LEADERSHIP & STAFF

Meet our leaders 

Our leadership team is deeply committed to shaping the strategic direction, projects, and community standards of our organization. They uphold the highest principles of open source and open development, ensuring a transparent, collaborative, and sustainable future for all involved.

Kei Fukuta

Kei Fukuta

Director of Blockchain Planning Department - Hitachi

Kei Fukuta

Kei Fukuta

Director of Blockchain Planning Department - Hitachi

Kei Fukuta is the Director of Blockchain Planning Department at Hitachi.. Kei Fukuta has 30 years of experience in solution planning and development for various kinds of business sector including financial institutions. He has experiences working globally, working in the US for 4 years and working in China for 3 years to develop new IT solutions in those countries.

Michael Klein

Michael Klein

Governing Board Chair - Managing Director - Accenture

Michael Klein

Michael Klein

Governing Board Chair - Managing Director - Accenture

Mike Klein is a Managing Director and Master Technology Architect at Accenture, leading technology architecture and delivery for the Innovation Incubation practice which includes web3/blockchain, decentralized identity, extended reality, quantum computing, and space technologies. With 20+ years leading delivery projects on various technology stacks, Mike is leading the next generation of technology engineers and architects.

Mike has been involved in blockchain and Hyperledger since 2017 and is a leading advocate for building diverse open-source communities. He is the primary sponsor for Hyperledger Cacti and Hyperledger Bevel development, and he was also was part of the founding teams for the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, Interwork Alliance, Decentralized Identity Foundation, and Trust Over IP.

 Tracy Kuhrt

Tracy Kuhrt

TAC Chair - Associate Director, Blockchain and Multiparty Systems Architecture - Accenture

 Tracy Kuhrt

Tracy Kuhrt

TAC Chair - Associate Director, Blockchain and Multiparty Systems Architecture - Accenture

Tracy Kuhrt is a Senior Technology Architect within Accenture’s Blockchain and Multiparty Systems group with 20+ years of experience covering the entire software development lifecycle. Tracy has been involved in the blockchain space since 2015, with a focus on Hyperledger and now LF Decentralized Trust technologies. At Accenture, besides architecting and delivering solutions for clients, Tracy is educating the next group of Blockchain and Multiparty Systems Technology Architects, is a frequent speaker on the topic, and is an advocate for inclusion and diversity in the technology. Tracy drove Accenture’s efforts to open source its Blockchain Automation Framework and Blockchain Integration Framework, which is now Hyperledger Cactus. Prior to joining Accenture, Tracy was a Hyperledger Community Architect.

Sophia Lopez

Sophia Lopez

General Member Representative - Founder and President - Kaleido

Sophia Lopez

Sophia Lopez

General Member Representative - Founder and President - Kaleido

Sophia Lopez is Founder and President of Kaleido, an award-winning Web3, blockchain, and digital assets platform that provides scalable and secure infrastructure to enterprises globally. Its clients include the world’s largest banks, top healthcare and insurance networks, gaming companies, 80% of the world’s supply chain leaders, top retail companies, organizations such as SWIFT, World Bank, and IMF, along with 100s of global enterprise networks. Sophia helped launch the IBM Blockchain Platform, the industry’s first blockchain managed service. She held executive P&L responsibility for the blockchain product portfolio. Previously, Sophia held multi-billion dollar P&L executive roles at IBM for enterprise software and hardware lines of business. Sophia currently serves on the Hyperledger Foundation Governing Board and is a senior advisor for Web3 to McKinsey & Company. Sophia serves as an advisor to startups, helping facilitate Web3 masterclasses and blockchain sessions at Davos, Milken Institute, SIBOS, HIMSS and other industry leading events, and providing mentorship in Web3 programs such as the ConsenSys Tachyon accelerator. Sophia has an engineering degree from Harvard University and MBA from UNC Chapel Hill.

Shyam Nagarajan

Shyam Nagarajan

Chief Operating Officer - Hedera

Shyam Nagarajan

Shyam Nagarajan

Chief Operating Officer - Hedera

Shyam is a distinguished leader in emerging technology, with over 20 years of experience in scaling AI, blockchain, and digital transformation. He has held key leadership roles at IBM, where he led responsible AI and blockchain initiatives, driving triple-digit growth and helping position IBM as a leader in enterprise blockchain services. 

He also played a pivotal role in developing IBM's COVID pass solutions, which were adopted by NYC and reached over 12 million users, and led the growth of IBM’s Blockchain and Digital Assets business. Shyam previously served as a member of Hedera’s Board of Directors and Hedera’s Technology Committee. 

Shyam has received a certificate in building AI products from MIT, executive diplomas from Harvard and Columbia, and a BA in computer engineering from Madurai Kamaraj University.

Johnna Powell

Johnna Powell

Managing Director, Technology Research and Innovation - DTCC

Johnna Powell

Johnna Powell

Managing Director, Technology Research and Innovation - DTCC

Dr. Johnna Powell is a Managing Director at DTCC, Global Head of Technology, Research and Innovation.

Previously, she was the Global Co-Head of ConsenSys NFT. She was at ConsenSys for 5 years, based in New York, and has served multiple Fortune 100 clients on product design, development and launch. Some of her work includes launching a carbon credit trading platform with a global alliance of 4 banks, and designing a securities issuance and lifecycle management platform with 10 of the largest global banks.

Under her leadership, the ConsenSys NFT team spearheaded a number of high-profile endeavors in NFT collections across industries including art, entertainment and music. This includes one of the highest-value, globally-recognized NFT projects (along with Palm and Heni): Damien Hirst - the Currency project, which achieved a $600m market cap and was 6x oversubscribed. Additionally, her team launched the second largest-ever Ethereum NFT collection, The Merge: Regenesis. Additionally, she and her team have partnered with 18+ global luxury brands (including LVMH, Prada, Cartier, and more) to launch the next wave of new utility NFTs, exploring loyalty, membership, personalization and creative user journeys. Also, in the world of global sports, Dr. Powell brought the Sports Illustrated Ticketing relationship to ConsenSys, which resulted in the development and launch of a global NFT ticketing platform, managed and delivered by her team. Additionally, she spearheaded the acquisition of Treum (a digital assets platform and creators of Eulerbeats) to ConsenSys, a groundbreaking platform in generative art & music, rights & royalties.

Johnna was previously a senior consultant at McKinsey & Company, where she focused on corporate strategy and commercial (e.g., marketing & sales optimization, go-to-market strategy) engagements. As a leader in the Pricing practice, she worked with product development teams to develop and launch pricing tools across multiple organizations.

Johnna holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science from MIT, where she conducted research in millimeter-wave imaging systems and Ultra-Wideband ("5G") antennas for military applications. While at MIT, she won the IEEE International Best Paper Award for her research, along with a patent for her designs. In addition, BMW used her designs and prototypes in their Ultra-Wideband systems testing.
Hanna Zubko

Hanna Zubko

Co-Founder and CEO - IntellectEU

Hanna Zubko

Hanna Zubko

Co-Founder and CEO - IntellectEU

Hanna Zubko is co-founder and CEO of IntellectEU Inc, a leading blockchain infrastructure and emerging technology company focused on serving the financial services community globally. IntellectEU delivers robust, enterprise-scale solutions with sustainability in mind. In addition to her role at IntellectEU, Hanna serves as an Operating Partner at Tioga Capital, a European early-stage Blockchain VC Fund. As a regular speaker at global technology conferences, including Sibos, Money2020, and Berkeley University events, Hanna contributes insights on DLT use cases and adoption trends. 

Hanna's journey with Hyperledger began in 2016, when she became a founding member with IntellectEU. Since then, she has been a committed contributor to the Hyperledger Foundation. Hanna's commitment to the community is exemplified by her roles as Vice Chair for the Hyperledger Marketing Committee and Co-Chair of the Blockchain for Social Impact working group. Her active involvement extends to the Budget and Strategy Committees during her prior term as a Hyperledger Governing Board Member.

 

Jim Zhang

Jim Zhang

Co-Founder - Kaleido

Jim Zhang

Jim Zhang

Co-Founder - Kaleido

Jim Zhang is co-founder and Head of Protocol Engineering of Kaleido. He is a maintainer of the Hyperledger FireFly project, member of the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance Technical Spec Workgroup and has contributed to Quorum and Hyperledger Besu open source code bases. Jim was a maintainer of the Hyperledger Fabric project, responsible for the node.js SDK and node.js chaincode support. Before starting Kaleido, he held a STSM role as IBM’s blockchain platform lead architect. Jim has written popular articles on the topics of comparing consensus algorithms and comparing Enterprise blockchain protocols. He has 15 years of experience in building a diverse range of enterprise systems including cloud services, enterprise mobile, and Java EE.

Arun S M

Arun S M

Vice Chair - Hyperledger TOC

Arun S M

Arun S M

Vice Chair - Hyperledger TOC

Arun areas of interests are cryptography & security, distributed systems and building scalable cloud solutions. He is a maintainer and an active contributor to the Hyperledger projects.

David Enyeart

David Enyeart

Architect - IBM Blockchain

David Enyeart

David Enyeart

Architect - IBM Blockchain

Dave Enyeart is a software engineer from IBM, and maintainer and release manager on the Hyperledger Fabric project. Dave graduated from Princeton University with a B.S.E. in Operations Research. He has spent his career working on enterprise software projects with a focus on data architecture, B2B, and business process management solutions. When enterprise blockchain came into existence, Dave started working on Hyperledger Fabric 1.0, and shortly thereafter became a maintainer and release manager for the project.

Marcus Brandenburger

Marcus Brandenburger

Research Staff Member - IBM Research Europe

Marcus Brandenburger

Marcus Brandenburger

Research Staff Member - IBM Research Europe

Marcus is a Research Staff Member at the IBM Research Lab in Zurich, Switzerland working in the area of Blockchain Security and Applications. His research is focused on secure distributed systems using confidental computing.

Peter Somogyvari

Peter Somogyvari

Software Product Architect Manager - Accenture

Peter Somogyvari

Peter Somogyvari

Software Product Architect Manager - Accenture

Peter is a technology architect manager at Accenture where he is one of the maintainers of the top level Hyperledger project called Cactus that aims to be an enterprise grade framework for blockchain integration/interoperability.

Stephen Curran

Stephen Curran

Technical Architect, DevOps and Blockchain - Cloud Compass Computing, Inc. / Quartech Systems, Ltd.

Stephen Curran

Stephen Curran

Technical Architect, DevOps and Blockchain - Cloud Compass Computing, Inc. / Quartech Systems, Ltd.

Stephen Curran is a veteran in Software Development and DevOps who dove full on into the Hyperledger Indy world in 2017. Working with the British Columbia (BC) Government, Stephen has helped define, build and launch the Verifiable Organizations Network (VON) – a production instance of Hyperledger Indy that makes public information about Organizations (Incorporations, etc.) in BC available in the form of Verifiable Credentials. Stephen is a regular agitator in the Hyperledger Indy community, facilitating discussions and driving interoperability. He created of the Hyperledger Indy chapter of Hyperledger’s “Blockchain for Business” EdX course. Stephen has presented on Blockchain and the Hyperledger Indy project at a number of events, including the Hyperledger Global Forum (Dec. 12-15, 2018 in Basel). Stephen is a member of the Sovrin Foundation Technical Governance Board.

Venkatraman Ramakrishna

Venkatraman Ramakrishna

Senior researcher - IBM Research Lab in Bangalore

Venkatraman Ramakrishna

Venkatraman Ramakrishna

Senior researcher - IBM Research Lab in Bangalore

Venkatraman Ramakrishna is a senior researcher in the IBM Research Lab in Bangalore, India. As an IBMer, he has also been on a temporary assignment as a research staff member at the IBM Center for Blockchain Innovation in Singapore. Ramakrishna’s current research area is blockchain and smart contracting technology, with a focus on blockchain and distributed ledger interoperability.

Daniela Barbosa

Daniela Barbosa

Executive Director

Daniela Barbosa

Daniela Barbosa

Executive Director

Daniela Barbosa serves as General Manager of Decentralized Technologies at the Linux Foundation and Executive Director of LF Decentralized Trust. She has overall strategic and operational responsibility for staff, programs, expansion, and execution of LF Decentralized Trust’s mission. Previously, she spent seven years in leadership roles at Hyperledger Foundation, driving the collaborative development of enterprise-grade blockchain and identity technologies by a global community. She is a leading voice for the power of openly developed decentralized technologies to optimize critical infrastructure for efficiency, privacy, and inclusivity.

Daniela has more than 20 years technology experience growing companies and communities and advancing adoption of business-critical software. She started her career at Dow Jones where she worked with the top global brands across various sectors, including finance, consumer and energy, to architect and deliver enterprise systems, ontologies and semantic web solutions. In the early 2000s, Daniela became involved in the early web 2.0 community helping to advance the concept of digital identity and data portability as the pathway for people to reuse their data across interoperable applications.

Sean Bohan

Sean Bohan

Community Architect

Sean Bohan

Sean Bohan

Community Architect

Over the last 20+ years Sean has worked in digital innovation, from CDRoms and websites to digital video, social networks, strategy, and product development. A member of the team that contributed what is now Hyperledger Indy, Sean has been directly involved or cheering-on Hyperledger from the sidelines since 2017. He is now a Community Architect of LF Decentralized Trust, working with David and Ry to help the projects and community scale.

David Boswell

David Boswell

Senior Director, Community Architect

David Boswell

David Boswell

Senior Director, Community Architect

David Boswell is a community expert who has worked with Mozilla, Open Networking Foundation, NASA, Sun Microsystems, Nokia and more on their community strategies. Through these past experiences he has expertise with both launching a new community as well as scaling existing communities. He is an O’Reilly author who has co-authored a book about Mozilla development and has also written several articles about community building. He has a Masters degree from Columbia University where he studied how technology can be used for public benefit.

Emily Fisher

Emily Fisher

PR Lead

Emily Fisher

Emily Fisher

PR Lead

Emily leads the day-to-day PR and content operations for LF Decentralized Trust.

Julian Gordon

Julian Gordon

VP, Asia Pacific and Middle East

Julian Gordon

Julian Gordon

VP, Asia Pacific and Middle East

Julian is an accomplished business, sales and technology leader and advocate for accelerating innovation through the use of open source, building technology ecosystems, and the transformational potential of blockchain, decentralized technologies, AI/LLM and cybersecurity. Julian has an extensive background in business, sales, finance and strategic development with experience in multinational and start-up technology companies across Asia.

Results-driven with excellent leadership and management skills and in-depth business and technology knowledge, especially in blockchain/Web3, AI, financial services, cybersecurity and big data. Possesses clarity of vision, strong, solution-focused planning and execution skills, interpersonal skills, contacts, and cultural understanding. 20+ years Asia experience.

Ry Jones

Ry Jones

Senior Community Architect

Ry Jones

Ry Jones

Senior Community Architect

Ry Jones serves as the Senior Community Architect at LF Decentralized Trust, where he contributes to the development and growth of the community. His role involves fostering collaboration within the global ecosystem​, and administrating the developer communities. 

Hart Montgomery

Hart Montgomery

CTO

Hart Montgomery

Hart Montgomery

CTO

Hart has extensive experience in blockchain and cryptography, and previously worked in blockchain and cryptography research at Fujitsu Research where he helped lead Fujitsu’s efforts in Hyperledger.  Prior to Fujitsu, Hart received a Ph.D. in cryptography at Stanford under Dan Boneh, where he was a Stanford Graduate Fellow. Hart has numerous academic publications and patents in cryptography and blockchain and brings a wealth of experience in these areas to LF Decentralized Trust.

Karen Ottoni

Karen Ottoni

Sr. Director of Ecosystem and Strategic Initiatives

Karen Ottoni

Karen Ottoni

Sr. Director of Ecosystem and Strategic Initiatives

Karen Ottoni is the Senior Director of Ecosystem & Strategic Initiatives for LF Decentralized Trust and has been in the blockchain space since 2016. She plays a leading role in growing and supporting the diverse ecosystem of organizations modernizing systems worldwide with decentralized technologies. Her areas of emphasis include open source, CBDCs, digital assets and interoperability.

Prior to joining Linux Foundation, she worked as a strategic business manager in the blockchain practice at Tata Consultancy Services. Karen speaks five languages and previously had a career in international development working in numerous overseas roles in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia with the U.S. Government and various social enterprises. She holds a bachelor’s degree in international service and economics from American University and an M.B.A. from Duke University.

Tomaz Sedej

Tomaz Sedej

Ecosystem Manager

Tomaz Sedej

Tomaz Sedej

Ecosystem Manager

Tomaz is also a Guest Researcher at Copenhagen Business School. His research focuses on the implications of enterprise blockchains for inter-organizational relationships. He is also working with the researchers from MIT Center for Information System Research, investigating the topics of Digital Ecosystems and Digital Partnering. Before starting to research enterprise blockchains, he worked at various multinational companies, such as L’Oréal and Coca-Cola, within the areas of digital transformation, process optimization, and financial controlling.

Ben Thomas

Ben Thomas

MarCom Lead

Ben Thomas

Ben Thomas

MarCom Lead

Ben leads the strategic development and execution of the organization's branding, marketing, and communications. He helps members maximize their marketing benefits and drives the adoption of decentralized technologies across the project and the broader Linux Foundation.

Min Yu

Min Yu

Program Manager

Min Yu

Min Yu

Program Manager

Min provides program management to scale the growth of an open source project community and to support the activities of the project governance and various committees at The Linux Foundation.

Keith Chan

Keith Chan

Community Director, Greater China

Keith Chan

Keith Chan

Community Director, Greater China

Keith Chan is the Community Director of Greater China.

Matt Nelson

Matt Nelson

Hyperledger Besu & Web3Signer PM - Consensys

Matt Nelson

Matt Nelson

Hyperledger Besu & Web3Signer PM - Consensys

Matt is a Senior Product Manager at ConsenSys, focusing on Hyperledger Besu and Web3Signer. He works on Ethereum core development, leveraging his skills in product management and technical consultancy. His role involves planning and implementing digital projects, particularly in the blockchain and Ethereum spaces.
Yacov Manevich

Yacov Manevich

Senior Research Software Engineer - IBM Research

Yacov Manevich

Yacov Manevich

Senior Research Software Engineer - IBM Research

Yacov Manevich is a Senior Research Software Engineer at IBM Research, focusing on blockchain technology, consensus mechanisms, and cryptography. He plays a key role as a maintainer of the Hyperledger Fabric core, contributing to its development and evolution in the field of distributed ledger technology. 

Conor Svensson

Conor Svensson

Founder & CEO - Web3 Labs

Conor Svensson

Conor Svensson

Founder & CEO - Web3 Labs

Founder and CEO of Web3 Labs, creator of Chainlens, and author of "The Blockchain Innovator's Handbook," Conor also hosts the Web3 Innovators Podcast.