Keynotes

Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen Chief Executive Officer

Choice Happens: How Customer Focus Drives Innovation at SUSE

Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen (“DP”) is Chief Executive Officer of SUSE and a member of the Management Board of SUSE S.A. Prior to joining SUSE, DP worked at Red Hat for 18 years holding a number of senior executive positions. From 2010 to 2021, he was Red Hat’s General Manager in Asia Pacific and Japan and from 2021 to 2022 their General Manager in North America. Before joining Red Hat, he held senior roles at Planetweb, BSDI and the Santa Cruz Operation. DP is on the board of the Institute of Systems Science at the National University of Singapore and since 2017 has been a mentor for women in business with Protégé Business Mentoring. In addition to his technical education, DP holds qualifications from the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) and Harvard Business School. DP lives in Switzerland with his family. He continues to program using open source code as a hobby.

Nicole Malachowski USAF Pilot (Ret.), motivational speaker

Breaking Barriers

Nicole made history as the first female pilot to fly with the USAF Thunderbirds, breaking barriers in military aviation. Over her illustrious career, Nicole logged more than 2,300 flight hours and served in multiple combat missions. Now, as a motivational speaker, she shares her experiences in leadership, resilience, pushing boundaries and thriving in high-pressure situations.

Thomas Di Giacomo Chief Technology and Product Officer

Get value from SUSE every step of the way

Thomas leads SUSE’s global Office of the CTO as well as Product and Solution Management. He is also responsible for driving and guiding SUSE's current and future technology and solutions. Thomas holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Geneva, and lives in Switzerland.

Rick Spencer General Manager, Business Critical Linux

Enterprise Linux at 25

Rick Spencer started programming when he was around 12 years old, and continues to program in his spare time. Since entering the tech industry, he served in many roles, including User Experience, Program Management, Engineering Management, and Product Management. He started his tech career at Microsoft, first leading usability efforts for their dev tools, and then eventually transitioning in Program Management Leadership for SDKs in the Windows Group. His passions for open source led him to Canonical where he ran the Ubuntu project for years and served on the Canonical executive team. He was an executive at Bitnami where they packaged open source software for running on public clouds and Kubernetes. After that he was the VP of Engineering at InfluxData for four years delivering the flagship SaaS version of InfluxDB. Rick Spencer is the General Manager at SUSE Business Critical Linux since January 24.

Peter Smails General Manager, Enterprise Container Management

Climb Aboard -- Successfully Navigating Your Cloud Native Journey

As the General Manager of SUSE's enterprise container management business, Peter Smails oversees engineering, product development, and go-to-market strategy, ensuring cross-functional alignment to support SUSE's growth objectives. A respected strategist and hands-on executive, Peter previously served as CMO for SUSE.

Keith Basil General Manager, Edge

Crossing the Edge Chasm

Keith Basil is Vice President and General Manager of our Edge Business Unit. Basil is a seasoned and performance driven, product management, development, and strategy executive with over 20 years of experience creating long-term corporate value and growth. At SUSE he serves as a product champion, innovation and growth catalyst, and strategic leader driving cross-functional alignment, efficiency, and results. Within the Edge BU his is committed to broadening the reach, impact, and innovation of cloud-native infrastructure in open source and across multiple edge market segments. Basil holds a Bachelor of Science in Interdisciplinary Studies with concentrations in Mathematics, Computer Engineering, and Computer Science and has been granted patents in the areas of unified communications systems design and edge computing.

Abhinav Puri General Manager, Portfolio Solutions & Services

AI You Can Trust: A journey to enterprise-scale innovation

Abhinav leads product management, engineering, product marketing and data analytics teams for cross-portfolio solutions at SUSE. He is focused on bringing the power of SUSE’s portfolio of products into integrated solutions that solve specific customer problems and use-cases. Abhinav is responsible for driving SUSE’s AI solutions strategy. He is a seasoned tech leader and innovator, passionate about driving data-driven transformation with expertise in AI, Cloud computing and Data analytics. Abhinav holds an MBA from SPJIMR, India and an MSc. in International Information Systems from FAU, Germany. He lives in Germany.

Jeff Price Field CTO North America

Demopalooza!

Jeff is a Technologist, Strategist, Futurist, and Communicator. He’s spent over 3 decades in IT at firms including 3M, IBM, Novell, Attachmate, NetIQ, Micro Focus and SUSE - including roles as Chief Architect, Enterprise Innovation Officer, Global Head of Domain Solution Architects and Field CTO. His constant goal - helping others learn, evolve and optimize their application of technology systems and solutions, improving their experience and the experiences of their customers.

Technology is changing at an ever-accelerating rate, with Open Source innovations paving the way of business transformation. Artificial Intelligence in production, Kubernetes, Zero-Trust security, transactional Linux, Dev/Sec-Ops and automating Edge deployments are all critical topics in the industry today. Jeff is a thought leader, an engaging speaker, and story teller who takes these complicated technologies, and leverages his consultative experience, understanding of verticals, markets and trends and makes them easier to understand, prioritize and apply.

Erin Quill Principal Technical Marketing Manager, SUSE

Demopalooza!

Erin Quill is a skilled Technology Evangelist known for his talent in simplifying intricate technical concepts into relatable ideas. With a flair for creative content creation and a captivating speaking style, his engaging presentations, blending storytelling and technical expertise, leave a lasting impact and have garnered attention at conferences. With a background in showcasing key technologies and products, Erin's passion for clear communication and technology continues to shape and inspire audiences worldwide.

Rick Villars Group Vice President

The AI Pivot: The Keys to Supporting Your Next Workload

Rick Villars is the Group Vice President of Worldwide Research at IDC. Rick brings over 35 years of experience to his current role where he serves as the chief analyst guiding research on the future of the IT industry. He’s been instrumental in help companies understand the impact of cloud computing and the shift to digital business models across infrastructure, platforms, software, and services."