Controller, he was assigned to the 602 TACC at the 12th Air Force in Austin and graduated top of his NCOIC class as the John Levitow award winner for excellence in military knowledge and leadership skills.

Guru Parulkar is Executive Director of the Open Networking Research Center, Executive Director of the Open Networking Lab, and Consulting Professor of EE at Stanford University. Guru has been in the networking field for more than 25 years. He joined Stanford in 2007 as Executive Director of its Clean Slate Internet Design Program. At Stanford, Guru helped create three programs: OpenFlow / Software-Defined Networking, Programmable Open Mobile Internet 2020, and the Stanford Experimental Data Center Laboratory. Prior to Stanford, he spent four years at the National Science Foundation (NSF) and worked with the broader research community to create programs such as GENI, Future Internet Design, and Network of Sensor Systems. He received the NSF Director's award for Program Management excellence. Before NSF, Guru founded several startups, including Growth Networks (acquired by Cisco) and Sceos (IPO'd as Ruckus Wireless). He served as Entrepreneur in Residence at NEA in 2001 and received NEA's Entrepreneurship Award. Prior to this, Guru spent more than 12 years at Washington University in St. Louis, where he was a Professor of Computer Science, Director of Applied Research Laboratory and the head of research and prototyping of high-performance networking and multimedia systems. Guru received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Delaware in 1987. He is a recipient of the Alumni Outstanding Achievement award and the Frank A. Pehrson Graduate Student Achievement award.

Phil Robb is a widely respected expert in the area of open source strategy, business impact and governance. He is a frequently speaker at international technology and business events and he has been consulted by policy makers, including the European Commission and the United States Department of Justice as well as numerous high-tech trade organizations. Prior to joining OpenDaylight, he was the director of HP's Open Source Program Office where he had responsibility for HP's corporate open source strategy, engagement with the open source community, oversight of the Open Source Review Board and a variety of software development projects. Phil was focused on open source at HP from 2001 through 2012. Prior to HP, he held senior management and technical positions at Critical Path, Fisher Scientific, Motorola and Honeywell-Bull focused on wireless and wire-line high speed telecommunications software and services.

Jim Fagan leads the Cloud Practice at Telstra. Based in Hong Kong, Jim joined Telstra from Pacnet, where he held the position of President, Managed Services responsible for the overall financial management and pricing structure of the company's services division. Prior to Pacnet, Jim worked at Rackspace as Managing Director of Asia Pacific, overseeing the management, strategy and growth of the company's Asia Pacific operations. Jim brings with him more than 15 years' experience in product and financial management.

Roz Roseboro has more than 20 years' experience in market research, marketing and product management. Her research focuses on how innovation and change are impacting the compute, network and storage infrastructure domains within the data centers of telecom operators. She monitors trends such as how open source is impacting the development process for telecom, and how telco data centers are transforming to support SDN, NFV and cloud. Roz joined Heavy Reading following eight years at OSS Observer and Analysys Mason, where she most recently managed its Middle East and Africa regional program, and prior to that, its Infrastructure Solutions and Communications Service Provider programs. She spent five years at RHK, where she ran the Switching and Routing and Business Communication Services programs. Prior to becoming an analyst, she worked at Motorola on IT product development and radio and mobile phone product management.

Roz holds a BA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and an MBA in marketing, management, and international business from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. She is based in Chicago. 

Saikrishna Kotha is currently responsible for leading the white box switching initiative at LinkedIn, Global Infrastructure Architecture and Strategy. He has 17 years of networking industry experience in product architecture and development. He has 11 issued and 17 pending patents in the field of SDN/NFV and emerging networking technologies. His LinkedIn profile can be accessed at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saikrishnakotha. He also moderates the 20K-member LinkedIn group 'Software Defined Networking (SDN)': https://www.linkedin.com/groups/4359316.

Kent J. McDonald helps teams discover the right thing to deliver.  His more than 20 years of experience include work in business analysis, strategic planning, project management and product development in a variety of industries including financial services, health insurance, nonprofit and automotive. As the founder of Knowledge Bridge Partners, he helps organizations figure out the right things to do in their IT and product development work. He currently practices those ideas as Product Owner for the Agile Alliance.

Kent is author of Beyond Requirements: Analysis with an Agile Mindset and co-author of Stand Back and Deliver: Accelerating Business Agility.

Alan Bateman has had a long career in the IT and Telecoms industry working around the world with the majority of major players, leading multivendor collaborative transformational programs. Until 2012, Alan worked for BT, having led two of the company's seven enterprise programs, each having global teams in excess of 1,000 personnel and 10+ supply partners. He delivered the first e2e Agile program in the company (Broadband) and six years later the biggest IT transformation, again using underlying Agile techniques.  He now helps a number of companies transition to a more flexible, customer-centered methodology.

Colin Kincaid is responsible for articulating a vision for the evolution of the service provider business and defining a strategic plan to advance that vision through the Cisco Service Provider services, software and hardware portfolio. Prior to the CTO role, he led a product management team focused on addressing the needs of web and OTT customers. In his career at Cisco, Colin has led a number of high-impact initiatives, including leading international, cross-organizational development of service provider subscriber services for Cisco's mobile wireless strategy and hospitality broadband businesses, running the Professional Services and integration teams deploying software solutions in carrier network and OSS/BSS environments, managing the development of Cisco's 10K switching platform from its inception and VPN security product development.

Burt Klein is one of only a handful of DevOps transformation subject matter experts at Tech Mahindra. He is a key part of a small team which focuses on helping clients plan, educate and mentor staff members as well as working to create and improve existing processes to support the DevOps transformation. He joined Tech Mahindra from CA Technologies where he was the CTO and DevOps Evangelist within the Application Delivery business unit. His primary responsibilities at CA Technologies were to inform leading worldwide organizations and alliance partners on the value of DevOps within the software development lifecycle. Burt has been traveling the globe speaking to the revolutionary technology capabilities of service virtualization, release automation, test data management, test automation and release management and how they can positively impact an organization's ability to delivery applications with greater speed and increased quality while reducing cost and business risk. He is also responsible for sharing the success stories of countless early adopters and actively participating with executive-level steering committees that are focused on the large enterprises implementation of this new and exciting capability in the application economy.

Will Barkis, PhD, runs the Smart Cities portfolio at Orange Silicon Valley and contributes to the Orange GigaStudio, a consumer apps program that benefits consumers with super-fast networks. He also serves as Volunteer Technology Advisor to the SF Mayor's Office of Civic Innovation. He served as Director of Mozilla's Gigabit Community Fund and has worked at the National Science Foundation, where he collaborated with the White House to launch the US Ignite next-generation apps initiative. 

Dr. Robert Howald has over 25 years of technology and executive experience in commercial and military communications systems. He is Vice President of Network Architecture at Comcast, focused on the evolution of cable systems and services, future network architectures, and emerging broadband technologies. He held a similar role at ARRIS and the former Motorola Mobility. Prior to this, Dr. Howald was the Vice President of Engineering at Xytrans, specializing in millimeter wave products for cellular backhaul, homeland security, and people screening. He was also the Director of Systems Engineering with General Instrument and Motorola's prior Broadband Communications Systems division.

Joe Kochan is responsible for day-to-day operations, finance and program management for the national non-profit organization US Ignite, based in DC. Prior to co-founding US Ignite, he worked as part of the Department of Commerce's BTOP grant program. Prior to that role, he was a Founder and Vice President of Operations at DigitalBridge Communications (DBC), a Virginia-based startup backed by more than $40 million in venture funding dedicated to bringing broadband services to small, underserved markets nationwide using broadband wireless technology. Previously, Joe worked with Verizon, with responsibility for strategic planning and project management, specifically focusing on the military housing market and the implementation of the first Verizon FiOS networks at military bases across the country.

Ty Pearman is Director of Access Architecture for Comcast. As a 22-year veteran in the cable industry, Ty joined Comcast in 2005.  Ty is currently focused on deploying converged services on CCAP platforms including supporting tools and processes surrounding the platform. Most recently, he has been involved in DOCSIS 3.1 deployments and developing and evaluating new distributed remote Phy and remote MAC/Phy architectures. Ty has also worked on a number of advanced video engineering initiatives within Comcast, including several of the industry's first ETV trials, all-digital video migration and NGOD (next generation on demand) programming technologies, including SDV. Prior to joining Comcast, Ty spent ten years in broadband Internet engineering positions, including serving as data network engineer for Charter Communications, a system engineer supporting the implementation of CMTSs for ADC Communications and Terayon, and as a member of the CableLabs technical staff, where he participated in developing DOCSIS.

Marty is currently responsible for Mobility and Cloud Security in support AT&T's transformation to software-enabled architecture. She  has 15 years of experience and has held various positions in AT&T. Marty is also responsible for developing the security architecture and framework for Mobility, Network Virtualization based on the User Defined Network (UDNC), and Emerging Services including Connected Car, Digital Life, U-Verse, etc. She served as a member of the CTO Technology Council that was chartered to provide technology thought leadership for AT&T and the partner community that makes up AT&T Technology Ecosystem. She led strategic initiatives to accelerate innovation through internal rapid development efforts and focused industry collaborations.

M. Rasool Kareem Irfan is the Telecom & Infrastructure Security Practice Head at Tata Communications Transformation Services Ltd (TCTS), a leading managed services provider specializing in network and business operations across telco lifecycle and consultancy & business enablement services to global communication service providers (CSPs). He has led various global security and strategic consulting projects for CSPs. Irfan brings over a decade of experience in security consulting, security assessments, managed security & security operations center, data center & cloud services. He is a Certified Ethical Hacker and also holds global certifications in security industry, including ISO/IEC 27001 lead auditor and multivendor certifications. As an evangelist and a prominent blogger in information security, Irfan works closely with reputed global telco forums and institutions.

Gary Sockrider is an industry veteran bringing more than 25 years of broad technology experience ranging from network security to routing and switching, data center, mobility and collaboration. His previous roles include security SME, consultancy, customer support, IT and product management. He seeks to understand and convey the constantly evolving threat landscape, as well as the techniques and solutions that address the challenges they present. Prior to joining Arbor in 2012, Gary spent 12 years at Cisco Systems and held previous positions with Avaya and Cable & Wireless.

Nick Feamster is a professor in the Computer Science Department at Princeton University and the Deputy Director of the Princeton University Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP). Before joining the faculty at Princeton, he was a professor in the School of Computer Science at Georgia Tech. He received his Ph.D. in Computer science from MIT in 2005, and his S.B. and M.Eng. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2000 and 2001, respectively. His research focuses on many aspects of computer networking and networked systems, with a focus on network operations, network security and censorship-resistant communication systems.

Toby Ford leads technology efforts around AT&T's cloud offerings both internally and externally focused. Currently, he is responsible for shepherding SDN and NFV projects onto AT&T's Integrated Cloud (AIC) platform. Previously, Toby served as CTO for USi, which was acquired by AT&T in 2006. He has held positions at Cornell University, ARINC, TeleCommunication Systems and his own company in the Netherlands. He has been a member of the OpenStack Board of Directors since its inception in 2012.

James Crawshaw is a contributing analyst to Heavy Reading's Insider reports series. He has more than 15 years of experience as an analyst covering technology and telecom companies for investment banks and industry research firms. He previously worked as a fund manager and a management consultant in industry.

With more than 25 years in the telecom industry, Isch started his career at MCI Telecommunications (now Verizon) before moving in 2001 to Orange Business Services, a global integrator of communications solutions for multinational corporations. He has worked in various operations and presales technical capacities covering a wide array of data networking, voice and Internet solutions. He is well versed in networking technologies, including SDN/NFV, SD WAN, IP, MPLS, SIP, among others.

Chris Rice, Senior Vice President of AT&T Labs, Domain 2.0 Architecture and Design, is responsible for delivering the architecture and design of AT&T's software-centric network. This transformation uses software-defined networking and network functions virtualization to deliver products and services to the customer. Prior to this role, Chris was the Vice President of AT&T Labs, leading the research and advanced development for the software-centric network. Since joining AT&T in 1995, Chris has contributed expertise and focus on wireless and broadband communication systems. He worked on satellite and broadband data communication systems. He also led development efforts for a digital radio-based, pico-cellular basestation, which provided in-building, mobile voice communication on standard cellular phones.

Paul Mason is a network and virtualization expert with more than ten years of experience. He began his career with Cisco, where he earned his CCIE in Route and Switch while he helped enterprises architect their global networks and data centers. He was an early expert in the Cisco Unified Compute System and worked with many Fortune 500 companies to deploy virtual data centers and private clouds. He recognized the shift the enterprise is making to the cloud and made his own shift to Equinix where he focuses on helping customers make the transition from legacy systems to cloud systems. Paul now advises his clients on the technical and business impact related to transitioning business to the cloud.

Sterling Perrin has more than 15 years' experience in telecommunications as an industry analyst and journalist. His coverage areas at Heavy Reading include optical networking, cable MSO infrastructure and services, and digital content. He also authors Heavy Reading's Packet-Enabled Optical Networking Quarterly Market Tracker, a special quarterly research service. Perrin joined Heavy Reading after five years at IDC, where he served as lead optical networks analyst, responsible for the firm's optical networking subscription research and custom consulting activities. Prior to IDC, Perrin worked for Standard & Poor's, where he delivered global industry analysis on a range of IT segments. He is a former journalist and editor at Telecommunications Magazine, and has also done consulting work for the research firm Current Analysis. Perrin is a frequent speaker at telecom industry events and is a highly sought-after source among the business and trade press.

Nick Feamster is a professor in the Computer Science Department at Princeton University and the Deputy Director of the Princeton University Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP). Before joining the faculty at Princeton, he was a professor in the School of Computer Science at Georgia Tech. He received his Ph.D. in Computer science from MIT in 2005, and his S.B. and M.Eng. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2000 and 2001, respectively. His research focuses on many aspects of computer networking and networked systems, with a focus on network operations, network security and censorship-resistant communication systems.

Sarah Obermayer leads a team that manages AT&T Global Supply Chain's Data & Analytics program. Key responsibilities for this team include project and process management, user support and training, monthly systems release management, and consultative analytics implementations for AT&T Global Supply Chain. Prior to this role, Sarah served in a variety of roles in AT&T Global Sales & Service Management, Consumer Supply Chain Planning & Project management as well as other operations roles in the telecom industry. 

Travis Ewert oversees the development of SDN Control Automation for network and service activation, management and programmable networking as tied to data/analytics and extended to the customer for dynamic service enablement. He also oversees software development of OSS platforms and network applications (UCC, CDN, IP-Video and NFV). Prior to his current role, Travis spent more than 20 years in technology, engineering, IT/development, operations and marketing leadership capacities.

Edward J. Fox is responsible for the planning, deployment, and operations of MetTel's broadband, data and VoIP network infrastructure. He has over 20 years of telecommunications and network experience managing massive organizational and customer growth at major telecom providers.

As the director, Heather Kirksey works with the OPNFV community to advance the adoption and implementation of open source NFV platform. She oversees and provides guidance for all aspects of the project, from technology to community and marketing and reports to OPNFV board of directors. Most recently Kirksey 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, business development, and participating in 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. She received her master's degree in English Literature from the University of Texas, Austin.

Kelsey Kusterer Ziser studied journalism and mass communication with a second major of Spanish at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, but her interest in the telecom world started with a PR position at Connect2 Communications where she worked with a variety of clients focused on communications network infrastructure, including switches, routers, SBCs, data center equipment and systems. There, she witnessed the growing influence of fiber in the industry, as packet optical service delivery platforms transformed network performance and scale.

Her drive for communicating the impact of new technology translated into a communications position at the FREEDM Systems Center, a smart grid research lab at N.C. State University. While at FREEDM, Kelsey orchestrated the center's webinar program which crossed multiple college campuses and covered research projects like cyber security in the smart grid, the center's smart solid-state transformer, fault isolation devices and distributed energy storage devices. She most recently worked in marketing at a healthcare company and is excited to take on the role of editor for Light Reading's Upskill U website.

Outside the office, she can be found riding her aging Raleigh-brand road bike or dodging snakes on runs through the local Raleigh, N.C., greenways. A glass half-full gal, Kelsey is grateful for the sunning reptiles because they motivate her to improve her timed miles.