Benchmarking AI infrastructure readiness Webinar | Flexential

Brian Gero

SVP Core and Strategic Engineering , Flexential

Brian is the Senior Vice President for Core and Strategic Engineering at Flexential, where he leads the Professional Services, Backbone and Cloud, and Data Protection Engineering and Operations teams. With over two decades of global leadership experience, Brian has consistently demonstrated his ability to enhance customer satisfaction, tackle complex challenges, and drive operational efficiencies. His expertise lies in team integration and high-performance team development, underpinned by a leadership style emphasizing active listening, data-driven decision-making, cross-functional collaboration, and strategic planning.

Adam Knapp

VP, Engineering , DigitalOcean

Adam Knapp is VP of Engineering at DigitalOcean, leading data center engineering and operations, fleet and capacity management, and GPU infrastructure deployments to support the growth of DigitalOcean’s cloud and AI/ML offerings. He helped lead DigitalOcean’s AI/ML infrastructure initiative launched in April 2024, contributing to over 200% year-over-year revenue growth in Q2 2024. Previously, Adam served as VP of Product & Engineering at GoDaddy and as COO at WebPros, where he focused on scaling cloud platforms and driving operational efficiency. At DigitalOcean, he focuses on modernizing infrastructure and proactive capacity planning to enhance customer experience, enable customers to adopt AI capabilities, and expand DigitalOcean’s own use of AI across its platform.

Kenneth Chaney

PARCC Associate Director of AI and Technology , University of Pennsylvania

Ken Chaney is the Associate Director of the Penn Advanced Research Computing Center (PARCC), where he works with a university-wide team to expand research computing capabilities across the University of Pennsylvania. His first project at PARCC delivers a DGX SuperPOD, an AMD EPYC Genoa CPU cluster, and 5PB of storage, effectively doubling the university’s research computing capacity in a single deployment. Ken earned his Ph.D. from the Department of Computer and Information Science at Penn, where he managed a lab-wide computing environment while remaining active in the computer vision research community. At PARCC, he focuses on delivering high-value computing resources to the university’s leading AI research labs while also lowering barriers to entry for groups beginning their journey into AI.