Agile + DevOps West 2021 - Conference Speakers | TechWell

Conference archive

Conference Speakers

nikolay-advolodkin
Sr Solutions Architect
Sauce Labs

Nikolay Advolodkin is a self-driven SDET on a lifelong mission to create profound change in the IT world. Today, he serves as the founder and Test Automation Instructor at UltimateQA.com and a Solutions Architect at Sauce Labs. He was also voted as one of the top automation engineers in the...Read more

christina-ambers
Agile Coach & Scrum Master
Thomson Reuters

Concurrent Sessions

Christina Ambers is a certified Scrum Master, Agile, and Kanban Coach with over 14 years of experience in software development and team transformations. She leads distributed teams through an Agile Dojo every six weeks, focusing on agile principles and values. In addition, she co-leads her company's Agile Guild. Christina enjoys...Read more

Derek Ashmore
Application Transformation Principal
Asperitas Consulting

Derek Ashmore is the Application Transformation Practice Lead at Asperitas Consulting. He helps companies leverage AWS and Azure cloud platforms to gain a competitive advantage with a focus on DevSecOps, infrastructure code, cloud computing, containerization, making applications cloud-native, and migrating applications to the cloud. Derek routinely speaks at technical conferences...Read more

sanjiv-augustine
Founder and CEO
LitheSpeed LLC

Sanjiv Augustine is the Founder and CEO of LitheSpeed, LLC and the Agile Leadership Academy. Sanjiv is an entrepreneur, industry-leading Agile and Lean expert, author, speaker, management consultant, and trainer. With 30 years in the industry, Sanjiv has served as a trusted advisor to executives and management at leading firms,...Read more

Melissa Benua
Director of Engineering
mParticle

Melissa Benua has worked in nearly every software development role—dev, test, DevOps, and program management—at companies big and small and somewhere in-between. She's created and run high availability, high-quality services for PlayFab, Bing, Cortana, and Xbox One, and now for mParticle's enormous data platform. Melissa discovered her love of massively-scaled...Read more

Paul-Borlin
Senior Software Engineer
Compassion International

Paul Borlin has been in software development as an engineer and architect since the late 1990's at premier companies, like Philips. He has a passion for best practices, and helping organizations deliver great value. Paul has worked in several flavors of agile to include Scrum, Kanban, Lean, SAFe, and XP....Read more

Mariya Breyter
Sr. Vice President, Product Delivery
Goldman Sachs

Mariya Breyter is a business and IT executive with a passion for leading enterprise-level agile adoptions and culture changes. As an Agile Delivery Leader for Goldman Sachs consumer business, Mariya led a team of Agile practitioners in building the first consumer business at the firm, with a goal of helping...Read more

Tricia Broderick
Principal & Founder
Ignite Insight and Innovation

Keynotes

Tricia Broderick is a leadership and organizational advisor. Tricia has more than twenty years of experience in the software development industry. Her transformational leadership, at all levels of an organization, ignites the growth of leaders and high-performing teams to deliver quality outcomes. As a result, she is a highly-rated trainer,...Read more

farah-chabchoub
Head of QA
MANGOPAY

After successfully completing her master's degree in computer science from The University of Pierre et Marie Curie, Farah Chabchoub became particularly interested in innovation and service improvement. She began to take an interest in quality assurance from her internship experiences by testing products and services for INFOTEL, then for Groupama....Read more

pranay-chanda
Digital Consulting Leader (Agile/Devops)
Cognizant

Pranay Chanda is Digital Consulting Leader in Cognizant, a seasoned Lean Agile strategist, with proven experience in implementation of organization and behavior change in large and complex digital transformation engagements in insurance, banking, financial services, and Healthcare. His primary focus areas have been Agile Organization Design, Agile Way of Working,...Read more

Rob-Cuddy
Global Application Security Evangelist
HCL

Rob Cuddy is a Global Application Security Evangelist for HCL providing thought leadership for the application security space. Prior to this role, Rob was with IBM for 14 years with roles in Application Security Evangelism, Worldwide Sales Enablement, Tiger Teams and Field Services. Rob has spoken at numerous events and...Read more

Jean Dahl
General Manager of Central and West Regions
C-prime

Jean Dahl is a collaborative, outcomes-driven senior executive, author, recognized thought leader, speaker, and serial entrepreneur who is passionate about building adaptive and responsive Lean enterprises that exploit change to seize greater and greater levels of agility. She regularly consults with her clients, ranging from Lean startups to corporate giants,...Read more

Lee Eason
Director of Digital Branch Experience
Edward Jones

Lee Eason is currently the Director of Digital Branch Experience at Edward Jones. Prior to this, Lee was CEO of Takata, an organization that helps teams reach its peak potential and the CTO of SoftPro, the number one provider of mortgage title and closing software in the US. After finishing...Read more

christy-erbeck
Chief People Officer
AgileThought

Christy Erbeck, former Chief People Officer at AgileThought, has over 25 years’ experience in domestic and international speaking, consulting, training, and coaching, working in both software development and non-product-focused environments, including manufacturing, distribution, and sales & marketing. She has trained and worked with thousands of individuals worldwide, from nontechnical roles,...Read more

Michael-Faulise
Sr Director Marketing & Innovation
BCforward

Sr. Director Digital Marketing & Innovation Michael Faulise is an Executive Leader who focus includes Sales, Marketing, Business Development, Innovation & Solutions. Michael has over 20 years in Consulting Services with his focus on Marketing/Sales & Client Business Development. Including working with the Allianz, NASDAQ, Amazon, United Heath, Boeing, Microsoft,...Read more

Kathleen-Flax
Agile Delivery Lead
Capital One

Kathleen Flax has been helping organizations and teams implement Agile practices since 2013 as a Scrum Master, Product Owner and Internal Coach. Prior to becoming Agile certified, she was a Waterfall Project Manager for 10 years. Kathleen believes that helping organizations and teams is less about the practices, and all...Read more

bob-foster
Technical Manager
Coveros

Bob Foster is a Technical Manager with over 20 years experience as a senior software engineer and team lead. Bob has proven experience in all aspects of software development and delivery (including DevOps, CI/CD, and infrastructure as code). He is a firm believer in the benefits gained by software teams...Read more

grant-fritchey
DevOps Advocate
Redgate Software

Grant Fritchey is a Data Platform MVP and AWS Community Builder with over 30 years' experience in IT, including time spent in support and development. Grant's primary focus is database development, administration and automation. He also has experience developing software in .NET, C#, and Java. Grant has written books for...Read more

Bob Galen
Principal Agile Coach
Vaco

Bob Galen is an agile practitioner, trainer & coach based in Cary, NC. In this role, he helps guide companies and teams in their pragmatic adoption and organizational shift towards Scrum and other agile methodologies and practices. He is a Principal Agile Coach at Vaco Agile, a leading business agility...Read more

Gene-Gotimer
DevSecOps Senior Engineer
Steampunk

Gene Gotimer is a DevSecOps engineer at Steampunk, often working with federal government clients. He considers himself a developer, but he usually focuses on DevSecOps practices such as continuous integration, repeatable builds, unit testing, automated testing, security tools, and automated deployments. Gene feels strongly that repeatability, quality, and security are...Read more

Steven Granese
Vice President, Transform Practice
AgileThought

Steven Granese has been building innovative teams and solutions for his entire nineteen-year career in the technology industry. His expertise lies in transforming organizations to deliver their desired business outcomes by adopting an agile way of working. He holds multiple agile certifications (CSM, CSP, PMI-ACP) and is an avid speaker...Read more

brian-holt
Senior Agile Coach
Accenture

Brian Holt started his career as a software developer. Just before becoming a manager, he volunteered his team to be a pilot for scrum. When he moved into management, Agile and DevOps were the key to his success, which ultimately led Brian into coaching. He relates with technical teams and...Read more

Sujay-Honnamane
Director - Quality Engineering
Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company

Sujay Honnamane is an information technology leader with two decades of experience in software delivery. Sujay possesses rich global experience working across several industry verticals such as Insurance, Financial Services, Retail, Logistics & Media-Entertainment-Communications. He is an international speaker on Continuous Testing in DevOps & Quality Engineering, has authored whitepapers...Read more

Tanya Janca Headshot
Founder
We Hack Purple

Tanya Janca, also known as SheHacksPurple, is the best-selling author of Alice and Bob Learn Application Security. She is also the founder of We Hack Purple, an online learning academy, community and podcast that revolves around teaching everyone to create secure software. Tanya has been coding...Read more

Ratna Janjanam
Sr Member of Technical Staff
Salesforce

"Curiosity" is one word that can describe Ratna accurately. She is forever exploring the software or asking thought provoking questions related to testing processes and strategy.A Strong Product Quality and Test Automation engineer with a proven track record of delivering high quality products by ensuring teams follow Agile delivery best...Read more

Byron_Katz
Coveros

Byron Katz has been in love with computers since his father bought the family a Commodore 64. A degreed architect, he found his way back to software development in 2010, and his career has included roles as a quality assurance lead, a full-stack developer, consultant, and sales engineer. Byron has...Read more

Eran-Kinsbruner
Chief Evangelist, Author
Perfecto by Perforce

Eran Kinsbruner is the author of the 2016 Amazon bestseller ‘The Digital Quality Handbook’, the Book Authority award-winning ‘Best New Software Testing Books’, ‘Continuous Testing for DevOps Professionals’, and ‘Accelerating Software Quality – ML and AI in the Age of DevOps’. He is Chief Evangelist and senior director at Perforce...Read more

soni-lee
Scrum Master
Capital One

Concurrent Sessions

Soni Lee is a Scrum Master/ Product Manager at Capital One for the past 10 years. Work with teams to facilitate and support enhanced delivery and efficiency of timelines. Partner with teams to identify impediments and get them resolved quickly. A Servant leader and coach for Agile/Scrum teams with experience...Read more

Janna_Loeffler
Director of Test Engineering
Equinox Media

Janna Loeffler has more than fifteen years of software quality experience. She holds a bachelor's degree in computer engineering and a master's degree in business administration. Working in a variety of software engineering roles, including development, testing, quality assurance, and DevOps, has provided her with a holistic view of software...Read more

adam-matłacz
Senior Project Leader
Demant

Adam Matłacz have spent his whole professional life in the IT in different roles - tester, consultant, pre-sales engineer, business analyst, scrum master and Agile Coach. Now he works as full-time Senior Project Leader at Demant. Outside the office, he passionately shares his experience with community by giving talks and...Read more

Rich Mills
Coveros

Richard Mills has more than 25 years of experience in software engineering with a concentration on pragmatic software process and tools. Rich has a specific focus in Agile development methods and is passionate about DevOps, Continuous Integration, and Continuous Delivery. As the Solution Architect for DevOps at Coveros, Rich is...Read more

talia-nassi
Senior Developer Advocate
Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Concurrent Sessions

Talia Nassi is an international keynote speaker who delivers content on all things testing and quality. She is currently a Senior Development Advocate at Amazon Web Services (AWS). Previously, she worked at Split Software as a developer advocate and at WeWork as an engineer, and implemented Testing in Production from...Read more

prashant-patil
Software Principal Engineer
Dell Technologies

With passion of lifelong learning, Prashant Patil has been leading his life by setting examples, adapting to situations and solving technical challenges. He completed his Masters from Southern Methodist University in 2006 and started working at AT&T as a Performance Test Engineer after graduation. His keen eye for detail, efforts...Read more

Jeff Payne
CEO and Founder
Coveros

Jeffery Payne is CEO and founder of Coveros, Inc., a consulting company that helps organizations accelerate delivery using agile methods. Since its inception in 2008, Coveros has become a market leader in agile and DevOps engineering while being recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of the fastest growing private companies...Read more

Yulia-Pieskova
ScrumMaster
SimCorp

Yulia Pieskova is a ScrumMaster at SimCorp with over 7 years of experience in IT. She started in sales and marketing and then received a Master's Degree in management and coaching. At scoutbee she evolved from ScrumMaster to Agile Coach, introducing scrum to a team of 3 people to then...Read more

julia-pottinger
Lead QA
QualityWorks Consulting Group

Julia Pottinger is a Lead QA Consultant at QualityWorks with expertise in manual, automated and API testing and training which has helped companies enhance the quality of their software through improved test coverage, faster time to market, increased process efficiency and optimized use of resources. Julia is passionate about sharing...Read more

Laveena-Ramchandani
Senior QA consultant
Deloitte

Concurrent Sessions

Laveena Ramchandani is an experienced Testing Consultant with a comprehensive understanding of tools available for software testing and analysis. She is energetic, technical-minded professional seeking a position as a Product Experience Analyst. She would really like testers out there to get involved with data science testing as there is a...Read more

Perry Riggs
Director of Agile Practices
Edward Jones

Leadership Summit Sessions

Perry Riggs is currently an Enterprise Agile Coach with the Digital Product Management team at Edward Jones. In this role he guides the adoption of lean and agile practices at the portfolio and product levels in order to improve value, quality, and throughput.   Prior to the Edward Jones he was...Read more

Linda Rising
Consultant
Independent

Linda Rising is an independent consultant who lives near Nashville, Tennessee. Linda has a Ph.D. from Arizona State University in object-based design metrics. Her background includes university teaching as well as work in telecommunications, avionics, and tactical weapons systems. She is an internationally known presenter on topics related to agile...Read more

Leon Sabarsky
President, Healthy Agile

Leon Sabarsky excels at building high performing software development teams ‎for all types of organizations. He has 20 years of IT experience and has been an Agilist for the past 10 years, primarily in the health care and government sectors. He initiated the first Agile transition at Blue Cross Blue...Read more

Adam-Sandman
Director
Inflectra

Adam Sandman was a programmer from the age of 10 and has been working in the IT industry for the past 20 years in areas such as architecture, agile development, testing and project management. Currently Adam is a Director of Technology at Inflectra Corporation, where he is interested in technology,...Read more

Dionny Santiago
Director of Engineering
test.ai

Dionny Santiago is a Director of Engineering at test.ai, where he leads the development of the core AI-driven testing platform. Dionny's goal is to advance the current state of the art in software testing through the application of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Dionny holds a M.S. degree and...Read more

Max Saperstone
Technical Sales Consulting Manager
Steampunk

Max Saperstone has been working as a Software and Test Engineer for almost fifteen years. He is the Vice President of Testing Solutions at TestPros, where he works as a test strategist and architect. Max's focus is on Test Automation and Continuous Testing, with the goal of having organizations understand...Read more

Director of DevSecOps
VillageMD

DJ Schleen is a DevOps pioneer, and DevSecOps Advocate in the Healthcare industry and provides thought leadership to organizations looking to integrate security into their DevOps practices. He comes from a practitioner background and specializes in architecting DevSecOps pipelines, automating security in DevOps environments, and breaking down organizational silos that...Read more

CEO
IncrementOne

Dave Sharrock is the visionary behind IncrementOne, a consulting and training practice focussed on building organizations that use their agile delivery capability to respond quickly to fast-moving, uncertain environments. He has led transformations in numerous industries in the private sector, from financial services to gaming to manufacturing, as well as...Read more

Drew-Shefman
Software Engineer
Disney Streaming Services

Drew Shefman has been professionally developing interactive experiences since 1996. He is a software craftsman, agile evangelist, mentor, and scrum master. He has served as technical lead or architect on projects that have included virtual simulation training for the cell phone industry, performance testing engines for the airline industry, mission-critical...Read more

rohit-sinha
Director of Product Development
Synerzip

Rohit Sinha is a tech-savvy experienced professional offering 20+ years of success in leading all phases of diverse technology products/projects and teams. He is currently working as Director of Product Development with Synerzip. In this role, he works with technology companies. Rohit helps companies in accelerating their product roadmaps with...Read more

Matthew Skelton
Founder and Head of Consulting
Conflux

Matthew Skelton is co-author of Team Topologies: organizing business and technology teams for fast flow. Recognised by TechBeacon in 2018, 2019, and 2020 as one of the top 100 people to follow in DevOps, Matthew curates the well-known DevOps team topologies patterns at devopstopologies.com....Read more

kimberly snoyl
UX Designer & Sr. Test Consultant
Capgemini/Idean

Kimberly Snoyl is a senior software tester with 7 years of experience in Testing, and recently added the role UX Designer to her skillset. With a Masters in Human Media Interaction, she focuses on UX Testing, and gives a Usability Testing course to her colleagues. She is leader of the Usability Testing...Read more

Jason-St-Cyr
Sitecore

Jason St-Cyr is a Technical Evangelist with 20 years of experience in the software development field using a variety of technologies. His primary focuses are in DevRel, DevOps, Sitecore, solution architecture, and product marketing. Having spent his career delivering digital solutions with a focus on quality assurance, deployment processes, and...Read more

Software Engineer
Pulumi

Paul Stack is a UK-based infrastructure engineer. Paul has spoken at various events throughout the world about his passion for continuous integration and continuous delivery and why they should be part of what developers do on a day to day basis. He believes that reliably delivering software is just as...Read more

jill-stott
Sr. Agile Trainer
NextUp Solutions

Jill Stott is a seasoned Agile professional, having held many roles in IT over that past two decades. She is passionate about teaching Agile concepts and frameworks. Jill has a background in teaching and she makes each class she teaches informative, eye-opening, interactive, and fun. Jill curates a psychologically safe...Read more

Craeg-Strong
CTO
Ariel Partners

Craeg Strong is the CTO of Ariel Partners, a small IT consulting company based in Times Square. He is currently teaching public Kanban classes and coaching teams to adopt and mature Agile/Kanban practices in the NYC area. He has 25 years of experience in information technology, starting at Project Athena...Read more

Solution Train Engineer
Chevron Corporation

Rochelle Tan is a seasoned Digital Consultant and Agile Coach. She has been a key driving force behind the Digital Transformation initiative within Chevron Corporation. Drawing from 20 years of experience as a Solution Train Engineer, Innovator, Agile Coach, and Digital Consultant, Rochelle successfully spearheaded the Digital Incubation program within...Read more

Mary Thorn
Vice President of IT Strategy and Transformation
S&P Global Market Intelligence

During her more than 20 years of experience with financial, health care, and SaaS-based products, Mary Thorn has held VP, director, and manager-level positions in various software development organizations. A seasoned leader and coach in agile and testing methodologies, Mary has direct experience building and...Read more

matt-van-fleet
Chief Technology Officer
LeadingAgile

Matt Van Vleet is an innovator with 25+ years of experience in the technology space and who brings a unique blend of technical ingenuity and business entrepreneurship to everything he does. After cutting his teeth as a consultant for six years, Matt went on to become the CTO of Solstice...Read more

Peter Varhol
Principal
Technology Strategy Research

Peter Varhol is a software strategist and evangelist who closely observes the testing industry and uses his knowledge and experience to identify new technologies and help companies respond to those trends. His diverse technical background enables him to seamlessly integrate new technologies into his practices and provides him with a...Read more

Alison Wade
President
TechWell Corp.

Alison Wade is the President of TechWell and an accomplished executive dedicated to the business of software. For the past fifteen years, she has worked with industry leaders developing programs for software development and testing professionals. She currently serves as the Program Chair for EPIC Experience, STAREAST, and STARWEST. She plays a...Read more

Kate Wardin
Senior Engineering Manager
Developer First

Kate Wardin is a currently a Senior Engineering Manager at Target Corporation in Minneapolis, MN. She leads a team of amazing engineers who build front end applications for Supply Chain HQ and Field users. Outside of her day job, she enjoys organizing events that enable young women to develop a...Read more