Open source leader brings deep connections throughout the cloud native ecosystem

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – June 1, 2020 – The Cloud Native Computing Foundation® (CNCF®), which builds sustainable ecosystems for cloud native software, today announced that cloud native expert Priyanka Sharma is joining CNCF as its new general manager.

“The Linux Foundation is excited to bring on Priyanka Sharma, a long-time open source leader with wide knowledge and connections in our industry, as the general manager of CNCF,” said Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin. “Priyanka will work closely with business and technology leadership of CNCF, which represents the whole technology industry, to continue building the cloud native ecosystem.”

Priyanka was previously the director of Cloud Native Alliances at GitLab Inc., where she built the developer evangelism team that participates regularly in the cloud native community.

“As an early member of the cloud native community, I have witnessed first hand the profound impact of CNCF. As the engine for the multi-billion dollar DevOps movement, it enables organizations to ship software faster and with greater resiliency,” said Sharma. “With our lives changed by a global pandemic, the world needs more and even better digital experiences and technology tools. As the new general manager of the CNCF, I am committed to supporting this second wave of technology innovation that is transforming human lives with continued growth and adoption of cloud native technologies.”

Priyanka takes over the leadership of CNCF from Dan Kohn, who will be launching a new Linux Foundation initiative to help public health authorities use open source software to fight COVID-19 and other epidemics. Kohn will continue to participate in several CNCF activities and CNCF’s CTO Chris Aniszczyk will continue in his role.

“Priyanka’s contributions to CNCF as a speaker, governing board member, and community leader over the last several years have been invaluable,” said Kohn. “I think she is a great choice to lead the organization to its next stage.”

“The cloud native community has grown leaps and bounds in the last few years as companies look for more flexible and innovative solutions to meet their continuously evolving infrastructure and application needs,” said Aniszczyk. “As CNCF now reaches nearly 50 projects and 90,000 contributors globally, I’m thrilled to have an opportunity to work with Priyanka to cultivate and grow our cloud native community in its next evolution.”

Priyanka also serves as an advisor at Heavybit Industries, an accelerator for developer products. Priyanka has contributed to several CNCF projects such as Jaeger and Vitess and was a founding team member of the OpenTracing standard. In addition, Priyanka is a leading speaker and subject matter expert on cloud native and observability and has spoken about Kubernetes, Prometheus, Jaeger, OpenTracing, Envoy, Vitess, SPIFFE/SPIRE, and more. She was a startup founder featured at TechCrunch Disrupt and started her career at Google.

About Cloud Native Computing Foundation

Cloud native computing empowers organizations to build and run scalable applications with an open source software stack in public, private, and hybrid clouds. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) hosts critical components of the global technology infrastructure, including Kubernetes, Prometheus, and Envoy. CNCF brings together the industry’s top developers, end users, and vendors, and runs the largest open source developer conferences in the world. Supported by more than 500 members, including the world’s largest cloud computing and software companies, as well as over 200 innovative startups, CNCF is part of the nonprofit Linux Foundation. For more information, please visit www.cncf.io.

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