By Nicola Wright
As we wave goodbye to summer, we’re saying hello to a new batch of AWS Heroes, including the first Heroes based in Cameroon and Malaysia! Let’s get to know them.
Denis Astahov
Vancouver, Canada | Community Hero | @adv4000
A seven-time AWS certified Solutions Architect at OpsGuru, Denis’s day-to-day sees him automating and developing a range of cloud solutions using Terraform. He’s also an accomplished vlogger, having garnered more than 70,000 subscribers and over 7,000,000 views on his YouTube channel, where he shares his know-how about all things DevOps and AWS. Denis’s channel is a valuable asset, and one of the most popular free resources of AWS and DevOps information in the Russian-speaking cloud community.
Ivonne Roberts
Tampa, US | Severless Hero | @ivlo11
An AWS veteran with more than 15 years of software development under her belt, Ivonne is currently a Principal Software Engineer at Edelman Financial Engines. Ivonne has been building serverless apps for over five years, and has developed expertise across a number of areas including building prototypes, establishing reference architectures, and developing mission-critical production workloads. Well-known for sharing her knowledge with the software engineering community, Ivonne runs both a popular blog and a YouTube channel dedicated to making serverless architecture more accessible.
Kaushik Mohanraj
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia | Community Hero | @kaushikmohanraj
A cloud fanatic with almost a decade of experience across the cloud space—and a total of 10 AWS certifications to him name—Kaushik is Director of Operations and Sales for Blazeclan Technologies, Malaysia. With a wealth of experience in architecting cloud solutions, Kaushik has led on multiple cloud-native and digital transformation projects for customers all over the world. He’s also a keen disseminator of AWS knowledge, and dedicates a lot of time to helping others build their own careers in the cloud. A co-organizer of AWS User Group Malaysia since 2019, he’s also co-director of Women In Big Data’s Malaysia Chapter, which offers a platform for Women in Technology, and is a regular event speaker in his role as an AWS APN Ambassador.
Luc van Donkersgoed
Utrecht, The Netherlands | DevTools Hero | @donkersgood
A solutions architect and software developer, Luc works as a Lead Engineer at the Dutch national postal service, where he designs and develops serverless architectures that help process millions of the country’s parcels. Luc is a huge fan of emerging tech, and is passionate about sharing his knowledge and enthusiasm with others in the tech space. As well as speaking at events, on podcasts, and contributing to blogs, Luc has also created his own 16-session video learning course on YouTube, and is the creator of the AWS Blogs Twitter Bot. Busy man!
Rick Hwang
Taipei City, Taiwan | Community Hero | LinkedIn
Rick is an AWS veteran of almost a decade, who has been using the platform’s core services to build and deliver OMO solutions for thousands of customers since 2015. Rick is currently a Senior Technical Manager at 91APP, where he and his team are responsible for not only building infrastructure on AWS, but managing cost, DevOps, and security. Rick’s commitment to helping other developers upskill saw him found SRE Taiwan four years ago. The group now has over 3,600 members that share best practices, content and host study group meetups.
Rosius Ndimofor
Douala, Cameroon | Serverless Hero | @atehrosius
Rosius is a relative newcomer to AWS, having first started working with the platform in 2020 after being introduced to it by a friend who co-organizes an AWS User Group. As a software developer at serverless consulting firm Serverless Guru, Rosius has been building apps for customers for eight years, and since first discovering AWS, has been documenting his journey on his blog. He’s also a regular speaker at AWS meetups and in AWS Community Voices video shows and webinars, where he shares his experiences getting to grips with AWS and building serverless web and mobile apps.
Setia Budi
Bandung, Indonesia | Community Hero | @boedybios
An academic and lecturer at Maranatha Christian University, Indonesia, Budi’s areas of interest include data science, optimization, and environmental monitoring. His love of knowledge-sharing is evident both inside and outside the classroom; as well as being a lecturer, he also runs a YouTube channel providing computer science-related learning materials, and is working on building out additional materials through weekly streaming sessions. Budi is also an accomplished speaker, having presented at such tech events as PyConID 2019, and has appeared on a number of podcasts and tech talk shows like Machine Learning ID, NUNI, Ceritanya Developer, DeepTech Talks, and Kota Kode.
Vinicius Caridá
São Paulo, Brazil | Machine Learning Hero | @vfcarida
An Engineer with a Masters and a PhD in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, Vini is Head of Digital Customer Service Platforms, PCP, WFM, Data, and AI at the largest bank in the Southern Hemisphere and a Professor for MBA Machine Learning, Data, and BI programs at FIAP. When it comes to sharing his know-how with others, social media, YouTube, and AWS Meetups (like AWS User Group São Paulo, where he’s a community leader) are Vini’s weapons of choice. He’s also a community leader at open source machine learning framework TensorFlow São Paulo.
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The second batch of cloud stars announced this year include the first-ever Heroes based in Peru and Ukraine. Let’s get to know them.
Tampere, Finland | Data Hero | @anahit_fi
A Lead Cloud Software Engineer at AWS Advanced Consulting Partner (and one of Finland’s largest digital transformation firms) Solita, Anahit has over ten years’ experience in the software architecture field. After cutting her teeth building on-premise, she began working in the cloud and now primarily works with AWS Data and Serverless platforms. Anahit is a regular writer, podcast guest, and speaker at local user groups and international tech events alike, where she can often be found discussing one of her pet subjects; AWS Kinesis and its integrations with serverless architecture.
Gothenburg, Sweden | Data Hero | @iAnuragKale
Another new Data Hero, Anurag is a certified AWS Solutions Architect — Associate, and a Cloud Consultant at Cybercom Group. In this role, Anurag works to create data-led solutions for customers, and is a particular fan of DynamoDB and Amazon Aurora. A significant presence in the AWS data space, he regularly shares his knowledge on social media, is co-organizer of the AWS User Group Pune, and helped host and run AWS Community Day Pune 2020 and AWS Community Day India 2020 – Virtual Edition. Anarug has also spoken at AWS Community Day Nordics 2020, along with various AWS Meetups, and was recently crowned a Next Generation Global Cloud Thought Leader by Whizlabs!
Kyiv, Ukraine | Container Hero | @setevoy2
A DevOps pro and 15 year veteran of the IT industry, Arseny is currently DevOps Team Lead and Data Security Officer at BetterMe Inc., where he harnesses AWS services like EKS to create robust, scalable solutions. He shares his considerable knowledge on his blog, where he writes about DevOps, system administration, containerization, and cloud computing. Arseny is an active member of Ukraine’s largest DevOps community group, UrkOps. He spends his spare time helping others achieve their digital solution goals using AWS, containers, and DevOps methodology.
Istanbul, Turkey | Community Hero | @azmimengu
An AWS cloud development professional for five years, Azmi specializes in serverless, containers, data, and storage services. He’s currently a Senior Software Engineer at Armut/HomeRun, and when he’s not developing great cloud solutions, he can be found blogging, organizing, and speaking at events. He’s co-organized and spoken at more than 50 events to date, both virtual and in-person, including the inaugural ServerlessDays Istanbul and various AWS Community Day Turkey events. Azmi is also on the organizing committee of the Cloud and Serverless Turkey community.
Ima, Perú | Community Hero | cortez.cloud
Carlos Cortez is the true embodiment of an AWS Community Hero, with a laundry list of firsts to his name. A certified AWS professional and CTO of CENNTI, he’s the organizer of Perú’s two largest AWS events to date: AWS Community Day Lima 2019 and AWS UG Perú Conference in 2021. He’s also the founder and leader of AWS User Group Perú, and creator of the first Latam AWS podcast Imperio Cloud, and the Al día con AWS podcast. Passionate about creating content on emerging technologies, he founded Twitch show #DeepFridays to focused on AI and machine learning technology.
Santa Cruz, USA | Machine Learning Hero | LinkedIn
A CEO, entrepreneur, inventor, and 2019 AWS DeepRacer Summit race winner, Chris is a technical wizard with a huge range of specialisms across software, hardware, AI and machine learning, and IT operations. As well as running AWS Select partner Cloud Brigade, Chris has also worked with AWS AI/ML teams on DeepLens and DeepRacer projects, including The Poopinator, an automated system that uses ML to spot (and deter) dogs who might be about to leave an unexpected gift on your lawn. No stranger to wild projects and hackathons, he counts the creation of an automated beer brewery, developing an animatronic ventriloquist dummy, and winning a Cardboard Boat Race among his many colorful achievements!
Brussels, Belgium | DevTools Hero | @glnds
A Cloud Solution Architect at DPG Media, Gert has been laser-focused on building and deploying cloud-native apps for more than eight years. As part of the program committee for major tech event Devoxx, Gert helps deliver quality cloud-focused sessions, and is also a regular blogger and sharer of code on GitHub. Gert’s blog is packed with top tips and under-the-hood secrets to help developers and cloud engineers with tasks like logging, debugging, error handling, and Infrastructure as Code. An early advocate of the cookie-cutter approach to AWS CloudFormation, he also helped create a collection of templates to make the migration of apps to AWS faster and easier.
Beijing, China | Machine Learning Hero | @wulei_bj_cn
A blogger, lecturer, and deep learning aficionado, Lei heads up the machine learning team at FreeWheel; a role that sees him work to promote services like Amazon SageMaker, EC2, S3, EMR, RDS, and Athena. A dedicated knowledge-sharer, as well as lecturing as part of one of the biggest IT learning platforms in China, he also publises blogs on ML and big data for infoQ. He’s shared his love of all things machine learning at several tech events too, including Spark Summit China, World Artificial Intelligence Conference, AWS Innovate AI/ML edition, and AWS re:Invent.
Hamamatsu, Japan | Serverless Hero | @hide04241990
A Developer at Startup Technology Inc., Hidetoshi works to develop systems using AWS. As an active member of the Japan AWS User Group, he even developed a distribution site for JAWS-UG’s largest event, using a web of AWS services to create a serverless distribution system that delivered top-quality video streaming for the event’s nearly 4,000 participants! He’s a regular author on web magazine builders.flash, where his articles are among the most-viewed posts. In the wake of the global pandemic, he put his serverless skills to outstanding use for the community, building an information delivery site to help restaurants suffering the effects of the crisis. His efforts earned him coverage in several Japanese media outlets.
Nuremberg, Germany | Machine Learning Hero | @_philschmid
AI and deep learning pro Philipp is a Machine Learning and Tech Lead at Hugging Face, where his role involves creating accessible AI solutions using open source. Specializing in Natural Language Processing, he develops cloud-native ML tools to overcome business challenges. Adept at deploying NLP models using Lambda, he’s also a big fan of Amazon SageMaker and its capacity to make ML easier and more manageable—you can hear him share his passion for these platforms at various tech events, including Data Science on AWS, and via his blog where he writes about all things machine learning, NLP, and serverless.
Milan, Italy | Community Hero | @CloudSimo
Not content with being CEO and CTO at AWS Advanced Consulting Partner beSharp, and a professor of cloud computing at The University of Pavia, Simone is also the co-founder of the first-ever Italian AWS User Group (launched way back in 2012!). Specializing in cloud infrastructures, continuous deployment, backup and disaster recovery, serverless, cloud security, and networking, Simone shares his knowledge as editor and contributor for Proud2beCloud, a technical blog designed to drive the adoption of cloud technologies. He’s also an APN Ambassador and a regular speaker at events and user groups; he also organizers AWS User Group Milan.
Lyon, France | Machine Learning Hero | LinkedIn
Author, professor, DataSquad Team Leader, and Amazon SageMaker superfan Virginie is a data and AI expert who works to help clients get maximum value from their data using AWS big data and data engineering platforms. Virginie has long been at the cutting-edge of the AI space, earning a dual master’s degree in computer science and artificial intelligence, and sharing her knowledge with graduate students for a decade before bringing the power of AI to TeamWork. She’s written numerous books and articles for AI enthusiasts of all ability levels, and is also an advocate for women in tech, working to make the data world a more diverse and inclusive place.
Dhahran, Saudi Arabia | Container Hero | @walidshaari
An Analytics Platform Engineer at Saudi Aramco, Walid collects certifications for fun, with badges including AWS Certified Associate Solutions Architect, Certified Kubernetes Administrator, Certified Kubernetes Application Developer, and Red Hat Certified Architect level IV to his name. A community superstar, he is the community lead for Dammam Cloud-native AWS User Group, and co-organized the first AWS Community Day MENA in 2020, where he also presented. Walid is a Kubernetes cheerleader and maintains content on GitHub for certified Kubernetes specialists to encourage knowledge sharing and collaboration within the container field.
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