Speakers

Alex Melen is an Award-Winning Entrepreneur & Keynote Speaker. He is the founder of web hosting company T35 Hosting (founded 1997) and co-founder of advertising agency SmartSites (founded 2011). SmartSites now manages over $100MM/year in advertising spend and has 6 offices & over 300 employees worldwide. SmartSites has been featured in the INC5000 for 6 consecutive years as one of the fastest growing digital agencies and Alex has been featured in Business Week’s Top 25 Entrepreneurs, Bloomberg, Forbes, NPR & more.

Alex Teller is the CEO of Home Perfect, an ecommerce retailer that has been selling luxury kitchen & bath fixtures online since 2008. Alex started using Magento over 10 years ago, after transitioning from a SaaS platform, and was even at the very first Magento Imagine Conference in Los Angeles way back in 2011!

A Native New Yorker with a passion for technology and entrepreneurship, when not in front of a computer, he collects vintage comic books and likes to go to the beach.

Alfreds started to code at 12 doing Minecraft mods, continued at 14 with Java mobile apps for his household, and finished school externally while starting to work full time as a Software Engineer at 15. Having a passion for front-end, Alfreds became naturally interested in PWA technology and pushing its boundaries on real-world projects. He is an active contributor to the PWA theme for Magento ScandiPWA and is a go-to person for several Fortune500 companies to plan their high-load front-end architecture.

As Dotdigital’s Head of Sales, Americas, Ashley leads responsibility for the region’s BDR and sales teams.

Ashley comes to Dotdigital with over 7 years of experience in the SaaS and ecommerce space, most recently working as a Regional Sales Director for NetSuite and, prior to that, for Bronto Software to grow their customer base. Within that time, she helped to enable new teams, build relationships with partners in the ecosystem, and introduce new processes and procedures.

Ashley is passionate about enabling her team to succeed and bring on new business. She is eager to continue enabling growth at Dotdigital!

BJ McCahill is the Vice President at KASHIYAMA, where he helped launch the brand in the US by opening its retail locations, developing an innovative e-commerce platform, and strategizing marketing rollout. He also leveraged learnings and efficiencies to scale KASHIYAMA’s e-commerce business into the Chinese market while improving Japanese e-commerce site functionality. Additionally, BJ recently oversaw KASHIYAMA’s new custom jewelry line from product inception to market.
BJ has worked in the made-to-measure niche of fashion for over nine years, and emphasizes the importance of fit and fabrication in clothing production.

Brandon is Commerce Client Director at Rightpoint, a global experience agency, and has been helping merchants succeed on the Magento platform since 2016 as a Solutions Architect, Consultant, and Strategist.

Brent Peterson is a Solution Specialist for more than 12 years on the Adobe Commerce Platform. He has since branched out into analyzing and recommending other platforms based on the client’s needs.

He hosts a podcast called Talk Commerce which takes an unbiased approach to all platforms with the goal of educating merchants, agencies, and developers on what platform is best for their specific needs.

In his free time, Brent likes to run marathons worldwide and easily gets distracted by running topics.

Caspar is the CEO and founder of Alumio, which is a cloud-based integration platform. With over two decades of experience in web and in the e-commerce industry, Caspar creates an ambitious, respectful and trustworthy environment for clients, partners, and employees to evolve in the world of information technology. Together with agencies and system integrators, Alumio serves renowned e-commerce merchants across the globe and helps them create future-proof integrations and IT ecosystems. Alumio is dedicated to solve the various challenges that businesses face when it comes to integrations.

With almost 10 years of Magento/Adobe Commerce experience and working with multiple leading SI’s in Australia, the United States and Canada, Chris has a wealth of knowledge to share. As leader of the Adobe Practice at Valtech he is responsible for the R&D and Architecture teams, training and enablement programs and establishment of development best practices.

Having worked directly with Magento/Adobe on Certification and Training programs and as an analyst, consultant, and developer for multiple products, primarily PWA Studio, he an expert on Adobe’s roadmap and platform evolution.

Denis began his career in the web hosting industry in 2000, with the formation of eBoundHost, which eventually generated a sister company – JetRails. Denis and his team have helped grow JetRails into a leading provider of fully-managed web hosting for Magento and Adobe Commerce users. He is passionate about working with clients daily to understand their infrastructure challenges and improving experiences and outcomes for eCommerce merchants. Denis collaborates closely with product and technical support teams at JetRails to ensure ultimate Customer Success.

Fahd Siddiqui currently serves as the Director of Engineering at Adobe where he leads teams responsible for delivering Intelligent Commerce solutions, such as Live Search and Product Recommendations, personalization at scale and the Adobe Commerce SaaS platform. Previously, Fahd led the SaaS architecture and Data Solutions teams. Passionate about highly scalable and distributed systems, he has been fundamentally involved in creating EmoDB, an open source data store on top of Cassandra. He holds a master’s degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, and an MBA from Louisiana State University.

Chief Adobe Commerce Architect, 11 years with the company.

Passionate about eCommerce and modern software architecture.

With more than 20 years of industry experience, James has equal tenure as a consultant in both finance and retail. Currently leading a team of tax technology professionals responsible for indirect tax automation for retail companies, his primary focus is designing end-to-end multi-channel transaction tax solutions. Leveraging advanced technology and scalable software, his keen understanding of compliance aids in enhancing productivity, reducing risk, and improving customer satisfaction.

Jason Morrell leads partnerships for Adobe’s Commerce Services team. Originally joining Magento’s Strategy and Growth team shortly after its divestment from eBay and continuing through the Adobe acquisition in 2018, Jason brings a 10+ year background in digital commerce, payment systems, tax and fraud services, and high conversion checkout.

Jiten, being a digital commerce enthusiast, started a small design agency in 2003. Fueled by his unending passion, under his leadership, Krish has become a leading global digital commerce agency today with footprints across US, UK, Middle East, India and Australia.

With more than 20 years of experience, Jiten’s brainchild Krish is now an Adobe Gold Specialized Solution Partner, having clients like Nestle, BioIQ, Dupont, Damas, Hamleys, The Body Shop, UnionCoop, Casio, Welspun and others. Krish is a forerunner in the digital commerce transformation space, which helps brands deliver digital experiences across all channels.

Being a visionary, Jiten has invested in products, solutions and practices which allow Krish to help brands innovate, evolve, and thrive in their digital commerce.

Jorge is an internet professional with over 20 years of industry experience and expertise in areas including application development, infrastructure security, dev ops, web design, and internet marketing. At Turning Point Brands, a publicly traded consumer products company, Jorge leads a team of developers that support a wide variety of B2B & B2C e-commerce initiatives across multiple Magento instances. Jorge’s future plans include upgrading a Magento 1 installation and building out front end technologies for faster shopping experiences across multiple B2C brands

Joseph Maxwell is the president of SwiftOtter, Inc, an Adobe Commerce specialized agency. He has been working with Adobe Commerce for over ten years. He has trained thousands of developers to be more proficient on this platform and uses this experience to build better experiences for ecommerce-enabled merchants. He lives in Kansas City, KS, with his wife and three children.

Krish is the Vice President of Strategic Partnerships & Industry Relations for Auctane where he is focused on long-term relationships between e-commerce merchants and e-commerce marketplaces. A respected expert in cross border & marketplace e-commerce, Krish is often quoted in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, Yahoo!, Bloomberg and the New York Times. In addition, Krish serves as the Vice President of the Package Shippers Association (PSA), which serves as the voice of the package shipping industry.

I am a Magento Developer from Ukraine with about 6 years of experience, currently a Development Tech Lead at vConnect agency. Member of the Magento Community Maintainers team since 2019. Previously was taking active participation contributing to Magento Open Source. I was involved in requirements analysis, design, and development of In-Store Pickup functionality in the scope of the Magento Inventory (also known as MSI) project. Also, I gave a paired speech about that contribution story at MageConf 2019 and other events and won Magento Community Spirit Award 2020.

Marion Freijsen is a long-term technology professional. Her role prior to joining Adobe as a Strategic Business Advisor running the Commerce Strategy team, was as COO of the largest Dutch ecommerce player in wine & coffee where she was responsible for transforming the company (organization and technology) and implementing an ecommerce platform across 16 labels in six different countries. She has over 15 years of C-level experience at public and non-public companies and has worked in technology for 25+ years. Marion is a published author with the release of The N-Factor: How Networking Can Change the Dynamics of Your Business in 2007 and her second book, The EFactor: Entrepreneurship in the Social Media Age, was released in November 2012. She is a frequent speaker and presenter and in her spare time, an active sports enthusiast!

Marsha has been a driving force in the Magento community for seven years and is CBO at Krish USA. She has worked internationally in multiple sectors across geographic and cultural boundaries. Her motivation includes strengthening communities and relationships to maximise benefit. She has hosted and supported high profile events including Meet Magento New York, is an active contributor of the Magento Association and is an international speaker.
You have probably met her at a number of community and industry events or had the pleasure of attending one of her talks.

Matt Serwin oversees strategic ecommerce platform relationships and expansion at Klaviyo with the goal of expanding access to Klaviyo’s Unified Customer Platform, enabling global merchants as they seek build personalized, scalable relationships with their customers through marketing automation and data analytics. He has been with Klaviyo for 4 years in a variety of roles as the Partner team has expanded from its inception. He lives in Boston, MA and works out of Klaviyo’s headquarters in Downtown Boston. In his free time he enjoys traveling with his wife, boxing, and photography.

Megan Baumer is a business development director at GS1 US with a focus on the e-commerce community. She works directly with agencies, platforms, marketplaces, and solution providers who share the common goal of helping brands grow and maximize their investments in e-commerce. Her mission is to raise awareness for the critical role that global data standards play in the retail supply chain and to partner with key organizations to make GS1 Standards accessible and understandable to business of all sizes. Her previous experience includes private-label product manufacturing and sales, along with extensive experience in the non-profit world.

Mike Byrnes is Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at Bolt. He leads the teams that partner with ecommerce platforms, technology providers, and SIs which enable Bolt’s One-Click Checkout to be simple to set-up for any merchant. For the past 20 years Mike has been at the forefront of helping organizations reduce the friction in their shopping experiences to accelerate sales. He has led partner and revenue generating functions inside ecommerce business in the education, media, consumer and B2B segments. Prior to joining Bolt, Mike led business development and solution architecture for Amazon Alexa’s ‘no-click’ replenishment business. Before that he spent 11 years at O’Reilly Media, who has been the thought leader and champion of Open Source developer communities for over 40 years.

Mike Muhlfelder, Jitterbit’s Vice President of Sales, North America, leads the team that sells Jitterbit’s integration-platform-as-a-service (eiPaaS) to both new and existing customers. Mike has over 30 years of business-to-business selling and sales leadership experience across all verticals and company sizes, bringing expertise in CRM, collaboration and Digital Transformation. In addition to Jitterbit, he has built and managed sales teams at LogMeIn, Cast Iron Systems (acquired by IBM), ADP Siebel, PeopleSoft, Oracle and MapAnything (acquired by salesforce).

Mudita Tiwari serves as Senior Director of Developer Experiences within the Product organization at PayPal. Tiwari joined PayPal in 2018, and currently focuses on creating seamless developer experiences, APIs and SDKs that power the world of integrations and product implementation at PayPal. She has extensive experience in Agile Product Management and Program Management. Prior to joining PayPal, Tiwari worked as a strategic technical partner to eBay’s Chief Architect, and VP of Developer Ecosystem. She created a strategic vision while executing complex technical programs to revolutionize cross-collaboration at eBay. She has a master’s in public policy and a business degree in informational technology. Tiwari is passionate about empowering customers by deploying initiatives for financial literacy and enablement.

Nathan has been with Adobe for almost 5 years and is currently the Engineering Manager over Adobe Commerce Application Security. He and his teams safeguard the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of Magento by providing proactive security expertise, creating and maintaining a resilient and secure infrastructure, and fostering a culture of security awareness and compliance throughout the organization and community.

Nathan lives outside of Austin, Texas on his 7 acre mini-farm with his wife of 11 years and 5 kids. In personal time he enjoys VR, cooking, movies, hiking, 3d printing,and many family activities.

Nitu Walker leads the sales enablement and evangelism effort for Commerce Services at Adobe. She has over 10 years of experience in sales, commerce, payments, and partnerships, including collaborating with internal and external stakeholders to drive product value and beneficial relationships. Immersed in the eCommerce ecosystem, Nitu enjoys working with sales teams, partners, and merchants and is passionate about creating awareness around the impact that key commerce business features can have on their growth.

Ray is an IT professional and evangelist from the Netherlands. He started working with computers in 1993 as a hobby at first. In the past, he has worked for KPN, a large Dutch Telecom company, as a senior security officer.

Over the last years he co-founded many businesses as a CTO (Jira ICT, Yireo, Wild Hibiscus, Rapido and SupportDesk.) As a trainer/consultant he has trained over 1,000 Magento experts worldwide since 2008.

Currently he is working as a Senior Global Software Support Manager supporting the Customer Engineering team on support and automation.

Ritesh Somani helps to drive value added services and features for Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source within the product team. He has over 15 years of experience delivering software solutions for SMB and enterprise customers in the commerce and payments spaces for platforms. Having started his own business, and having worked at startups and companies such as Intuit, Visa, and PayPal, Ritesh understands the needs of merchants and has successfully implemented easy to use and delightful solutions for millions of businesses worldwide.

Rob has been an IT leader for over a decade and worked in the field for over 15+ years. Has attained a BS from SIUC and several industry certificates. He specializes in complex hardware, software, and networking troubleshooting as well as industrial controls and server/SAN management. He’s been with Zanders, where he heads up IT, for over 6 years. During that time, he’s experienced significant challenges, but ultimately, has seen this 60-year-old sporting goods distributor evolve from operating an onsite and underperforming eCommerce store, to a highly successful cloud based platform.

Robert first became an active member of the Magento community as the CTO of Rand Marketing, a full-service digital agency that was acquired back in 2017. His passion for helping businesses grow and thrive on the internet has continued to shape his career. As the Director of Partnerships & Alliances at JetRails and host of The JetRails Podcast, he has continued to bridge the gaps between eCommerce merchants, ever-evolving technologies, and winning strategies. His many years of experience and expertise have made him a frequent contributor and leader in the eCommerce industry.

Slava is a Magento community member from 2010, born in Ukraine. He enjoyed programming from his childhood years and began his commercial career as a freelance web developer in his early teens. Later in 2006 Slava founded an eCommerce agency now known as Atwix, which became the #1 contributor to Magento source code since 2018.

Being a big fan of exploring the world, Slava took a sabbatical, circumventing Africa by car, visiting 44 countries within 7 months and filming a video series about local life. Slava is serving as a volunteer Vice Chair of the Magento Association.

Sofia Aranha is a Solutions Consultant at Adobe with a passion for helping companies transform their digital business through a greater focus on consumer experience. She is a creative thinker focused on how innovative technologies and business strategies can help shape the future of digital commerce.

Sofia’s expertise ranges from developing go-to-market strategy to product management to consultative selling uniquely positioning her to truly empathize with and solve for the major pain points of the companies she serves.

Sofia resides in Austin, TX. Outside of work, Sofia is a dance teacher, budding social impact entrepreneur, and dog mom to the best boy, Mochi.

Stefanie is responsible for growing platform partnerships on the Strategic Partnerships team at Checkout.com. Before joining Checkout.com, she advised rapidly growing fintech & SaaS companies as a Global Corporate Banker at J.P. Morgan for over a decade. She earned a degree in Finance from NYU Stern and is a CFA charterholder. Stefanie resides in Hoboken, NJ with her husband, daughter and a pup named Pesto.

Stephen Cohen is a digital marketing enthusiast and the principal eCommerce Consultant for dotdigital, the premier marketing automation platform.
His successful philosophy enables brands to grow through a blend of knowledge and simplicity. Stephen consults with brands to drive traffic, revenue, and ultimately improved profitability.
Stephen has been working in the Magento ecosystem since 2012 and is the founder of Scotland’s Magento Meetup.
Now living in New York, he can be found walking daily in Central Park with his dog, Zidane.

Steve Kamerman is a tech executive, inventor, and thinker. He taught himself to code as a child in the 90s and has been collecting knowledge ever since. He has used his expertise in scalable web architecture to accelerate the internet for more than 15 years. Steve co-founded ScientiaMobile, which catapulted an open-source project (WURFL) into the gold standard for mobile device intelligence. This, combined with ImageEngine (a product he created), improves the web experience of more than a billion people daily, including you!

Sushanth is an experienced engineering leader and solutions architect, serving as a trusted advisor for organizations implementing cloud native solutions. Sushanth functions as a strategic advisor to executive business and technology decision makers. He specializes in containers and cloud-native technologies and is passionate about making them easy to understand and adopt. Prior to joining AWS, Sushanth built IT solutions for multiple industries, using a wide range of technologies. This includes a stint as the architect for a digital-commerce web store implementation. He is based in Chicago, IL.

Talesh started working with Magento in the confusing early days of Magento Beta. Over the last 10 years he has transitioned into a role of Consulting Magento Architect working with companies to direct (and occasionally rescue) their Magento projects.

All throughout his 20 years working with web application development Talesh has also held a keen interest in the security issues. Given the recent renewed interest in web application security Talesh has started evangelizing defensive development practices and helping teams build defensive Magento sites. Some of that manifests in the security podcast at magedef.com

Thien-Lan Weber is the CMO at OneStepCheckout, the Norwegian-based vendor of the established and globally acclaimed checkout extension for Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce.

Prior to that role, she had a 15+ year international career focused on retail and technology with roles at Accenture France, Clarins, Johnson & Johnson, eBay, and PayPal Australia.

Since 2016 she has been very active in the Magento Community and currently serves as Vice President of the Mage-OS association and as a Director on the board of the Extension Developers Network.

She now lives in France, where she is originally from, with her husband and two children.

She is a keen foodie and in her spare time, she is a drummer in a rock band.

Uri Strauss is the CEO of Webeyez, a Tel Aviv-based digital analytics platform that online businesses use to immediately grow revenue by surfacing the most important points of hidden friction in the consumer journey. Prior to founding Webeyez, Uri was the CEO and co-founder of Yaabam Technologies, which specialized in development for many e-commerce brands across platforms. Uri also served as CEO for easyMarkets, a trading platform with the mission to democratize trading of everything from cryptocurrency to global indices and metals.

Vijay is a Co-Founder and Solution Architect at Evrig. Vijay is one of the worldwide Adobe Commerce Technical and Business Instructor for Adobe Digital Learning Services and regularly travels to and speaks at Magento events. Vijay actively involved in the Magento Community through organizing Meet Magento India, Distributed Contribution Day, Local city level meetups, and Magento Association Events committee member. Vijay’s career as a Magento Developer started with Magento Commerce in 2009. During the initial years, he gained experience in different skills like Magento customization, extension development/integration, API integration, and Magento performance. He extensively focuses on code quality. When not working, Vijay enjoys spending time with his family, watching the cricket match, and running.

Willem is the founder of Hyvä Themes, the fastest Magento frontend currently on the market. He has been working with Magento since 2011. After he started specializing in performance optimization on Magento, he accidentially built Hyvä out of frustration with the Luma theme and the PWA solutions currently on the market. Hyvä focusses heavily on performance, reducing complexity and thereby also reducing the build time and developer frustration. Willem is also currently serving on the Magento Association Board of Directors.

Yael is Vice President of Product Management at Checkout.com. She covers Payment Facilitators, Marketplaces, Payout Solutions, and Developer Experience, and is passionate about developing customer-centric solutions anchored in data.

Yael has been building and deploying global payments solutions for the last 15 years. She has worked with businesses around the world helping optimize the payment experience in verticals such as Ecommerce, Omnichannel Retail, Digital Goods, and Subscription platforms. She joined Checkout.com in 2020 after six years at Paysafe Group, where she led the strategy, planning and execution of the global payment network for both b2c and b2b verticals.

Yael has a masters’ degree from The New School in New York City.