Derek Garnier is the CEO of Evocative, a global digital infrastructure provider headquartered in Los Angeles, California. With over 35 years in the industry, he has built, operated, and sold multiple companies across data centers, fiber networks, and managed services. A former engineer turned strategist, Garnier co-founded Arcadian Infracom, led Layer42 Networks through a successful acquisition by Wave Broadband in 2015, and returned to Evocative as CEO in February 2023. He champions hybrid cloud, AI-ready infrastructure, and inclusion as core business pillars, guiding Evocative through a significant debt financing round in December 2025 to expand high-density colocation and network capacity for next-generation AI applications.
Sachin Puri is the Chief Executive Officer of Bluehost Group (Newfold Digital), the umbrella that houses Bluehost, HostGator, Yoast, and YITH. An IIT Kanpur engineer with a Michigan Ross MBA, he spent two decades marketing and operating high-growth SaaS, security, and commerce brands - WP Engine, McAfee, StubHub, eBay, HP, Liquid Web - before taking the corner office in May 2025 with a mandate to rebuild the open web for the AI era.
Steve Smith is the Chief Executive Officer of Zayo Group, one of the world's largest independent fiber network and infrastructure companies. A West Point engineering graduate and former eight-year U.S. Army officer, Smith built his reputation scaling Equinix from a $2 billion company to a $34 billion global data center giant over 11 years as CEO. Appointed to lead Zayo in October 2020 after the company went private under EQT and Digital Colony, he is now steering the company through a massive AI-driven infrastructure buildout - securing over $1 billion in AI-related deals in 2024 alone, with a pipeline exceeding $3 billion. Under his leadership, Zayo operates 240,000+ route miles globally and 34 million fiber miles, serving customers across healthcare, finance, media, and enterprise sectors.