Skillcentrix is a Boston-based consultancy and Workday services partner focused exclusively on helping Workday customers build skills-centric talent strategies. Founded in 2022, it advises, deploys, innovates and manages HR technology across the talent lifecycle - planning, acquisition, development, mobilization and retention - for enterprises modernizing their workforce.
SORINT.lab is a multinational, vendor-neutral 'Next Generation System Integrator' founded in Bergamo, Italy in 1985. With roughly 1,500 engineers across 17 offices in Europe, the USA and Africa, it helps over 100 large organizations run and modernize their IT through DevOps, CI/CD, cloud adoption, application modernization, next-generation IT operations and site reliability engineering. The company is a notable open-source contributor (Agola, Stolon, Ercole, Sircles) and runs on a flat, holacracy-style 'Sircles' organizational model.
Eric Berridge is a 23-year Salesforce ecosystem veteran and CEO of Coastal, a premier Salesforce consultancy he joined in 2020 and took the helm of in September 2023. He previously co-founded Bluewolf in 2000 - one of the first Salesforce-focused consulting firms - and built it to a major acquisition by IBM in 2016. A TED speaker, two-time author, and MFA-holder in creative writing who never studied computer science, Berridge argues that the humanities are tech's most underrated competitive advantage. Under his leadership, Coastal was acquired by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) for $700 million in January 2026, the largest professional services acquisition in Salesforce ecosystem history.
Naren Kini is the CEO and co-founder of Global Touchpoints Inc., a California-based IT services and consulting firm he built organically over 20+ years to 150+ employees and $15M+ in annual revenue — entirely without outside capital. Starting from a background in industrial engineering and early stints at Hinditron and Syntel, Kini built Touchpoints into a trusted partner for Fortune 500 companies like Meta, Intuit, and Fiserv, as well as California state government agencies, specializing in Salesforce, AWS, data analytics, AI consulting, and managed services.
Verizon Communications is one of the largest telecommunications carriers in the United States, delivering wireless service, fiber and broadband internet, and managed enterprise networking to consumers, businesses, and government. Formed in 2000 from the merger of Bell Atlantic and GTE, the company runs one of the country's most extensive 5G and fiber-optic networks and reported roughly $138 billion in revenue in 2025.
Arun Kumar Ramchandran - known as 'Rak' - is the Chief Executive Officer of QBurst, a global product development and consulting firm backed by Multiples Private Equity. Appointed in April 2025 following a $200M investment, Rak brings 25 years of leadership experience spanning Infosys, Virtusa, Capgemini, and Hexaware Technologies. An IIT Bombay and IIM Calcutta alumnus based in Palo Alto, he is driving QBurst's transformation into an AI-first engineering services company with his 'High AI-Q' framework - embedding generative and agentic AI into every layer of software delivery.
Tarun Raisoni is the CEO and Co-Founder of Gruve, a Redwood City-based AI services company he launched in February 2024 after selling his previous venture, Rahi Systems, to Wesco International. Rahi Systems scaled to $500M+ in annual revenue across 25 countries with no external funding - then Tarun pivoted immediately to AI, co-founding Gruve with a mission to deliver outcome-based enterprise AI services. Within months, Gruve raised $87.5M in total funding, completed multiple acquisitions, grew to 500+ employees, and unlocked 500+ MW of distributed AI inference capacity across the United States. He is one of the rare founders who has built and exited multiple hundred-million-dollar companies and come back for more.
Alyssa Bernstein is the co-founder, President, and CEO of wrrk, an Austin-based company that provides fully managed, fractional customer support solutions for fast-growing brands and startups. With a background in product management at RetailMeNot and Main Street Hub, she launched wrrk in 2016 to give entrepreneurs access to experienced, embedded support teams without the overhead of building in-house. Under her leadership, wrrk has grown to serve 125+ brands including Bombas, Taylor Stitch, and Supergoop, offering omnichannel support via US-based and offshore teams in the Philippines.
Connie Tang is the CEO and founder of CCT Technologies Inc., operating as ComputerLand of Silicon Valley - a San Jose-based IT solutions firm she built from a storefront computer shop in 1991 into a 55-person enterprise serving government agencies, K-12 schools, higher education institutions, and commercial businesses across Northern California. After more than three decades at the helm, she led the company through a strategic acquisition by ISSQUARED Inc. in May 2024, positioning the combined entity to expand in cybersecurity, AI, and edge computing.
Carolyn Joshua is the President and CEO of Trilyon, Inc., a Silicon Valley-based IT staffing and workforce solutions firm she has led since 2009. Under her leadership, Trilyon has grown into a globally recognized, women-owned and minority-certified enterprise serving Fortune 500 companies including Google, Cisco, Samsung, Hitachi, and Oracle across North America, LATAM, EMEA, and APAC. A champion of diversity, inclusion, and women's empowerment, she serves as Co-Chair of USPAACC WISE and has been recognized with the J.P. Morgan Unity in Action Award (2025), the SheLeads Impact Award (2024), and named a Top 50 Women Leader of San Francisco (2023).
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.
Freddie Heygate is CEO, North America at Just After Midnight, a London-founded managed cloud services and 24/7 digital support company now part of the Ultima group. After spending five years building JAM's Asia-Pacific operations from Singapore, he relocated to Austin, Texas in January 2024 to lead the company's US expansion. With a background spanning digital consultancy, marketing, and business development at agencies including Reading Room and The Drum, Freddie brings over a decade of cross-continental experience helping global brands like Ford, Abbott, and Vodafone keep their digital infrastructure running around the clock.
Joe Zarrehparvar is the President and CEO of Fresche Solutions, a Montreal-based IT advisory and modernization company specializing in IBM i (AS/400) systems serving 22,000+ global clients. A 30-year technology veteran who built his career at Microsoft, Juniper Networks, and Wicresoft, Zarrehparvar took the helm at Fresche in May 2023 and has since driven a wave of AI-powered modernization tools, strategic partnerships with IBM, and a transition to subscription-based service models - all while championing a platform-neutral approach that lets clients modernize on their own terms.
Mike Promotico is the President and CEO of ProTelesis Corporation, a San Diego-based managed IT services provider he has helped build into a West Coast powerhouse over 37+ years in telecommunications. Starting as a principal at INet Corp in 1987 and helping grow it into one of North America's largest Mitel resellers, Promotico has spent three decades bridging the gap between traditional telecom and modern IT - co-founding Technology Assurance Group, leading Standard Tel Networks, and ultimately guiding ProTelesis through eight strategic acquisitions including the 2025 cyber-physical convergence play with Amer-X Security. Under his leadership, ProTelesis manages over 100,000 endpoints for more than 10,000 customers across the U.S.
Mikael Carlsson is the CEO of Forte Group, an AI-native product development partner with 900+ specialists and 25 years of history. A Swedish-born technology executive with 20+ years in digital engineering, he scaled Lohika 5X before joining Forte in October 2022. Under his leadership, Forte Group closed 2025 at an all-time financial high and has positioned itself around AI transformation, data engineering, and outcome-driven software delivery for Fortune 500 and mid-market clients across North America, Europe, and Latin America.
Nilesh Jadhav is the CEO and Co-Founder of AMISEQ Inc., a Milpitas, California-based cybersecurity and intelligent automation company he co-founded in 2017. With over 18 years in IT — more than 12 of them in Silicon Valley — he has built AMISEQ into a globally recognized firm serving Fortune 500 clients across cybersecurity, RPA, product engineering, and UX design. In 2025, AMISEQ launched Z-Deploy, a zero-touch automation platform that compresses multi-day security deployments into under two hours, and expanded aggressively into the Middle East.
Vasu Maganti is the founder and CEO of Zelar (formerly Zelarsoft), a Google Cloud Premier Partner and cloud-native consulting firm headquartered in San Francisco. Since founding the company in 2018, he has built it into an ~180-person, $26.6M-revenue enterprise serving Fortune 500 companies, major banks, telcos, and federal governments across North America and APAC. Zelar was named Google Cloud Activation Partner of the Year - JAPAC 2025 and Google Cloud Partner All-Star in Artificial Intelligence 2024 under his leadership. Maganti co-organizes Silicon Valley's cloud-native meetup community and is a vocal advocate for Kubernetes multi-tenancy, GitOps, zero-trust security, and FinOps practices.
Venkat Bhat is the CEO and founder of VentureSoft Global, an $80 million IT services and consulting firm headquartered in Pleasanton, California. Founded in 1996, VentureSoft has grown to serve over 300 clients - from startups to Fortune 500 companies including Tesla, Nike, Intuit, and Citigroup - across data & AI, cybersecurity, cloud, ERP/CRM, and managed services. With offices in North America, Dubai, and Bengaluru, Bhat has built a global delivery model that blends deep technical expertise with business transformation, and is now steering the company into the era of generative AI and enterprise AI platforms.