Leadership

Arnaud was a staff member of the W3C and the X Consortium and has represented IBM in several standards and open source organizations for many years. Arnaud has been involved in every aspect of the Open Technologies development process. This includes the technical, strategic, political, and legal aspects. Arnaud was editor of several key Web specifications including HTML and DOM and was involved in high profile open source projects such as Xerces, the Apache XML parser, and the X Window System. Arnaud made his first steps in Open Source in 1990 with the release of the XPM library which is still in use today! Arnaud is currently the main representative for IBM at W3C, the chair of the W3C RDF Data Shapes Working Group, and a member of the Hyperledger Project Technical Steering Committee (TSC).

He has led development of many IBM commercial products and open source projects, including WebSphere components, Analytics, Open Blockchain, Fabric, Gamification, and Visual Programming.

He has been involved in the architecture, design, and engineering of distributed systems for most of his 36+ year career in IT and has been actively engaged in open standards and open source development since 1999. He has overall technical responsibility for all of IBM’s strategic open technology initiatives, including OpenStack, Cloud Foundry, Hyperledger Project, Open Container Initiative, Cloud Native Computing Foundation, Mesos, Node.js and Docker and more.

Dan joined Intel in 2000 to work on emerging web and distributed systems technologies. His early accomplishments include optimizations of matching engines for major stock exchanges and multi-tier system designs at a variety of financial institutions. Working with industry consortia in 2007, Dan led Intel’s contributions on a privacy preserving network leveraging proof of work and anonymous credentials. Since 2009, Dan has incubated new business ventures in Intel’s New Technology Group. Dan is excited to contribute the Sawtooth Lake Distributed Ledger project into Hyperledger and collaborate with the community to create something globally beneficial.

He specializes in system architecture, operating systems, distributed/parallel/decentralized computing, cryptography, high performance and fault-tolerance. His has founded and/or contributed to many open source projects such as the Linux Kernel, KVM, AlacrityVM, Hyperledger Chaintool, and LSEG MemoryConnect in addition to leading countless proprietary projects, many of which are still in the field today. He holds an MSEE and BSECE from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and lives in Holden Massachusetts with his wife and 4 young children.

He joined Fujitsu Laboratories of America in 2015. His current research interests are spread throughout general cryptography, with a current focus on cryptocurrency and applicable cryptographic techniques, lattice-based cryptography, and cryptographic primitives.

Intel is working to improve the security, scalability, and privacy of DLT deployments through the use of Intel hardware features such as Software Guard Extensions (SGX). Intel was the initial contributor of the Hyperledger Sawtooth blockchain software.

Mic has spent over 20 years working on large-scale databases and distributed systems. He is currently working on methods for improving the security, scalability, and privacy of distributed ledgers. He received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Arizona.

He holds a degree in Computer Science from Utah State University and a Master of Business Administration from Brigham Young University.  Nathan is the chair of Hyperledger Indy’s Agent working group, championing the company’s engagement in the open source community through Hyperledger Indy and is a contributor to distributed identity and blockchain standards at the Decentralized Identity Foundation and the W3C.  His development experience spans diverse systems including robotics, GIS, file systems, big data analytics, and attribute-based security systems.

Aaron has extensive experience in healthcare and finance, startups, and global enterprises. As a founder of a healthcare analytics startup, Aaron architected and built an innovative peer-to-peer platform that enabled leasing of analytics by authors, data by owners, and executing analytics, all while preserving each party’s intellectual property.

Prior to that, as a Managing Director at Bank of America, Aaron architected, built, and ran the Rates Derivatives and Credit Derivatives global trading platforms, including back office and middle office functionality. He also architected a new enterprise Capital Management platform.

Earlier, Aaron architected the Cash Pro platform at ABN Amro. This included the Cash Pro Mobile and Cash Pro Web products, where he introduced leading-edge capabilities.

Previously Aaron was the founder of an equipment leasing technology provider, and one of the first hosting businesses to provide dynamic web pages. His first role was at Andersen, where he led the architecture for the International Tax Forecasting product, targeted at the world’s top 50 companies.

Aaron has an MBA, MSCS, and Bachelors (Econ) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Blythe was previously a senior executive at J.P. Morgan, which she left in 2014 after a career spanning 27 years, following the successful sale of the bank’s physical commodities business which she built. Named J.P. Morgan’s head of Global Commodities in 2007, Blythe was responsible for building an integrated physical and financial commodity business, including market-making, structuring, risk management, financing and warehousing capabilities across the full spectrum of commodity asset classes. From 2012, in addition to Global Commodities, she was responsible for the Corporate & Investment Bank’s Regulatory Affairs overseeing strategies to address the range of complex regulatory changes. She was a member of the J.P. Morgan Corporate & Investment Bank Operating Committee and previously the firm’s Executive Committee. From 2004 to 2007, she was Chief Financial Officer of the Investment Bank. Prior to that role, she was J.P. Morgan’s head of Global Credit Portfolio and Credit Policy and Strategy. Earlier positions at J.P. Morgan include head of North American Structured Credit Products, co-head of Asset Backed Securitization and head of Global Credit Derivatives Marketing. From 2012 to 2014, Blythe was chair of the Global Financial Markets Association (GFMA). From 2008-2010 she was chair of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA). Blythe is the chair of the board of Santander Consumer USA Holdings Inc. She is also a member of the board of directors of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation and the Global Fund for Women.

He has experience leading global teams, using the latest technologies to create new products, solutions and systems. Prior to New Digital Business, he worked on BBVA’s Open Platform, Banks as a Service, Financial Digital Platforms, and Added Valued Mobile Services initiatives. Prior to BBVA, he worked as a consultant in mobile technologies for financial institutions and retail and developed multiplayer mobile games. Carlos is co-author of the book “Blockchain Industrial Evolution,” mentor of AI at Universidad Internacional La Rioja, has lectured at the International Desing Scholl.

He has been involved in the architecture, design, and engineering of distributed systems for most of his 36+ year career in IT and has been actively engaged in open standards and open source development since 1999. He has overall technical responsibility for all of IBM’s strategic open technology initiatives, including OpenStack, Cloud Foundry, Hyperledger Project, Open Container Initiative, Cloud Native Computing Foundation, Mesos, Node.js and Docker and more.

Daichi Iwata is leading a Blockchain project of NEC corporations through collaborations with many institutions and NEC Research Lab Europe, which has been leading academic Blockchain security research. He explores broader business models and public services of Blockchain beyond FinTech space.

Dan joined Intel in 2000 to work on emerging web and distributed systems technologies. His early accomplishments include optimizations of matching engines for major stock exchanges and multi-tier system designs at a variety of financial institutions. Working with industry consortia in 2007, Dan led Intel’s contributions on a privacy preserving network leveraging proof of work and anonymous credentials. Since 2009, Dan has incubated new business ventures in Intel’s New Technology Group. Dan is excited to contribute the Sawtooth Lake Distributed Ledger project into Hyperledger and collaborate with the community to create something globally beneficial.

He has over 18 years of experience in Financial Services split between consulting and industry roles. The early part of his career was primarily focused on retail banking, and cards and in the past decade he has focused on capital markets. Dave has experience and expertise in running strategy functions, innovation, strategic cost management, large-scale restructuring, customer relationship management, M&A, outsourcing & offshoring and process excellence.

Gert is co-founder and VP of Global Network Strategy of Tradeshift, a cloud based company with the goal of connecting all companies in the world. He holds a MS in Computer Science and Music, specializing in real-time distributed collaboration systems. Has spent the past 1.5 years growing product- and engineering teams in Tradeshift’s Chinese joint ventures and enabling cross-regional cloud infrastructure. For the past 15 years he has been designing open, high volume business systems and networks with Tradeshift, Accenture and Avanade. He was responsible for the technical design and implementation of the Danish (Nemhandel) and European (PEPPOL) peer-to-peer-based invoicing infrastructures.

He has 30 years of experience in software product strategy and cloud services. His recent activities were providing Fujitsu’s public cloud platform in 6 regions worldwide, led some startup companies acquisition and partner alliances. He is also leading some digital transformation projects at Fujitsu customers as well as Fujitsu internally by leveraging API management. Blockchain initiative is a part of his API ecosystem development.

Jerry is leading the creation of an emerging business unit to define IBM’s Blockchain strategy, offerings, and customer engagement approach. In 2016 IBM Blockchain is open for business, with the creation and open source contributions to the new Linux Hyperloedger Project, the introduction of IBM Blockchain Cloud Services, and the new Blockchain Garages to be opened in NYC, London, Japan, and Singapore. Jerry is known as one of the fathers of the IBM Websphere software brand, where he served as Chief Technology Officer for 15 years. During this time, Jerry led efforts to establish key middleware initiatives including IBM’s API Management, Mobile and Cloud Services offerings in Bluemix. Jerry also led acquisitions to accelerate delivery in emerging middleware areas including StrongLoop, Worklight, and DataPower. Jerry continues to be a visible spokesperson for IBM in the emerging technology areas including Blockchain, API Economy, Digital Transformation, Cloud Services, and the lean start-up approach to continually address new business opportunities.

Jon Geater is responsible for product security and technology strategy, designing technical and cryptographic solutions to meet the ever-changing demands of cyber security threats. In a career dedicated to high-tech and cryptographic security, Jon has held senior global roles in leading companies such as nCipher (Director of Technical Strategy), ARM (Director of Technology and Division CTO, Secure Services Division) and Trustonic (founding Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President Engineering). Through these roles, he has designed, built and overseen leading edge solutions for a wide variety of industries such as mobile, IoT, payments and smart cities and at every level of the technology stack from the fabric of the smallest microchips to the largest cloud systems. A keen supporter of open standards, Jon has been a board director and chair of the Security Task Force at GlobalPlatform, served on the Operational Efficiency Committee at Trusted Computing Group, and was a founder author of the Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP) at OASIS.

Jonas holds a Diploma in Computer Science and Japanese Studies from University of Bonn. Within Daimler he previously was in lead architecture roles for Finance Systems and various leadership positions. He has a keen interest in new technologies and the Open Source movement.

His team is responsible for all technology legal support needs of the company, including with respect to software, cybersecurity, open source, innovation, outsourcing, procurement and telecommunications matters. His team is also responsible for supporting the company’s websites, mobile apps and social media presences. Kevin sits on the Chief Information Officer’s leadership team, and is also a member of the Digital Leadership Committee of the General Counsel’s Organization. In his role, Kevin supports a variety of strategic initiatives across the company.

Kevin joined American Express in February 2007 as Counsel in the Technology Law Group. He was named to his current position of Chief Technology Counsel in December 2010.

Prior to joining American Express, Kevin practiced law in the Intellectual Property Transactions Group at Kirkland & Ellis in New York. Before that he practiced in the Technology Transactions Group at Cooley Godward in Silicon Valley, where he helped to launch the original Creative Commons licenses. He earned his BA at Yale University and his JD at Columbia University.

Paul Maley is the Chief of Staff for Deutsche Bank’s Institutional Client Group and also the Head of Change for the firm’s Corporate & Investment Bank. Paul is responsible for the operational management of the institutional client business at DB but also anticipating, analysing and implementing the market structure and regulatory changes that impact the capital markets and corporate banking franchise at the firm. Previously Paul was the Global Head of the Business Solutions Group (BSG) and led the Listed Derivatives business for the Americas within Deutsche Bank’s Prime Finance business. Paul has more than two decades of capital markets experience shared between the US and Europe. He holds a degree in Electrical & Mechanical Engineering from Brunel University, London.

Ram Jagadeesan is a Distinguished Engineer and CTO of Blockchain in Cisco’s Chief Strategy office. He has developed Internet scale distributed systems for VolP, video, mobile and wireless networking and IoT. Jagadeesan incubates disruptive technologies to shape CIsco’s strategy. A highly-regarded contributor to open standards and open source implementation, Jagadeesan was a founder and board member of Open Interconnect Consortium where he drove IoT interoperability. He has been a chair of the Hyperledger Architecture Working group since its inception, where he is a proponent of modern architecture for blockchain. Jagadeesan has been granted over 50 patents. He holds a Masters of Science in Electrical Engineering from University of California, Santa Barbara and a Bachelors of Science in Electronics and Communications Engineering from College of Engineering Guindy, Anna University in India.

Palatnick previously served as a Domain Lead in the Application Development division of IT and was Chief Administrative Officer of Information Technology from 2003 to 2007. Palatnick joined Government Securities Clearing Corporation (GSCC), a DTCC subsidiary, in 1993 as Vice President, Information Technology. He became Managing Director and Chief Information Officer of DTCC subsidiaries GSCC (1996), Mortgage-Backed Securities Clearing Corporation (2000) and Fixed Income Clearing Corporation (2003). Prior to that, Palatnick was Vice President, Development and Systems, at Security Pacific Corporation Sequor Software Services. Palatnick received his BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Buffalo, and is an alumnus of the David Rockefeller fellowship.

Thierry globally leads virtual and verification & validation activities in Airbus research portfolio i.e. all processes, methods & tools; modelling & simulation of aircrafts, manufacturing or operations, digital continuity; ground & flight test means; flight test demonstrators.

Before getting deeply engaged with Blockchain, Torsten drove as Chief Product Strategist the overall product & innovation strategy. In the early part of his career he had various positons in software development including Area Product Owner, Development Project Manager, Software Architect, and Application Developer.

He has a career as systems engineer, business consultant for financial industry as well as a banker. Before joining Hitachi, Toshiya was responsible for Internet Banking and CRM at Citibank N.A.(Japan) and has been involved in a wide range of business and technologies related to marketing, channel strategies, biometrics, and artificial intelligence. Toshiya is a frequent speaker at industrial events and academia. He co-authored “E-Commerce Banking Strategies” (2000), Toyo Keizai, Inc. Toshiya holds a BA in economics from Waseda University and MBA in marketing and international business from New York University.

He is responsible for financial oversight and business management across Technology, Operations, KYC and Controls. He also manages the Blockchain initiative for the Corporate and Investment Bank. Prior to this position, Umar was the Head of Small Business Segment for Chase Consumer Bank. His key responsibilities included P&L management, service delivery, marketing and AML/KYC controls. Previously he held the positions of National Sales Manager and CFO for Chase Business Banking. Umar joined JP Morgan Chase in 2009. Prior to joining JP Morgan Chase, he was the Chief Sales Officer for CIT where he led revenue growth across middle market and specialty lending businesses. He started his career at McKinsey & Company. Umar got his B.S. in Computer Science, B.S. in Economics and M.Engg. in Computer Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Umar received his JD from Yale Law School. He is a member of the New York Bar.

Xuyang zhang joined Baidu in June 2016 as Vice President, in charge of wealth management and asset management under the Baidu Finance services Group. Before joining Baidu, Mr.Zhang served as the general manager of China Everbright Bank’s Asset Management Department. During his 19 years in China Everbright Bank, he held numerous key roles in investing banking, wealth management, retail banking and oversaw the launch of Chinese commercial banking’s first RMB wealth management products.