Amanda Blevins is the Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for the Americas at VMware. Her career in technology has spanned over 25 years. Amanda works with customers and partners to achieve their business goals through collaboration and innovation. As an executive in the Office of the CTO, she works with other leaders across the company to define VMware’s strategic direction. Amanda also leads the Office of the CTO Global Field Programs which provides the opportunity for technical individual contributors in the field to grow their technical knowledge and soft skills while acting as an extension of the Office of the CTO.

Amanda joined VMware in April of 2010 as a Senior Systems Engineer. She has established herself as well-respected leader inside VMware as highlighted by a number of firsts – first woman Principal Systems Engineer, first woman Chief Technologist, and first woman CTO at VMware. Amanda is a passionate advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion which is demonstrated by her professional development talks, leading the VMworld Professional Development and Inspire Change tracks, and mentoring others. She firmly believes in always doing the right thing with authenticity, respect, and by being a good human.

Frank Denneman is a Chief Technologist in the Office of CTO of the Cloud Infrastructure Business Group at VMware. Frank focuses on Machine Learning Infrastructure and compute resource management such as DRS and NUMA. He is the author of multiple books, including “vSphere 6.5 Host Technical Deep Dive” and the “vSphere Clustering Technical Deep Dive” series. He is the host of the podcast: “Unexplored Territory.

Alexander is a Senior Lead Tanzu Emerging Solutions Engineer in VMware's MAMBG. As an expert in Kubernetes and containerized applications, he is helping EMEA-based customers with their transformation from legacy to modern applications. Before becoming a System Engineer, he worked as a Staff Technical Account Manager in VMware's Professional Service Organization. He holds several industry certifications, including the CKA, CKS, and CKAD certifications.

Robert Guske is a tech enthusiast who's passionate and committed to the principles of collaboration and innovation that drive the community forward. Working as a Lead Tanzu Emerging Solutions Engineer, he’s helping clients and organizations adopting new technologies to accomplish business goals and IT objectives which are mainly oriented towards application modernization as well as on the platforms underneath. For further insights, explore his personal blog at https://rguske.github.io.

Bob Plankers works in the Cloud Platforms group at VMware, focusing on all forms of security and compliance from VMware Cloud to on-premises vSphere. Prior to joining VMware, he spent more than two decades leading cross-organizational teams that designed, built, and operated reliable, secure, and compliance-oriented IT infrastructures worldwide, focusing not just on technological solutions, but also the people and process aspects, too.

Colin Rutherford currently serves as a Field CTO at Dell Technologies covering North America. In this role, he leverages his business & technology knowledge to help organizations translate their business strategies into innovative technology strategies that connect data, applications and infrastructure. Colin also provides technical thought leadership across a range of emerging technology domains. With experience spanning APJ and North America, Colin has worked across technology vendor, consultancy, and internal roles (Private and Public Enterprise Level). This has provided him with a unique and well-rounded view of the technology landscape, across a wide range of industry verticals and technologies.

His primary responsibility is to help drive collaborative sales and strategy and promote the adoption of Dell and VMware joint solutions. In this role, he leads a technical community and is responsible for the development and execution of programs focused on how Dell Technologies can deliver differentiated technology solutions and outcomes to organizations in the areas of Cloud, Edge, and AI through the partnership with VMware.

Based in the UK with over 16 years of industry experience with a key focus on technologies such as cloud-native, automation & data management. His role at Kasten is to act as a technical thought leader, community champion and project owner to engage with the community to enable influencers and customers to overcome the challenges of Cloud-Native Data Management and be successful, speaking at events sharing the technical vision and corporate strategy whilst providing ongoing feedback from the field into product management to shape the future success.

Michael is a leading member of multiple technology organizations, including VMware vExpert, Veeam Vanguards, Cisco Champions, and the HashiCorp Ambassadors.

John Nicholson is a Staff Technical Marketing Architect in the Storage and Availability Business Unit. He focuses on delivering technical guidance around VMware vSAN, and VMware Data Services Manager. John previously worked for partners and customers in architecting and implementing enterprise storage and VDI solutions. He co-hosts the award-winning Virtually Speaking Podcast. He is on Twitter @Lost_Signal

Pete Koehler is a Staff Technical Marketing Architect working for VMware in the Cloud Infrastructure Business Group at VMware. With a primary focus on vSAN, much of Pete's experience in infrastructure design and optimization came from hands-on experience as a customer, consultant and later as an Engineer for a VMware reseller and VMware partner. You can find all of Pete's latest content related to vSAN out on https://core.vmware.com/users/pete-koehler. He can be followed on Twitter @vmpete

Daniel Mazzini is a Senior Staff Architect for VMware’s Customer Experience & Success. Daniel is responsible for defining, creating, packaging, and driving the roadmap and execution of the VMware Networking and Security Professional Services portfolio. He supports customer pre-sales opportunities across the globe by providing VMware sales-aligned solutions and consulting services. Daniel joined VMware in 2020 with over 20 years of international work experience in Telco and IT professional services.

Kacy Reed is a Staff Architect for VMware's Customer Experience & Success (CXS) organization. Kacy is responsible for leading the development of VMware professional service security solutions collaborating with global engineering, delivery, sales, and marketing teams. Kacy joined VMware in 2021 and has over 14 years of security and consulting experience in the private and public (SLED and DoD) sectors.

I am an IT Server/Infrastructure Manager at First Commonwealth Bank in PA.  We have over 140 branches and 2 data centers.  My team consists of 7 analysts that manage all applications, servers, storage, vulnerability management, and DR/BC.  I have been using VMware for 10 years, a vExpert for 7 years, and a VMUG leader for 8 years.  Presenting at UserCons is a great experience and something I'd like to continue doing as I enjoy interacting with the community.  I have presented at the Nashville and Denver UserCons and look forward to presenting at others in 2023.  In 2019 I received a pass to VeeamON for a blog I wrote on my use of Veeam.

I lead product marketing for Application development services and Developer Relations for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

Dianna Marks is a product marketing manager at ControlUp for the VDI and DaaS product, Real-Time DX. Before joining ControlUp, she worked at Microsoft as a product marketing manager for Windows Server, Windows Admin Center, and Office 365 security. She also served as a product marketing manager at Dell for entry to midrange-level storage hardware. Dianna loves to write and come up with creative new ways to translate the value of technology for customers.

Tom Fenton has a wealth of hands-on IT experience gained over the past 30 years in technologies involving virtualization and storage. He currently works as a Technical Marketing Engineer for ControlUp. He writes for Virtualization and Cloud Review Magazine and StorageReview.com. He held Staff and Senior positions at VMware, IBM Sequent, and The Taneja Group. He can be contacted at @vDoppler. He lives in the Pacific Northwest. He enjoys skiing, hiking, motorbiking, and extreme gardening.

Over 12 years at VMware from Support, to Education and now Technical Marketing focusing on vSphere.

Joe Houghes is a co-leader of the Denver VMware & PowerShell User Groups and he's a Sr. Solutions Architect with Pure Storage. He focuses on automating us out of our IT operations while freeing us to perform higher-level tasks.

Joe has been the #1 speaker internationally for VMUG in 2021 and 2022 for virtual/in-person events, and works to encourage the next community speaker(s) to take his place, while helping get them started.

Joe believes automation should be a focus for admins & engineers, although it requires in-depth thinking beyond performing a task once. Even though it is not always someone's default method, the result is then repeatable and consistent.

Joe tries to help others understand why we should do the easy tasks better, and he challenges everyone to push themselves outside of their comfort zone and learn more about any topic of interest.

He's a collector of communities as a leader for 2 User Groups, vExpert Pro, Cisco Champion, Veeam Vanguard, Tanzu Vanguard, plus vBrownBag crew. He tells people not to let fear keep them from sharing their knowledge with others and teaching from their unique perspective.

You can spot him by the bright hat, big grin, and the loud "Howdy Y'all."

Colin Rutherford currently serves as a Field CTO at Dell Technologies covering North America. In this role, he leverages his business & technology knowledge to help organizations translate their business strategies into innovative technology strategies that connect data, applications and infrastructure. Colin also provides technical thought leadership across a range of emerging technology domains. With experience spanning APJ and North America, Colin has worked across technology vendor, consultancy, and internal roles (Private and Public Enterprise Level). This has provided him with a unique and well-rounded view of the technology landscape, across a wide range of industry verticals and technologies.

His primary responsibility is to help drive collaborative sales and strategy and promote the adoption of Dell and VMware joint solutions. In this role, he leads a technical community and is responsible for the development and execution of programs focused on how Dell Technologies can deliver differentiated technology solutions and outcomes to organizations in the areas of Cloud, Edge, and AI through the partnership with VMware.

Anthony Dutra is a Technical Marketing Engineer (TME) at Zerto, a Hewlett Packard Company who specializes in containerization, designing microservices in the public cloud, and architecting blockchain applications. For the past decade, Anthony has leveraged his Master’s in IT Management to become a trusted technical partner for many organizations.

Rupesh Shimkhada is a Sr. product manager for vSphere, with 18+ years of experience as cloud architect and storage architect. He joined VMware IT in 2009 as storage and cloud architect and moved to engineering role in late 2015. He is the product manager for vSphere Lifecycle Manager and Cloud Infrastructure. Prior to VMware, he worked at IBM and several startups, his public profile can be found at www.linkedin.com/in/rupesh-shimkhada-5949544 or follow him on Twitter @vmw_rupesh

Shanthala Gorur Ashwath is a Product Line Manager at VMware. She focuses on building vision, strategy and product from ideation to delivery for configuration management for all VMware software, including vSphere, vSphere+, SDDC, VCF and VMC.

David Iparraguirre is a senior product marketing manager for vSAN with the Cloud Infrastructure Business Group at VMware. He's been with VMware since 2019. Previously, he helped start the sales development team at Collibra, a data governance software platform.

Simon Todd is a respected Technical Solution Specialist at Intel with a career in the technology industry spanning nearly 30 years. With a keen eye for innovation and an unparalleled passion for technology, Simon has worked with industry-leading companies such as Dell and VMware, where he honed his expertise in developing and implementing cutting-edge technical solutions.

Beyond his professional achievements, Simon is an accomplished blogger, sharing his extensive knowledge and insights on mrvsan.com and itsabout.ai. These platforms allow Simon to connect with a broader audience, discussing topics such as virtualization, storage, and artificial intelligence, which reflect his dedication to staying at the forefront of technological advancements.

Simon's talents extend beyond the realm of technology, as he has also cultivated a fascinating hobby in astrophotography.

Combining his love for the cosmos with his technical prowess, Simon captures breath-taking images of celestial wonders, sharing the beauty of the universe with his followers. As a speaker, Simon Todd brings a unique blend of industry experience, technical expertise, and passion for technology.

Illyse is a Data Center Cloud Solutions Architect with 20+ years of hands-on IT design, including consulting experience with enterprise datacenters of all sizes across multiple industries. Leveraging in-depth technical knowledge with well-honed strategic analytical skills, Illyse specializes in identifying and remediating environments in need of agile transformation. With expertise in software-defined data center solutions across compute, storage, networking, and enterprise applications, Illyse has led orchestration/automation projects across dedicated, virtualized and public cloud infrastructures. As a member of the “VMware Champs”, an informal Intel group, Illyse is frequently called upon to speak in front of customers, partners and our joint sales staff. Illyse’s industry certifications include but are not limited to: VPC-DV; AWS Certified Solution Architect Associate; and Azure Fundamentals.

Ken LeTourneau has been with Intel for 25 years and is a Cloud Solutions Architect in the Intel Optane Group. He’s been working with vSAN since 2014 when he worked with VMware on bringing NVMe SSD-based vSAN solutions to market. Previously, Ken served as an Engineering Manager and Build Tools Engineer in Intel’s Graphics Software Development and Validation group. He got his start as an Application Developer and Application Support Specialist in Intel’s Information Technology group.

Jon Holloway is a Senior Product Line Manager in End-User Computing (EUC) at VMware, where he has worked on VMware Horizon in various roles since its inception. Jon's current focus is on strategy and features for desktop provisioning, RDSH published apps, Horizon for Healthcare, and integration with the VMware SDDC solution.

Kristina De Nike is a Director for Product Management for VMware EUC. In addition to her current responsibilities for Horizon Clients, she has worked on VMware Horizon FLEX and VMware Workspace ONE integration. She brings her love of consumer products, data-driven decision making and clear UI to the end-user side of VMware EUC.

Cato Grace has been an enthusiastic user of VMware technology since 2006 as both a VMware customer and partner. He has worked for VMware in Technical Marketing since 2013, focused on Availability solutions, specifically Site Recovery Manager, vSphere Replication, VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery, and VMware Site Recovery for VMware Cloud on AWS. Follow him on Twitter @vCatoGrace

Mike is a Sr Technical Marketing Architect at VMware. As part of his work within the Technical Marketing team, he is currently covering cloud infrastructure and disaster recovery solutions. Before coming to VMware, Mike worked in Technical Marketing and Solutions in the Office of the CTO at Datrium as well as similar roles within the storage industry at other companies such as Nimble Storage, Data Domain, EMC, and Veritas. Mike’s focus has been working in the early-stage efforts of companies introducing new innovative technologies. These technologies have covered a broad range of IT infrastructure areas such as virtualization, data protection and disaster recovery, hybrid storage and, now multi cloud architectures.

Amit Sinha is Sr. Director of Product Management at VMware leading product management for VMware's cloud services and data protection product lines.

Yoomi Hong is Director of Product Marketing at VMware. She leads the product marketing team for VMware's cloud data protection and storage products. She has been with VMware for 9 years, and has led product marketing across multiple products. She also spent the early part of her career in private equity and investment banking at Lehman Brothers and Barclays Capital. She holds a bachelor's degree in Computational and Applied Mathematics from Rice University and an MBA from MIT Sloan.