Technology Advisory Board

Kelly Ahuja

CEO,
Versa Networks

Kelly Ahuja is a seasoned industry veteran with more than 20 years of experience in networking and telecommunications. He currently serves on the board of directors for two startups in Silicon Valley.

Kelly spent 18 years at Cisco rooted in the design and deployment of telecommunications networks. He was most recently SVP of Service Provider Business, Products and Solutions at Cisco where he was responsible for developing and managing the service provider segment strategy and portfolio. Kelly held several other senior executive roles at Cisco, including SVP and GM of the Mobility Business Group, Chief Architect for the Service Provider business, and SVP and GM of the Service Provider Routing Technology Group.

Earlier in his career, Kelly served as VP of Marketing at optical networking startup BlueLeaf Networks and product management leader at Stratacom. He also managed the design and deployment of data and voice networks for AT&T Canada, Bank of Canada and Telesat Canada.

Kelly holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Calgary.

Kailem Anderson

Vice President, Portfolio and Engineering,
Blue Planet

Kailem Anderson is Vice President of Portfolio and Engineering for Blue Planet, a division of Ciena. His responsibilities include global ownership of Blue Planet’s portfolio strategy, direction, development and introduction of new disruptive offerings in the areas of automation, orchestration, analytics, software, SaaS and global services.

Well-established in the networking industry for 20 years, Kailem has held various leadership positions at Cisco, IBM, and Microsoft, where he focused on introducing new technologies to market in the areas of networking, security, data center, automation and SaaS.

Kailem holds a bachelor’s degree in Engineering and an MBA from the University of New South Wales and resides in Sydney, Australia.

Abe Ankumah

Vice President & General Manager,
VMWare

Abe Ankumah is Vice President & General Manager for VMware’s SD-WAN and SASE business. Abe joined VMware via the Nyansa acquisition in February 2020. Prior to joining VMWare, Abe was CEO and Co-Founder of Nyansa, Inc. a fast-growing innovator of AI-based network analytics based in Palo Alto, CA.

Before Nyansa, Abe was Director of Products and Alliances at Meraki (acquired by Cisco). Abe also held multiple leadership roles at Aruba Networks (now part of HP) in product management and business operations. Earlier in his career, Abe was part of the founding engineering team at the fabless semiconductor company, Fulcrum Microsystems (acquired by Intel), a leader in the low-latency Ethernet switching market. Abe began his career working at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA.

Abe holds a BS degree from Caltech and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. He is also an inventor on multiple patents.

Ari Banerjee

Senior Vice President Strategy,
Netcracker Technology

Ari Banerjee works for Netcracker as Senior Vice President of Strategy, responsible for the company’s strategic direction and enabling it to address changing market and technology opportunities. He is responsible for all aspects of Netcracker’s strategic initiatives across its portfolio of software solutions, including customer, product and technology management, market direction and corporate communications.

Ari interfaces with CTOs and CIOs at customers and prospects to ensure the alignment of technology, products and services while providing strategic input to the CTO office, product management and R&D teams. In his role, Ari collaborates with industry organizations, standards bodies, media and analysts and is responsible for running marketing and strategic partner programs for Netcracker.

Rohit Batra

Vice President and Head of Product Management for Telecom, Media and Technology,
ServiceNow

Rohit is VP and Head of Product Management for Telecom, Media and Technology at ServiceNow. As part of his role, Rohit leads the TMT product strategy and roadmap pertaining to domains such as network and service experience, order management and customer experience for ServiceNow customers. Prior to ServiceNow, Rohit ran the solutions and product strategy teams at various organizations including Salesforce, Amdocs, Oracle and Comverse. He has over 20 years of experience in TMT industry across Customer Experience and BSS/OSS domain running delivery, solutions, and product management functions.

David Fan

Vice President and General Manager of Communications Cloud,
Salesforce

David Fan currently serves as the Vice President and General Manager of Communications Cloud at Salesforce. David joined Salesforce through the Vlocity acquisition in 2020. He has over 20 years of CRM and BSS experience in Communications, holding various leadership roles in product management, application development and global transformation implementations.

Prior to joining Salesforce and Vlocity, David served as VP of Industry Strategy and Product Management at Oracle where David led the product team in developing industry CRM solutions and fostered the ecosystem that made Oracle CRM/CX a market leader in Communications. He was also the Vice-President at Huawei Technologies for 3 years where he led the company’s BSS application strategy and product management.

Suresh Katukam

Co-founder and Chief Product Officer,
Nile

Suresh Katukam is an experienced technologist and entrepreneur with a proven track record of successfully building and launching a range of products. Prior to co-founding Nile, Suresh held positions at companies such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Aruba Networks, Cisco, and various startups.

With over 25 years of industry experience, Suresh has held diverse roles encompassing product management, engineering, business development, investments, and acquisitions. He has also made contributions to the field of Artificial Intelligence, publishing several research papers and co-authoring industry standards and IETF drafts. Additionally, Suresh is an inventor with 40 patents to his name.

Suresh holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from BITS, Pilani, India, a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from Arizona State University, and an MBA from the Anderson School of Management at UCLA.

Sunil Khandekar

Tech Executive | Advisor | Former Founder & CEO of Nuage Networks,

Sunil is a seasoned tech executive and advisor with over 25 years of experience in the Telecom and Networking industry. He specializes in developing high-value growth businesses from concept to customer adoption. Sunil’s most recent role was as the Founder and CEO of Nuage Networks. 

During his career, Sunil has held various product and business leadership roles at Alcatel-Lucent, including an international assignment in Europe, leading and managing the IP Division business for the EMEA region. He has in-depth knowledge of SDN, SD-WAN, multi-hybrid cloud, cloud security, and networking. Sunil is a frequent speaker at industry events and conferences.

Dave Larson

Chief Technology Officer and General Manager, Cloud & IP,
Spirent Communications

Dave Larson is the CTO for Spirent Communications and General Manager for Spirent’s Cloud & IP business. He is responsible for overall company technology vision and strategy, leading the Spirent Advanced Technology team that incubates forward looking test, measurement, and assurance solutions in the Cloud-Native realm for incorporation across all of Spirent’s product lines.

Dave has more than 25 years’ experience across networking, network security and cloud architecture, working in both emerging technology start-ups and large public enterprises. Before joining Spirent, Dave was Vice President and General Manager for the Data Center Networking business and Chief Technologist for Networking, Security, Advanced Cloud Technology & Strategy at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Previously, Dave was COO/CTO for Corero Network Security, a developer of carrier-grade, terabit-class DDoS mitigation solutions. He was also VP of Advanced Technology and CTO for HP Networking, and held senior product and technical roles for a number of organizations, including 3Com Corporation, TippingPoint, Xedia, Sandburst, and Tizor Systems. Dave has a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from Gordon College in Wenham, MA.

John Maddison

Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Vice President, Products,
Fortinet

John Maddison has more than 30 years of executive management experience in the Cybersecurity and Telecommunications Industries. He joined Fortinet in 2012 to lead Cloud/SaaS Security development teams and is now the Chief Marketing Officer and EVP Products. He previously held executive leadership positions at Trend Micro focused on Advanced Threat Research and Cloud Delivered Security Services. He started his career with Lucent Technologies Mobile Division, Hewlett Packard Software and Cable & Wireless Global Networking. John holds a B.S. degree in Telecommunications Engineering from Plymouth University, United Kingdom.

Samantha Madrid

Group Vice President, Security Business & Strategy,
Juniper

Samantha Madrid is the Vice President of Security business and strategy at Juniper Networks, with over twenty years of experience in the enterprise business-to-business security market in roles spanning from product management to marketing to sales engineering. She previously served as the Vice President of Product Management and Marketing for E8 Security (acquired by VMware). Prior to that, she held leadership roles at Palo Alto Networks, Forcepoint, Inc. (formerly Websense), and Cisco (via IronPort).

Over the span of her career, Samantha has had a proven track record turning around businesses in decline to achieve record growth and industry recognition. She’s built strong product organizations, introduced many successful products, created brands, and launched effective go-to-market programs that have led to rapid product adoption in the highly competitive security industry.

She studied Political Science at San Jose State University, where she also was a member of the university’s swimming and diving team.

Ken Urquhart

Global Vice-President of 5G Strategy,
Zscaler

Dr. Ken Urquhart is Global Vice-President of 5G Strategy at Zscaler. He holds three degrees in Physics and executive roles at Sun Microsystems, IBM, and Microsoft.

Prior to joining Zscaler, Ken consulted with Fortune 2000 companies on 5G, AI, and cybersecurity.

JL Valente

Vice President, Product Management, Enterprise Routing and SD-WAN,
Cisco

JL Valente leads product management in the Networking Experiences Team with direct responsibility for the enterprise routing, SD-WAN and multi-cloud networking portfolio. In this role, he is globally responsible for product strategy, definition and delivery. He is also the executive sponsor of a number of key service provider accounts. 

A highly respected industry veteran, Valente joined Cisco in 2013 as a software executive with 25 years of operating and leadership experience in building international software businesses. He is a technology advocate with intimate knowledge of the evolution of networking and information technology. At Cisco, he led the service provider network automation strategy including the acquisition of Tail-f, organized the initial 5G initiative including OpenvRAN, brought to market Cisco telco cloud and the first SDWAN aaS platform known as ngena. Previously, he led the product management of Cisco Cloud Platform and Solutions Group portfolio across network automation and cloud management.  A sought-after industry speaker, he is often featured at venues such as Mobile World Congress, CTIA and many Cisco hosted events. 

Prior to Cisco he was President and CEO of blueKiwi, a social business startup, which was acquired by the IT service firm Atos to form the backbone of the Atos Zero eMailTM initiative. Before that, Valente was CEO of RiverMuse, an IT operations software company. He also held leadership positions at software companies including InfoVista, Viasoft (now ASG), and CA where he led regional and worldwide marketing for its information management division. He also spent a year as an entrepreneur in residence with Atlas Venture, where he focused on the wireless industry.