Keynote Speakers

Angie Jones is the Global Vice President of Developer Relations for Block’s decentralized finance division. She is an award-winning teacher and international keynote speaker who shares her wealth of knowledge at software companies and conferences all over the world. As a Master Inventor, Angie is known for her innovative and out-of-the-box thinking style which has resulted in more than 25 patented inventions in the areas of metaverses, collaboration software, social networking, smarter planet, and software development processes.

Melissa Tondi has spent most of her career working within software testing teams. She is the Director of Quality Engineering at Guild Education and Principal at Disrupt Testing, where she assists companies to continuously improve the pursuit of quality software—from design to delivery and everything in between. In her software test and quality engineering careers, Melissa has focused on building and organizing teams around three major tenets—efficiency, innovation, and culture – and uses the Greatest Common Denominator (GCD) approach for determining ways in which team members can assess, implement and report on day to day activities so the gap between need and value is as small as possible.
Session Speakers

Alexa Beach is a Senior Quality Assurance Analyst for Core BTS. Alexa has over 8 years of experience in advocating for quality throughout various projects. She is passionate about not only testing functionality, but also testing from the perspective of the end-user. Because of her strong belief that testing should be approached as early in the process as possible, she engages in quality advocacy at every stage of the project, from designing the user interface to uncovering and documenting business requirements. Please don’t throw something over the wall at her. When she is not working, Alexa enjoys spending time with her family at their lake place or a nearby local winery. If you don’t find her there, she is probably at home snuggled up with her pup and a cup of coffee.

Aly Brine is the founder of The Corporate Hippie Hustle, the leading resource for Corporate Hippies who want to thrive in their careers. As someone who loves juxtaposition, her work focuses on teaching both energetic and practical tools to equip her fellow lightworkers in purposeful work. Aly prides herself on embracing her awareness that effective transformation starts from within and exudes a talent to problem solve from multiple lenses while questioning the norms of work in a manner that’s backed by business acumen. She’s an award-winning coach, speaker, and podcast host with a background in Human Resources, collegiate career services and recruiting.
Aly comes with a Master’s in Human Resources Management and Bachelor’s in Psychology both from The Ohio State University, a yoga instruction certification and more professional development coursework than most humans should probably do in a lifetime. And if you were wondering: Enneagram 3, Scorpio Sun, Leo Moon, Taurus Rising and Manifesting Generator Human Design. She’s got crystals in her Louis Vuitton and is just as comfortable in a full moon circle as she is in a meeting with the leadership team. At the end of the day, she considers herself a little corporate, a little hippie and a lotta hustle.

Amanda Perkins is a Sr. SQA for Rocket Homes. She has been in the quality field for almost 10 years and uses her vast array of job skills to help improve not only the quality of software but the quality of interactions between team members. With a background in customer service, retail sales, music and leadership, she uses these skills to help her to think outside of the box when it comes to quality. With a passion for software quality and strengthening soft skills for members in IT, she is a speaker and has given conference talks on building more inclusive teams, tips and tricks on how to give better demos, and is working toward giving other talks on automation frameworks and the human side of software testing. Amanda lives near Kansas City, MO with her husband, 2 kids, cat and dog.

Andrew Knight is the Automation Panda and a Developer Advocate at Applitools. He strives to help others in solving problems in software development, testing, and quality. Over the past decade, he has designed and built robust test automation projects from the ground up that can run thousands of tests continuously. He is the author of the upcoming book "The Way To Test Software" from Manning Publications, and he is also the lead developer for Boa Constrictor, the .NET Screenplay Pattern. Read his tech blog at AutomationPanda.com, and follow him on Twitter at @AutomationPanda.

Andy Warns is the Principal Automation Architect at Impower.ai. A subject matter expert in process and test automation, continuous integration/delivery, and enterprise architecture, he focuses on partnering with leadership to strategize, architect and implement automation solutions with the goal of driving efficiency gains throughout the entire organization.

Ben Oconis comes from a customer support background where he has spent 15 years managing customers, dealing with angry people, and helping make their day to day experience better. As a new tester—and the first within his organization, Ben takes that background and previous experience and tries to apply it to find innovative ways to help improve quality across the organization. He has had some great successes and failures and hopes to share those with the testing community. When not testing, Ben enjoys hanging with his family which includes 2 kiddos, a 5-year-old and 8-month-old, his wife and his old dog Dexter, who is a dachshund mix.
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Carlos Kidman is a Director of Engineering and Test Architect, but was formerly an Engineering Manager at Adobe. He is also an instructor at Test Automation University with courses around architecture, design, and containerization. He is the founder of QA at the Point, which is the Testing and Quality Community in Utah, and does consulting, workshops, and speaking events all over the world. He streams programming and other tech topics on Twitch, has a YouTube channel, builds open source software like Pylenium and PyClinic, and is an ML/AI practitioner. He loves futbol, anime, gaming, and spending time with his wife and kids.

Damian Synadinos helped to “build better software and build software better” through testing for more than 25 years. Now, through his company Ineffable Solutions, he helps “build better people”. Damian is an international speaker and trainer, delivering keynotes, talks, and workshops that are focused on fundamental topics and people-skills, based on real-world experience, and supplemented with deep research. His diverse experience spans many roles, industries, and companies, including CompuServe, NetJets, Abercrombie & Fitch, Nationwide Insurance, and Huntington Bank. Damian also helped organize the "QA or the Highway" conference from 2014-2020, has over 10 years of theatrical improv experience, authored and illustrated a children’s book, “Hank and Stella in Something from Nothing” (HankAndStellaBooks.com), and draws strangers for fun (IDrawStrangers.com).

Darrel Farris is a Solutions Engineering Manager at mabl, a low-code, intelligent test automation company. Prior to mabl, he spent much of his career working across a variety of roles within product delivery, often focused on aspects of quality and testing. His diverse technical experience and upbeat personality make him an engaging, compelling coach with a focus on nurturing good testing practices. In his free time, Darrel enjoys papercraft, tinkering with the insides of pianos, photography, and niche fragrances.

Eran Kinsbruner is a bestselling author, TechBeacon Top 30 test automation leader, and the Chief Evangelist and Senior Director at Perforce Software. His published books include the 2016 Amazon bestseller, “The Digital Quality Handbook”, “Continuous Testing for DevOps Professionals”, and “Accelerating Software Quality – ML and AI in the Age of DevOps”, which was named the “Best New Software Testing Book” by Book Authority. With a background of over 21 years’ experience in development and testing at companies such as Sun Microsystems, Neustar, Texas Instruments, General Electric, and more, Eran holds various industry certifications such as ISTQB, CMMI, and others. Eran is a recognized influencer on continuous testing and DevOps thought leadership, an international speaker, blogger, and also a patent-holding inventor (test exclusion automated mechanisms for mobile J2ME testing). Eran is active in the community and can be found across social media and has his own blog http://continuoustesting.dev

Jacob Haning is the Principal AI Architect at Impower.ai. A subject matter expert in machine learning, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and pure mathematics, he focuses on leading standards and best practices while helping business units deliver true value by identifying, and solving, challenges ideal for machine learning.

Jamie Kelley is 10 year veteran of the Columbus IT Market. He started his journey in automation development out of college. After that he moved into a full stack developer role 5 years. Now he\'s back in the automation space at Huntington Bank where he helps manage the Automation efforts for one of their business segments.He has often served in leadership roles on any team he has been on. Teaching others and helping build the foundations for success.In his spare time he likes to ballroom dance and do nerdy activities with his friends.

Jeff Sing is a Quality Leader who has been in the testing industry for over 15 years. During this time, he has built automation frameworks, test strategies, and executed quality initiatives for fields such as medical devices, infrastructure security, web identification, and experimentation and progressive delivery.Jeff has most recently joined Iterable to build out a QA organization and orchestrates Iterable’s quality control plan utilizing a combination of automated testing, implementing QA procedures, and acting as our customer experience champion to ensure Iterable remains the world’s leading customer engagement platform.

Jenna Charlton been a tester for over a decade and focused on web accessibility, usability, test methodologies, and test and agile leadership. My experience in testing runs the gamut from lone tester on a Scrum team to test lead on an enterprise-level project. I\'m passionate about helping teams move to a culture of whole team quality and empowering testers to be quality leaders on their teams.

Joel Montvelisky is a Co-Founder and Chief Solution Architect at PractiTest. Joel has been in testing and QA since 1997, working as a tester, QA Manager and Director, and a Consultant for companies in Israel, the US and the EU. Joel is a Forbes council member, a blogger with the QA Intelligence Blog, and is constantly imparting webinars on a number of testing and Quality Related topics. In addition, Joel is the founder and Chair of the OnlineTestConf, and the co-founder of the State of Testing survey and report and a director at the Association of Software Testing(AST).

Justin Hunter is the CEO and Founder of Hexawise, is recognized as one of the world's leading experts in the field of optimized test design. Prior to founding Hexawise, Justin earned an Accenture Global Innovation award for introducing methods of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of software testing. Justin has taught thousands of testers and business analysts on six continents how to implement more efficient and effective testing methods, and is dedicated to furthering the spread of better software test design practices to firms around the world.

Leandro Melendez is a performance testing manager providing testing and consulting services to worldwide companies. He has over 20 years of experience in IT and over 10 in the performance testing practice where he served multiple S&P500 customers all over the USA, Mexico, Canada, Brazil, India, Austria, etc. Author of the popular performance testing blog Señor Performo (www.srperf.com) where he curates a diverse set of learning material for performance testers and engineers. He is the producer and host of the Spanish language version of the PerfBytes podcast and the Señor Performo learning YouTube channels. He is an international public speaker participating in multiple conferences, events and webinars, with keynotes, workshops and multiple talks on his belt. And last, author of "The Hitchhikers Guide To Load Testing Projects", a fun walkthrough that will guide you through the phases or levels of an IT load testing project.

Lee Barnes has over 25 years of experience in the Software Quality Assurance and Testing field. Lee has been involved in the implementation of test automation and performance testing solutions in hundreds of environments across a wide array of industries. Most recently, he has been involved with bringing quality practices (with a focus on automation and performance) to DevOps teams. Lee regularly speaks at industry conferences including StarWEST, EuroStar, DevOpsDays, Agile+DevOps East, STPCon, and TestCon Europe.

Sarala Pandey is presently serving as a Senior QA Manager at Chipotle Mexican Grill. Her expertise is building QA organization from scratch and lift it up all the way to enterprise level. In less than two years she has transform QA organization at CMG, and built a strong QA organization that is recognized by Enterprise Project Management team. Prior to that she had built a QA organization at Huntington National Bank where she developed enterprise QA standard, process and documentation for Waterfall and Agile development process. Sarala began her career in QA with an internship at Online Computer Library Center (OCLC). Over the course of 20 years, she has served as a QA Analyst, QA Lead, Off-shore Liaison, and finally as a QA Manager. She is responsible for delivering industry-wide SDLC standards to AT&T/IBM, SypherLink, Huntington National Bank and Chipotle Mexican Grill.

Matthew Eakin has over 20 years of technical, leadership and planning experience. With his extensive experience, Mr. Eakin brings a unique, thorough and comprehensive perspective to every project. His extensive expertise around all aspects of the SDLC combined with development skills has helped him to be an effective Agile and Test practitioner and coach. He talks extensively on Gherkin Scripting and is in high-demand as a BDD (Behavior-Driven Development)/ATDD (Acceptance Test Driven Development) coach.

Petros Plakogiannis lives in Greece. He has graduated the University of Piraeus and the Technological Educational Institute of Crete. He has been working professionally as a software tester for 12 years, with strong focus on automated testing using various tools like QTP , Selenium, Protractor etc. He also has a significant experience in white box testing, application testing (desktop, web and mobile), and security testing. He travels a lot and support customers onsite by providing information regarding automation testing. Petros is also the main organizer of the Ministry of Testing Athens meetups and he is very active into the testing community.

Shyam Sunder is a PMP® Certified Test Program Manager with total IT Testing Experience of 23+ Years. Shyam has worked in various reputed organizations like Capgemini, Dell , Sapient, HCL Tech, United Health Group etc. Shyam is strong in the area of Test Management, Software Testing areas and Client relationship management. Shyam has been a regular contributor in IT Forums with his presentations and workshops. Some of the Conferences include QA Geekle’2021, Q4Quality’2019,TLC’2018,StarEast’2017,STP,2013 etc.
Shyam's Professional Certifications:
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PMI Certified PMP®.
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Certified Test Manager
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Certified Scrum Master
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6-Sigma Green Belt Champion.
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KPMG Certified IS0 9001 Internal Auditor.
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Brainbench Certification in Project Management.
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AHM 250
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Healthcare Integration Architect
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Healthcare Consultant

Stacy Wyatt started her second career in software and found a love for testing. She started working in QA in 2014 and was placed on the flagship team where one of the first bugs she found was in the code written by the CEO. After learning a lot about testing in an Agile environment, Stacy made the move into Management. She is now Managing the most talented team of SDET\'s that she\'s ever worked with!

Thomas Haver is presently serving as a Test Automation Architect. He leads a team of testers, ops engineers, and production support analysts in the adoption of DevOps practices. Previously, he led the enterprise automation support of 73 applications at Huntington National Bank that encompassed testing, metrics & reporting, and data management. Thomas has a background in Physics & Biophysics, with over a decade spent in research science studying fluorescence spectroscopy and microscopy before joining IT.

Titus Fortner is a core contributor to the Selenium project and the current project lead for Watir (a Ruby test library built on top of Selenium). Titus has created automated frameworks at several companies as an SDET and worked with numerous clients on their frameworks as a Solutions Architect at Sauce Labs. He's currently a Senior Development Experience Engineer, creating tools and resources for developers and testers to make better use of Sauce Labs.

Magesh Chandran is QA Test automation architect at Everest technologies. An avid learner and practitioner of Test automation. He is passionate about Quality and is experienced with a variety of technologies and tools. Currently, leading QA automation with a client's transformation journey. Magesh is father to 2 amazing kids and loves outdoor sports.

James Otworth is a software developer and test engineer with a focus on quality. Transitioning from medical science to software in 2019, he has been responsible for automating performance, regression and functional testing for several teams and projects at Everest Technologies Inc. While at his current client Abercrombie & Fitch, he has been a key contributor in modernizing the current integrations platform, implementing CI/CD technologies and introducing future-state QA methodologies into the software delivery pipeline.

Hitesh Patel is the Director of Quality Engineering at Sogeti-Capgemini. He has over 23 years of experience in IT Quality Assurance, leading various QA transformation programs for multiple companies in Healthcare, Insurance and Retail. He has been a speaker for STAREAST conference and co-author for World Quality Report for last 2 years.