Dan Pitt has been a leading voice of the Open Networking movement since its inception. He served as executive director of the Open Networking Foundation from 2011-2016 and since 2017 has been senior vice president of MEF (retired since 2020 but still active), applying SDN, NFV, Cloud, Disaggregation, and Open Source to the offering of new, dynamic services across a global system of automated networks. Since 2007 as President of Palo Alto Innovation Advisors he has advised private and public companies on four continents to commercialize new ideas in broad areas of technology and currently serves as Executive in Residence at the Plug and Play Tech Center, Inc., the world’s most successful startup accelerator.
 
Prior to ONF he ran two startup companies, served as Dean of Engineering at Santa Clara University, held executive management roles at Nortel Networks and Bay Networks, developed and managed networking technology at HP Labs Palo Alto and IBM Research Zurich, and taught computer science and electrical engineering at Duke and UNC; he has over 50 publications to his credit. Dan holds a B.S. from Duke and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Illinois and is a Fellow of the IEEE as well as a longstanding member of the Society of Women Engineers and the National Society of Black Engineers and a high-level volunteer with the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology.