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.
Prior to Amazon, she started and grew Comcast and Western Digital’s Open Source Program Offices. Nithya first glimpsed the power of open source while at SGI in the ‘90s and has been building bridges between companies and the open source community ever since. She’s also held leadership positions at Wind, Synopsys, Avaya, Tripwire and Eastman Kodak.
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. She has been pushing for all contributions to open source to be valued such as in marketing, legal and community and not just code. Nithya graduated with an MS in Computer Science from NDSU and an MBA from the University of Rochester, Simon Business School. Today she is an aspiring corporate director and corporate governance enthusiast.
