Speaker Details

Nithya A. Ruff is the Head of SanDisk’s Open Source Strategy Office. She first glimpsed the power of open source while at SGI in the 90s and has been building bridges between hardware developers and the open source community ever since.     Nithya has been an advocate and a speaker for opening doors to new people in open source and promoting diverse ways of contributing such as in marketing, legal and community.

She’s also held leadership positions at Wind River, Synopsys, Avaya, Cranite, Tripwire and Eastman Kodak.   Nithya has been a speaker at OpenStack Tokyo, Openstack Austin and at other open source events such as OSCON, Linux Con North America and Europe and All Things Open.  She is a leader in the Women of OpenStack (WOO) group and a lisaon to the OpenStack Foundation for the WOO. 

Nithya is also is the President of SanDisk’s Women’s Innovation Network or WIN dedicated to the development of women’s highest potential in the work place.

Nithya graduated with an MS in Computer Science from NDSU and an MBA from the University of Rochester, Simon Business School.  She lives in the bay area and is a proud mother of two daughters.