TechLead Conference 2025: AI in Orgs

Kanika Tolver is a Senior AI Product Manager, Certified Agile Facilitator, and founder of Career Rehab, LLC. With over 15 years of experience across government and private-sector tech, she brings bold insights on product development, AI integration, and career transformation. She's the author of Career Rehab and has been featured on CNN, CNBC, and The Washington Post. Kanika empowers professionals to rethink how they work and thrive in the digital age making her a sought-after speaker at tech and career development conferences.

Award-winning engineering leader, TEDx speaker, and author of Amazon bestselling career guide "You Belong in Tech". She started coding at 8 and has since led teams across consulting, health tech, AI innovation, and media. In 2024, she won Software Engineering Leader of the Year with the WomenTech Global Awards; and in 2025, her technical interview structure, "The McDougall Method" was revealed in a blog post which shot to prominence.

Swizec is a software engineer, author, and conference speaker. He's published books on modern web technologies, data visualization, and productivity, and has trained engineering teams at companies big and small. He’s on a mission to distill 20 years of tacit experience into actionable steps.

Tony is a bestselling Udemy and Pluralsight author, known for his online courses such as "JavaScript: Understanding the Weird Parts", in which he focuses on teaching web and computer science fundamentals. He has spent 25 years as a web application developer, database architect, and UX designer and continues to focus on creating a usable and accessible web. He holds a BS in computer science from Case Western Reserve University.

Maya is Lead Software Engineer in Salesforce, working extensively with JavaScript and frontend frameworks and based in Israel. She founded and is currently the organizer of the VueJS Israel Meetup Community, helping to create a strong playground for Vue.js lovers and like-minded developers. Maya is also a published author, international speaker and an open-source library maintainer of frontend and web projects. As a core maintainer of StorefrontUI framework for e-commerce, she focuses on delivering performant components and best practices to the community while believing a strong Vanilla JavaScript knowledge is necessary for being a good web developer.

Amy has over 22+ years of web experience and have expertise in product design, frontend, and backend development. She's developed multiple technology courses and written curriculum for the University of Florida, in their Master’s program. She has spoken at conferences around the world about full stack development. Her podcast, http://Compressed.fm supports thousands of developers with design and engineering tips. She has built hundreds of websites and products for enterprise companies, startups, and even major recording artists. She lives in Nashville, TN with her husband, 3 adorable children, and 2 dogs.

Gregor is an engineering leader with 12+ years of experience in the engineering industry. In his career, he grew as an engineer to Senior Software Engineer and after to Lead roles (Team Lead to Engineering Manager to Head of Engineering to VP of Engineering to CTO). And now he is helping people and teams/companies to thrive with Fractional/Interim CTO roles, tech advising, coaching and mentoring. He is also writing one of the fastest growing newsletters for engineers and managers called Engineering Leadership newsletter.

Co-founder & COO at Epicmax | OpenSource advocate | Vuestic UI core team

Expert in AI-Powered Microservices and Cloud Performance Optimization in Fintech Solutions. A Senior Staff Engineer at Walmart, a speaker at IEEE and ICETAIA 2025, with a recent publication on Agentic AI in enterprise environments.

Generative AI Engineer and Product Manager, working in IT for the past 13 years. MSc. in AI Engineering. Founder of CEE AI Hub, AI venture building and local communities booster. I worked in corporates (Microsoft, Cisco) and startups (edrone, kontakt.io), finished my full-time working as a Product Director. I am helping companies implementing Generative AI features / products and building product (engineering) teams. IoT and homelab enthusiast. I own a vineyard

Cynthia Akiotu is a Cybersecurity Architect and Identity Specialist with expertise in IAM, data governance, and Zero Trust. She has led projects on securing AI-driven environments, identity risk, and insider threats. A certified Microsoft Identity & Access Administrator and Microsoft Certified: Information Security Administrator, Cynthia speaks at global events and writes on AI governance and security. She also leads community initiatives as Cyberhero Coach Cynthia, promoting digital safety.

Keren Fanan is the co-founder and CEO of Myop, a developer-first platform transforming how UI and UX are built, controlled and optimized in production. Keren has held key leadership positions at Moon Active and Gett and has a proven track record of success in scaling startups, launching strategic partnerships and driving profitability. At Gett, a global B2B transportation leader and unicorn, Keren served as Chief Revenue Officer and GM Enterprise. She was instrumental in scaling the company from its early stages to over $200 million in revenue, leading international SaaS strategy and overseeing marketing, sales, and business development. Following Gett, Keren joined Moon Active, a $5B gaming company, as VP of Product & Monetization. There, she led cross-functional teams, shaped product direction, and grew average daily revenue from $10K to $200K, contributing to over $1.5B in total revenue. Keren is a passionate advocate for women’s inclusion in tech and serves as a board member at Women in Tech (WIT). She also actively mentors and supports the next generation of female tech leaders.

Wesley is a Senior Principal Engineer at Modus Create, with over 13 years of experience building cloud-native applications for web and mobile. Working as a tech leader he's spending most of his time working closely with engineering, product, and design to solve customers' business problems. His experience sits at the intersection of hands-on coding, innovation, and people management with a mix of experiences going from AWS, Java and TypeScript to startups, agile and lean practices.

Shaundai is a front end Senior Software Engineer (Netflix) based in Georgia, US. Through her work as a course instructor (tsforjs.com) and her YouTube channel (youtube.com/shaundai), she aims to make programming interesting and approachable for all.

J. B. Rainsberger (@jbrains@mastodon.social) is a professional 5-pin bowler who enjoys consulting with software development professionals and the companies that employ them. He guides companies to better results from their software projects while he helps individuals work with less stress. He wants everyone to actually realize the promised benefits of Lightweight approaches to software development, which includes making sense of the "Agile" chaos of the past quarter-century. Companies engage him for remote working sessions, training courses, on-site workshops, and in-person consulting visits. Individuals, especially those stuck in companies that don't have the budget for formal consulting, can get the help they need by joining J. B.'s mentoring group by visiting https://experience.jbrains.ca. (Quite often, they can convince their employer to pay for that!) He lives in Atlantic Canada with his wife, Sarah, who is busy showing the Open Source world how to have quality documentation even with a mostly-volunteer project community. They travel to Europe less often than they used to, which makes each visit even more enjoyable.