Speakers - Digital Resilience Forum

Digital Resilience Speakers

Meet the experts shaping the conversation at the Digital Resilience Forum. Our speakers include key figures from government, industry, and innovation who possess deep expertise in digital sovereignty, cybersecurity, and creating resilient digital environments. Their contributions are essential for gaining a better understanding of digital challenges and developing the collaborative strategies needed for a secure technological future.

Adriana Groh is the co-initiator of the Sovereign Tech Fund and CEO of the Sovereign Tech Agency, the first government organisation in the EU dedicated to strengthening critical digital infrastructure in the public interest. Financed by the German Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, the Sovereign Tech Agency focuses on ensuring the sustainability and resilience of foundational technologies that underpin our society. Adriana’s expertise lies in aligning innovation and digital transformation with democratic values.

Alberto P. Martí has spent most of his career in Spain and in the UK, both in Tech and in Higher Education. As VP of Open Source Innovation at OpenNebula Systems, he deals with strategic collaborations with cloud and edge providers, other open source initiatives, and CIOs from relevant vendors. He is one of the initial promoters of the SovereignEdge.EU initiative, coordinating involvement in the Horizon Europe programme and in other joint R&D activities based on European open source technologies for the cloud-edge continuum. In March 2024, Alberto was elected Chair of the Industry Facilitation Group of the new €3B IPCEI Cloud.

OpenUK CEO and Executive Producer State of Open Con, Amanda’s 25 years’ legal experience includes being instrumental in shaping open source’s legal frameworks and internet law in 2000’s. Sought-after international keynote speaker, tech press contributor and editor “Open Source: Law, Policy and Practice” (2022).Recognition: Computer Weekly 50 Most Influential Women (2023, 2024) listed as #20 in 2024; Computing IT Leaders 100 (2023,2024,2025); Lifetime Achievement WIPL (2022); Women Who Will (2023); INvolve Heroes (2022, 2023); Novi Awards (2024).Advisory: Boards -UK Open Standards Board; UKRI Digital Research Infrastructure; UKRI Exascale; KDE; Mimoto; Scarf; FerretDB and Space Aye; Fellow, Open Forum Academy; Distinguished Fellow, Rust Foundation; European Representative, OIN; Ambassador, Open Charge Alliance, Board Member Mojaloop Foundation and ITU Expert Network, Digital Innovation Board.

A Senior Project Manager at the Linux Foundation, mainly involved in the TODO Group and the PyTorch Foundation. She manages open source communities across four continents and contributes to program strategy, developer advocacy, OSPO ecosystem enablement, and open source research.
Before joining the Linux Foundation, Ana worked at Bitergia, a software development analytics firm, and completed an MSc in Data Science. Her final thesis focused on measuring the success of Developer Relations in open source development communities.
Ana is passionate about open source, InnerSource, and developer community health metrics. She contributes to several open source projects, including CHAOSS, InnerSource Commons, OpenChain, OpenSSF, PyTorch, and the CNCF ecosystem.

Carlos is the Director of the Centro de Novas Tecnoloxías de Galicia (CNTG) at the Xunta de Galicia, a role he has held since January 2023. He previously worked as a faculty member and educational advisor, and served as Subdirector Xeral de Formación Profesional at the Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Universidade from 2020 to 2022. With extensive experience in educational leadership and technology innovation, Carlos focuses on advancing digital transformation and professional training initiatives in Galicia.

Clare Dillon is community lead for CURIOSS, a community for university and research institution OSPOs. Clare is also a PhD researcher with Lero, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software and a member of Lero’s OSPO team. From 2021-2023, Clare served as the inaugural Executive Director of InnerSource Commons, a global non-profit foundation supporting open collaboration methods in corporate software development. In 2021, Clare co-founded Open Ireland Network, a community for those interested in advancing open source at a national level in Ireland. Clare is a qualified coach and frequently speaks on topics relating to open collaboration and innovation trends.

Darío García de Viedma is a Fellow at the Elcano Royal Institute in the fields of technology and digital policy.

He currently teaches Big Data for Political Communication at Universidad Camilo José Cela and Instituto Atlántico de Gobierno. Prior to this, he served as Associate Director at the Center for the Governance of Change at IE University, conducting research, training and outreach at the intersection of technology and governance, which covered issues such as the governance of emerging technologies, foresight, and tech diplomacy.

During his career in Artificial Intelligence (AI), he contributed to building Citibeats, an ethical-AI software designed to help decision-makers prevent crises using open-source data. At Citibeats, he conceptualized machine learning models to measure complex aspects of public opinion such as social unrest, distrust, and polarization. He has worked as a policy consultant with institutions in more than 90 countries.

García de Viedma earned his degree in Political Science from Sciences Po Paris, followed by a Master of Science in Social Research Methods from the London School of Economics.

Dr. Dawn Foster provides consulting services around open source strategy, contributor strategy, improving project governance, and similar topics. She also works as the Director of Data Science for the CHAOSS project where she is a board member, working group lead, and maintainer. Dawn is an OpenUK board member, and was previously a co-chair of the CNCF Contributor Strategy Technical Advisory Group. She has 20+ years of experience at companies like VMware and Intel with expertise in community, strategy, governance, metrics, and more. She has spoken at over 100 industry events and has a BS in computer science, an MBA, and a PhD. In her spare time she enjoys reading science fiction, running, 3D printing, and traveling.

Drummond has spent over a quarter-century in Internet identity, security, privacy, and trust infrastructure. He is currently the lead organizer for the First Person Project. From 2021 to 2025, he was Director of Trust Services at Gen (formerly Avast) after their acquisition of Evernym, where he was Chief Trust Officer. He is co-author of the book, Self-Sovereign Identity (Manning Publications, 2021), and co-editor of the W3C Decentralized Identifiers (DID) 1.0 specification. He currently serves as Governance Lead for the Ayra Association. He is founding board member of the OpenWallet Foundation and Trust Over IP (ToIP), where he serves as co-chair of the Technology Stack Working Group and the Concepts and Terminology Working Group. In 2002 he received the Digital Identity Pioneer Award from Digital ID World, and in 2013 he was cited as an OASIS Distinguished Contributor.

Elzbieta Godlewska, Global Partnership Development Representative at LPI

Since 2005, Elzbieta has been committed to promoting Open Source. She has spent many years working with certification programs and supporting the careers of IT professionals. Previously, she served as a Senior Manager for the EMEA region at CompTIA. Since 2011, she has been part of the Linux Professional Institute (LPI), the global certification standard and career support organization for open source professionals. In her current role, Elzbieta focuses on expanding LPI’s international partnership network, which includes training providers, academic institutions, and organizations across the open source industry.

Emily Omier is a consultant who helps open source companies position themselves and align product, marketing and sales to maximize their growth in community and in revenue. She is the co-founder of Open Source Founders Summit and hosts The Business of Open Source podcast.

Gar Mac Críosta is an IASA certified architect and spends much of his time trying to figure out what being a sociotechnologist is; so he can be one. He regularly engages in humane human experiments and is very certain that he spends most of his time being uncertain. Gar has worked as a Digital Advisor to the CIO in the HSE since early 2019, Product Lead for the COVID Tracker App in the Health Service Executive (HSE) in Ireland (www.covidtracker.ie) a COVID-19 pandemic response app. Gar has been an active contributor to IASA Global since 2006, developing & delivering education and certification programs. Gar has facilitated the development of change programs with C-level executives, senior managers, technology leaders, and executives in the areas of business model innovation, digital strategy, architecture, and design across various industries. Gar is a Certified Architect Professional (IASA CITAD), a Fellow of the Irish Computer Society, a LEGO Serious Play Practitioner (LSP) and in the process of becoming a Cynefin Practitioner.

Georg Link is an Open Source Strategist. Georg’s mission is to help open source projects, communities, and companies become more professional in their use of metrics and analytics. Georg cofounded the Linux Foundation CHAOSS Project to advance analytics and metrics for open source project health. Georg has 15 years of experience as an active contributor to several open source projects and has presented on open source topics at 20+ conferences. As the Director of Sales at Bitergia, Georg helps organizations and communities obtain professional metrics and analytics to solve their business needs effectively and efficiently. In his spare time, Georg enjoys reading fiction and hot air ballooning.

Gina Plat is the Interim Lead for the Open Source Program Office (OSPO) at the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations (BZK) in the Netherlands, responsible for consolidating the OSPO and promoting open-source practices within government, as well as collaborating with national and European OSPOs. She previously served as Project Manager for the SWIFT cloud migration at the Ministry of Finance and as Advisor on the implementation of national cloud policies, bringing extensive experience in cloud strategy, digital transformation, and government IT initiatives.

Jennifer Tridgell is an Independent Consultant and PhD Candidate at University of Cambridge, where she focuses on the global governance of free and open-source software. She has almost a decade of experience working in international law and human rights, digital policy and diplomacy.

She previously was the Senior Legal Advisor to a UN Special Rapporteur, where she led on the mandate’s strategic impact and the development of landmark UN reports including Freedom of Thought. She has worked for leading international firms, the International Criminal Court and human rights NGOs, and has advised major tech companies on legal and regulatory issues.

Alongside her award-winning doctoral research, she currently works as an Independent Consultant, advising on cutting-edge technology policy and law issues. She serves on OpenUK’s Legal Advisory Board and the International Law Association’s Executive Council. She holds a LLM (Cantab) and BA/LLB (Hons).

John Ellis is President and Head of Product at Codethink, a company specializing in trustable software for safety-critical and high-performance systems. A former Motorola executive and Global Technologist at Ford Motor Company, he is the best-selling author of The Zero Dollar Car. John has also served as an adjunct professor at the University of Notre Dame. Drawing on years of product leadership, consulting, and policy-facing speaking, he advises OEMs, regulators, and insurers on software liability, open source governance, and emerging risk-retention models for insuring software-driven systems.

Juan Corro is currently the Manager of the Autonomous IT Agency of the Madrid City Council. He has held leadership roles such as Director of Technology and Innovation at Madrid’s Municipal Transport Company (EMT), Vice President of the UITP IT Committee, and advisor to the European Commission on multimodality initiatives. He has also been Academic Director at U-TAD, Vice President of the IoT startup SAYME, Chief of Staff to the Secretary of State for Telecommunications, and a board member of RED.ES and Hisdesat. Additionally, he founded AENOR’s Smart Cities committee, is an associate professor at the University of Alcalá, and has served as a councilor in Santander.

Juan Rico is a Telecommunications Engineer and Master in ICT technologies who has been deeply involved in the technical development of R&I initiatives applied to multiple domains (avionics, cities, homes, industry and energy). With a strong Digital mindset, he has led and supported the deployment and adoption of IoT, cloud and data technologies to exploit connected assets. During the last 10 years, he has been combining technology and business development defining and deploying digital transformation strategies for energy, consumer devices and manufacturing companies. These challenges led him to specialise in Disruptive Strategy at Harvard Business School and Innovation management at Georgia Tech. He is currently Senior Manager at Eclipse Foundation exploiting his background as a technologist and manager to push forward open source as the most effective way to democratise technology and make it interoperable.

Melanie Wollnik, based in Frankfurt, HE, DE, is currently a Facilitator OpenRail Team at OpenRail Association. Melanie Wollnik brings experience from previous roles at DB Systel GmbH. Melanie Wollnik holds a 1997 – 2000 Reiseverkehrskauffrau in Tourism and Travel Services Management @ Städtische Berufschule für Spedition und Touristik.

Maria Antonia is an interdisciplinary technologist passionate about leveraging emerging technologies, applied data science and global policy to address pressing global challenges. With a background in applied research, analytics, and strategy consulting – and a growing interest for product management – she drives efforts to expand the reach and impact of Giga’s technology solutions. As part of the ITU-UNICEF initiative to bridge the school connectivity gap, she focuses on developing and scaling tools that enable more effective and sustainable school connectivity projects.

Previously, Maria Antonia advised the United Nations ICT office on new technologies and strategic foresight, shaped GovTech policies to support governments in their digital transformation journeys, and led research projects at the intersection of technology, data and humanitarian action for development agencies.

Omar Mohsine is a member of the United Nations Office of Digital and Emerging Technologies . He additionally leads the open source team within the UN Office of Information and Communication Technologies and serves as the co-chair of the UN Open Source Community of Practice.

With over 15 years of experience working in various capacities across different continents, Omar has spearheaded numerous projects for the UN, focusing on public-private partnerships and innovation management. He has also designed UN open source competitions aimed at achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Omar is deeply committed to building new partnerships with technology stakeholders to support the United Nations’ mandate.

Philippe Ombredanne is an architect of open-source tools with over 20 years of experience in software composition analysis. He is the creator of Package-URL (PURL) and co-founder of SPDX SBOM and ClearlyDefined. Philippe is also the lead maintainer of several key open-source projects, including ScanCode, PurlDB, and VulnerableCode, playing a pivotal role in advancing transparency and standardization in the software supply chain.

Engaged in the critical exploration of the intersections of technology, art, and socio-ecological justice, Paloma works as a community-driven developer and advocate for free and open-source software. She is an organizer with PyLadies Berlin, a board member of the Python Software Verband, and a co-founder of Zentrum für Netzkunst. Currently part of the Sovereign Tech Agency, she contributes to defining critical open digital infrastructure for European sovereignty. In her own practice, she explores ways of building technologies that center autonomy, equity, and care – also beyond the human.

Stefano Zacchiroli is full professor of computer science at Télécom
Paris, Polytechnic Institute of Paris. His current research interests
span digital commons, open source software engineering, computer
security, and the software supply chain. He is co-founder and CSO (Chief
Scientific Officer) of Software Heritage, the largest public archive of
software source code. He is a former 3-times Debian project leader and a
former board director of the Open Source Initiative (OSI). He is
recipient of the 2015 O’Reilly Open Source Award and of the 2022 Google
Award for Inclusion Research.

Tanu Sahnan is Head of Engineering for Account and Identity at the BBC Product Group, where she leads the strategic vision and technical delivery of services that support over 65 million users across web, mobile, and TV. With deep expertise in digital media, e-commerce, and the public sector, Tanu has built and scaled high-performing engineering organizations, modernized legacy systems, and driven personalization at unprecedented scale—boosting weekly engagement to over 23 million users. She has led transformative initiatives including serverless architecture adoption, agile squad formation, and in-house access management capabilities. A passionate advocate for inclusive leadership, Tanu is a mentor across disciplines and an active voice in the Women in STEM network, championing diversity and resilience in tech. Her approach blends technical excellence with human-cantered leadership, fostering cultures of ownership, innovation, and operational stability. Under her guidance, the BBC’s identity and user engagement services have become pillars of its digital-first strategy.

“Digital resilience is more than uptime—it’s about building systems and teams that adapt, evolve, and grow stronger through change. For me, resilience starts with people: empowered, connected, and trusted to lead”

Tom Sadler is a Principal Software Engineer at the BBC, working with a number of teams to enable open source and industry engagement, and InnerSource. He has led multiple teams working on the BBC’s Connected TV applications, with a focus on cross team collaboration. Tom has been a regular speaker on collaborative practices. He is also a Member of the InnerSource Commons Foundation, and currently serves as Assistant Treasurer.

Graduate in Physics (Electronics and Microwaves) from the University of Cantabria and MBA from ICADE, Pontifical University of Comillas, with business studies at ESADE, IESE, and astrophysics studies at the Complutense University of Madrid.
He has been an associate professor at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), specializing in Operations, Processes, and Supply Chain Management.
He has held executive positions in international telecommunications companies, managing service development, operations, and maintenance for fixed, mobile, and IP communications.
He led international projects in Europe and America, based in Zurich and Miami. He has coordinated multinational and multidisciplinary teams in business development, planning, engineering, and operations.
He is currently the Deputy Director of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Support Service at UC3M, promoting innovation through research results generated at UC3M and with C3NIA (Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship in AI) – Legatec Science and Technology Park in the technology sector.

Thank you for being a part of this incredible journey!

We hope you’re as excited as we are about the future of collaboration, innovation, and the power of people in driving meaningful change.

Let’s continue to build connections, learn from each other, and create something extraordinary together.

For more information or if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out.

Digital Resilience Speakers

Adriana Groh

Alberto P. Martí

Amanda Brock

Ana Jiménez Santamaría

Carlos Vázquez

Clare Dillon

Darío García de Viedma

Dawn Foster

Drummond Reed

Elzbieta Godlewska

Emily Omier

Gar T. MacCriosta

Georg Link

Gina Plat

Jennifer Tridgell

John Ellis

Juan Corro

Juan Rico

Melanie Wollnik

Maria Antonia Bravo

Omar Mohsine

Philippe Ombredanne

Paloma Olivares

Stefano Zacchiroli

Tanu Sahnan

Tom Sadler

Virgilio Díaz

Thank you for being a part of this incredible journey!