Securing the shift to AI native

Stone is a software engineer at Ragie, where he’s advancing how AI applications connect and reason through the Model Context Protocol (MCP). He builds the systems that power Ragie’s multi-tenant AI infrastructure and has led open source efforts that make MCP more usable and accessible for developers worldwide.

Zack Kass is an advisor, researcher, keynote speaker, and the former Head of Go-To-Market at OpenAI. 

At OpenAI, Zack led the teams responsible for sales, partnerships, and customer success, turning the company’s cutting-edge research into real-world business solutions. He has personally advised executives across dozens of industries on deploying AI at scale.

As an executive business advisor, Zack now works with Fortune 1,000 boardrooms and leadership teams—including Coca-Cola, Morgan Stanley, and Amgen—to help leaders navigate the rapidly evolving AI landscape.

Zack’s mission is to ensure individuals, businesses, and governments are active participants in the AI-powered future by making the technology both understandable and actionable. He is recognized as one of the foremost thinkers in applied AI, with his insights featured in Fortune, Newsweek, Entrepreneur, AdAge, and Business Insider.

Beyond his advisory work, Zack also supports AI education and research at the University of Virginia. He holds a BA from the University of California, Berkeley, and currently resides in Santa Barbara, California.

Advisory Services

Zack and his team also help organizations navigate the complexities of AI adoption, providing leadership with the strategies and frameworks needed to drive real business impact. As AI strategists and business transformation experts, they work closely with executive teams to identify challenges, assess opportunities, and implement AI solutions that prepare companies for the future of work.

Through boardroom advisory, executive workshops, and strategy consulting, Zack provides the insight and practical guidance needed to integrate AI effectively. While the team is committed to delivering successful business outcomes, the broader mission is to contribute to an optimistic AI future by empowering organizations to innovate, operate more efficiently, and ultimately expand human potential.

Zack Proser is a Staff Engineer and Developer Educator at WorkOS, where he explores how AI-native tools are transforming the way we build and secure software. He is known for turning complex ideas — from agentic coding systems to voice-driven development — into approachable, practical workflows that help developers glimpse and prepare for the future.

Nnenna Ndukwe is a Principal Developer Advocate and Software Engineer, enthusiastic about AI. With 8+ experience spanning across startups, media tech, cybersecurity, and AI, she's an active global AI/ML community architect championing engineers to build in emerging tech.

Guy Podjarny is the founder & CEO of Tessl, the pioneering AI Native Development platform. Guy previously founded Snyk, which created and leads the Developer Security market, scaling it to an $8B company. Before that, he founded Blaze and sold it to Akamai, where he served as CTO. Guy is an active angel investor, and a co-host of the AI Native Dev podcast.

John McBride is an engineering leader, writer, and podcast host. He is currently a Staff Engineer at Zuplo, where he heads up new AI and infrastructure development.

He has previously worked on AI infrastructure at the Linux Foundation, AI/ML community tooling at OpenSauced, Linux-based operating systems at AWS, Kubernetes products at VMware, and the Cloud Foundry platform at Pivotal.

Nate Barbettini is a seasoned developer, author, and educator with deep expertise in authentication, developer tooling, and AI-driven software. As a Founding Engineer at Arcade.dev, he brings a potent blend of technical leadership and real-world product experience.

Ian is a Staff Developer Relations Engineer at Block, working on open source and content for AI tooling. His background in backend architecture and scalable API development brings exciting opportunities for open-source collaboration and community building. He has spent most of his career designing distributed backends and data pipelines, touching on DevOps, DBA duties, and more.

A former Head of Product at AWS working on AI agents, Rene is the cofounder and CEO of Casco (YC X25),  an agentic red team that identifies high-quality findings in AI systems, apps, and agents.

Brett is a Distinguished Software Architect/Engineer/Developer with 25+ years of experience, specializing in Event Driven Automation, Continuous Integration/Delivery/Testing/Deployment, Supply Chain Security, and AI Security. Brett is currently Engineering and Securing the Supply Chain with Event Driven CI/CD gitOps Pipeline Architectures that leverage Kafka, Go, Rust, and Python running in Containers on Kubernetes and SBOMs.

Jeff Watkins is the Chief Technology Officer at CreateFuture, the award-winning digital consultancy formed from the 2024 union of CreateFuture and xDesign, where he previously served as Chief Product & Technology Officer. In this dual-hat role, he steered multi-disciplinary teams across AI strategy, product engineering and cloud, turning bold ideas into secure, human-centred digital experiences for big-name brands.

Harshad Kadam is a Senior Security Infrastructure Engineer with over a decade of experience leading Zero Trust, Deception Engineering, and Platform Security initiatives. He specializes in designing secure network architectures and driving large-scale cloud migrations that strengthen global infrastructures.

Peter is the CEO of Snyk. In previous roles as CEO, Peter led multiple software companies through hypergrowth, including Watchfire (acquired by IBM), Desktone (acquired by VMWare), and Veeam. When not running Snyk, Peter can be found reading or listening to books, biking, or running.

Manoj leads Snyk’s Emerging Technologies and Solutions Office (ETSO). His team is responsible for the company’s incubation and future acquisition strategy, ensuring Snyk’s long-term vision and strategy are fully aligned with the emerging needs of our customers. Before Snyk, Manoj served as Chief Cloud Officer and General Manager of Metallic at Commvault (NASDAQ: CVLT), where he accelerated the growth of the company’s crucial cloud and SaaS business units. Previously, he was the co-founder and CEO of HyperGrid and has held additional product leadership roles at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Dell EMC, and RSA Security. Manoj also holds more than a dozen information management and security patents.

As CTO, Danny leads end-to-end ownership of Snyk’s current core offerings and roadmap, as well as the company’s near-term platform vision. Before joining Snyk, he was CTO at Veeam and Desktone (acquired by VMWare) and Director of Security Research at IBM. In his free time, Danny loves scuba diving, cycling, and hockey (like a true Canadian!)

Aamiruddin Syed is a Cybersecurity Professional with over a decade of experience in the industry. He specializes in DevSecOps, Shift-Left Security, cloud security, and internal penetration testing. He authored the book titled "Supply Chain Software Security-AI, IoT, Application Security " with Apress/Springer. Leveraging his penetration testing skills, he routinely conducts targeted internal assessments of critical applications and systems to proactively identify risks. 

Aamiruddin Syed holds a Dual Master’s degree in Cybersecurity from Northeastern University and Jadavpur University.  A recognized advocate for secure development, Aamiruddin is a frequent speaker and session chair at leading industry conferences including RSA Conference, DEFCON, and Black Hat. In 2024, he was honored with the Impact Award for Professional Excellence in Dubai.

Brendan Putek is at the helm of DevSecOps and cloud operations at Relay Network, a personalized B2C engagement platform serving more than 100 enterprise clients and millions of end users. His leadership has been instrumental in modernizing the company’s infrastructure, implementing iterative CI/CD pipelines with tools like GitHub Actions, AWS CodePipeline/CodeBuild, and Terraform. This transformation has empowered teams to deliver hundreds of secure releases each week.

Brendan embraces a straightforward vision: to weave security and efficiency seamlessly into the fabric of engineering, allowing quality code to flow faster. At Relay, this philosophy translates into developing pipelines that integrate security from the start, rather than treating it as an afterthought.

Outside of his professional endeavors, Brendan is a devoted father of two and a passionate strength, conditioning, and mobility coach. He is also the founder of Smoothdev.io, an initiative focused on transforming documentation processes. By automating the transition from commit messages to user-facing documentation, he helps teams reduce the time spent rehashing what they’ve already built, enabling them to invest more energy into shipping great software. As a fractional CTO, Brendan extends this philosophy of efficiency and value to startups and growth-stage companies, helping them cultivate high-performing, dynamic engineering cultures.

At the heart of Brendan's work is a genuine love for technology, connection, and making people’s lives better. He believes in the power of conversations and shared experiences, valuing the insights that emerge from collaboration.

Jeff Andersen is a Senior Director of Product Management at Snyk, where he leads teams focused on building tools and workflows that enable secure software development, reduce organizational risk, and enhance developer productivity.

Brendan Hann is a Senior Product Marketing Manager at Snyk, focused on the developer experience and core analysis engines of Snyk Open Source, Code, Container, and IaC.

Itay is a Senior Product Manager at Snyk, leading a team shaping the Application Security experience with a focus on governance and asset management. He drives innovation in Snyk’s AI Trust Platform, helping teams shift left and secure code at scale.

Kate is a Senior Product Marketing Manager at Snyk, bringing extensive experience from previous roles at Datadog, Turbot, and the Frank Recruitment Group.

Ryan is a Staff Product Manager at Snyk, driving the product vision and strategy for remediation. He focuses on empowering customers to strengthen application security through both proactive and reactive fixes in open source.

Ezra Tanzer is a Director of Product Management at Snyk, leading teams that build tools and workflows empowering developers to focus on shipping software while writing secure code.

Daniel Berman is a Director of Product Marketing at Snyk, helping shape the future of AI security.

Rudy is the Director of Technology Incubation at Snyk, working at the forefront of AI security innovation. He began his career in AI modeling of brain cancer structures before building AI trading systems at Morgan Stanley and Bank of America. In 2019, Rudy founded Tactic, an Index Ventures–backed startup, where he pioneered the idea of combining search and chatbots to create AI agents for customer and CRM data. Today, Rudy focuses on advancing AI security at Snyk.