Nithya Ruff

Nithya A. Ruff is the Head of the Amazon Open Source Program Office. She drives open source culture and coordination inside of Amazon and engagement with external communities. Open Source has proven to be one of the world’s most prolific enabler of innovation and collaboration, and Amazon’s customers increasingly value open source innovation and the cloud’s role in helping them adopt and run important open source services. In the age of AI, the value of open and transparent AI is becoming critical to building trust. Nithya takes her decades-long knowledge of open source principles and now brings them to the world of AI.

Prior to Amazon, she started and grew Comcast and Western Digital’s Open Source Program Offices. Open Source Program Offices are a critical part of a company’s digital transformation and innovation journey and enable the intentional and systematic engagement with open source for companies.

Nithya has been director-at-large on the Linux Foundation Board for the last 5 years and in 2019 was elected to be Chair of the influential Linux Foundation Board. She works actively to advance the mission of the Linux Foundation around building sustainable ecosystems that are built on open collaboration. She is a passionate advocate and a speaker for opening doors to new and diverse people in technology and can often be seen speaking and writing on this topic.

Nithya graduated with an M.S. in Computer Science from NDSU and an MBA from the University of Rochester, Simon Business School and is an aspiring corporate board director and governance enthusiast. You can follow her on twitter @nithyaruff and you can find her on https://www.linkedin.com/in/nithyaruff/

Pronouns: She/Her