Allison Pollard
@allison_pollardAllison Pollard is an Agile Coach with Improving in Dallas who helps people discover and develop their agile instincts. She enjoys mentoring others to become great Scrum Masters, coaching managers to grow teams that deliver amazing results, and fostering communities that provide sustainability for agile transformations. Allison is also a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach, an organizer of the Dallas-Fort Worth Scrum user group, a foodie, and a trebuchet builder.
Franklin Mosley
Franklin has 15 years experience as an information security professional, and prior to that, was a software engineer, which makes him perfectly suited for his passionate focus on Application Security. At Ellucian, a leader in higher education technology, his mission is to help effectively and efficiently develop, deliver and support the most secure platform possible. He received his MS and BS in Computer Science, is an active participant in various security groups, still likes to write code, and enjoys participating in capture the flag challenges. Aside from technology and security, Franklin is a tennis player, enjoys traveling and photography.
Jeffrey Snover
@jsnoverJeffrey Snover is a Technical Fellow at Microsoft and the Chief Architect for the Enterprise Cloud Group which includes Azure Stack, Windows Server, System Center and Operations Management Suite. Snover is the inventor of Windows PowerShell, an object-based distributed automation engine, scripting language, and command line shell. Snover joined Microsoft in 1999 as divisional architect for the Management and Services Division, providing technical direction across Microsoft’s management technologies and products. Snover has over 30 years of industry experience with a focus on management technologies and solutions. He was an architect in the office of the CTO at Tivoli and a development manager at NetView. He has worked also as a consulting engineer and development manager at DEC, where he led various network and systems management projects. Snover is a frequent speaker at industry and research conferences on a variety of cloud, management and language topics.
Kevin Witherstine
@CumulusKevinKevin Witherstine is a Systems Engineer at Cumulus Networks with over 20 years of networking industry experience and a recent focus on SDN and virtual networking. Previous to Cumulus, Kevin has had stints with industry giants such as VMware, Cisco, and Juniper.
Marissa Levy Lerer
@marissalevyMarissa Levy Lerer is a technologist, musician, cake decorator and mom. She grew up in Bethesda, Maryland and then moved to New York City where she received a BS in Music Education and an MA in Graphic Communications, Management and Technology. During her time at NYU she began writing music and has since released three albums.
Marissa started her career in technology as a graphic designer for MTV before transitioning into management. Eventually she began coding as a senior developer at The Chopping Block and then at BBDO. She is currently managing a team of developers, as Vice President of Technology at COMPOSE[D], a digital creative and development agency in New York.
Marissa prides herself on being a “cool nerd” who likes to get her hands in everything. When she decided she wanted to learn to decorate cakes, instead of taking classes she let the internet be her guide. She made one cake a week for an entire year chronicling the experience on 52cakes.com. She is also an accomplished singer/songwriter who has released three albums and shared the stage with talented musicians such as Matt Nathanson, Lisa Loeb and Gavin DeGraw. She has also participated in the 2012 StartupBus and was on the winning team of the 2012 International Space Apps Challenge. She is passionate about mentorship, especially for women in tech. In addition to teaching programing at the School of Visual Arts she is also a regular panelist at Pace Path Live and recently mentored Girl Scouts at a SXSW event sponsored by Twitter and Dove.
Michael Coté
@coteMichael Coté works at Pivotal in technical marketing. He’s been an industry analyst at 451 Research and RedMonk, worked in corporate strategy and M&A at Dell in software and cloud, and was a programmer for a decade before all that. He blogs and podcasts at Cote.io and is @cote in Twitter.
Michael Hedgpeth
@michaelhedgpethMichael Hedgpeth has been automating all the things for over a decade at NCR by implementing devops and testing automation for their hospitality and is currently working with the development organization to implement Chef as NCR Hospitality’s configuration management platform. Over the years, Michael has developed a passion for test-driven development, Kanban, good design, organizational effectiveness, Texas BBQ and mountain biking.
Nathen Harvey
@nathenharveyNathen Harvey, VP of Community Development at Chef, helps the community whip up an awesome ecosystem built around the Chef platform. Nathen also spends much of his time helping people learn about the practices, processes, and technologies that support DevOps, continuous delivery, and high velocity organizations. Prior to joining Chef, Nathen spent a number of years managing operations and infrastructure for a diverse range of web applications. Nathen is a co-host of the Food Fight Show, a podcast about Chef and DevOps.
Shazad Brohi
Shazad Brohi is a dedicated, highly driven, and team-oriented software engineer with extensive experience working with 3-tier enterprise and web applications. Shazad is also a self-starter that can pick up and learn new technologies at a fast pace. Shazad possesses a strong understanding of the software development life-cycle and the technical acumen to execute it.
Zach Cannon
Zachary Cannon is a Technology Consultant with Improving out of the Dallas headquarters. His passion lies in helping others define and achieve their goals, both personally and professionally. An avid supporter of Agile and Lean programming principles, Zach believes that empowering team members and giving them the freedom to creatively solve their problems will lead to rapid delivery of a quality product. He embodies the motto “Lead From Any Chair” and encourages others to do the same. In his time out of the office, Zach is a health and fitness nut, a coffee enthusiast, and a fan of good conversation.
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