Neela Jacques

A 20-year veteran of the tech industry, Neela Jacques brings a wealth of business, product and open-source experience to the role of executive director of OpenDaylight Project. He has taken OpenDaylight from a nascent project whose future was doubted by many to a vibrant, growing open-source community that is quickly becoming the de facto standard platform for software-defined networking (SDN).

Jacques guides and oversees all aspects of the OpenDaylight Project, from governance and technology to community and marketing. A big part of his role includes driving innovation and collaboration to advance open-source software, as well as software-defined networking and network function virtualization (NFV), across the tech industry via an open-source networking platform. He spends a great deal of his time actively facilitating strategic collaboration, helping to find areas of common ground both among industry rivals and within the technical community as a whole.

He received an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business with high honors and a bachelor of science degree from Georgetown University. He is an adviser and board member for several startups, a frequent writer for leading publications and a dynamic public speaker.

The opinions expressed in this blog are those of Neela Jacques and do not necessarily represent those of IDG Communications Inc. or its parent, subsidiary or affiliated companies.