Speakers

Code for Ethics welcomes professionals and evangelists from open source and open data organizations and communities.

We are extremely lucky to have secured some experienced and influential speakers from various countries who have made changes to the world to bring you a day of inspirational keynotes and networking.

Code for Ethics will feature more than 7 speakers from the industry. Check out our confirmed speakers’ list and read more about their professional experience.

Clare Dillon

Executive Director for InnerSource Commons Innovation Forum

With over 25 years of experience in leadership development, business strategy and technology evangelism, Clare works with organisations exploring new ways of working and future work trends. Passionate about how technology is changing and shaping the world we live and work in, she regularly speaks on topics related to artificial intelligence, digital transformation and innovation trends. Clare is currently the Executive Director for InnerSource Commons, a global non-profit helping software developers work in open collaborative ways. Clare was also a member of the Microsoft Ireland Leadership Team for 8 years, heading up the Developer Experience and Evangelism team. Before that, she was a product manager with Irish start-ups Havok and Iona. Clare is a qualified coach and has also served as a director on the boards of the National Digital Research Centre, the Irish Internet Association and the industry guidance board of the Irish Centre for Cloud Computing and Commerce. She is currently a member of the industry expert group for the Technology Ireland Innovation Forum.

Danese Cooper

Founder and Chairperson of InnerSource Commons

Danese Cooper is the founder and chairperson of InnerSource Commons. Previously, Danese spent 4.5 years as Sr. Director and Head of Open Source Software at PayPal, Inc. She was the inaugural Chairperson of the Node.js Foundation. Ms Cooper also previously served as the CTO of Wikipedia, as Chief Open Source Evangelist for Sun and as Sr. Director of Open Source Strategies for Intel. She concentrates on creating healthy open source communities and has served on the Boards of the Drupal Association, the Open Source Initiative, the Open Hardware Association and has advised Mozilla and the Apache Software Foundation. She also runs a successful open source consultancy that counts Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, SETI Foundation, Harris Corporation and Numenta as clients. She has been known to knit through meetings.

Martin Callinan

Director at Source Code Control

Martin has over 20 years of experience providing organizations with strategies to manage business risks associated with open source software supply chains such as IP compliance processes, security vulnerability management and procurement. He is actively involved in the open-source software risk management industry and is the founder of the OpenChain (ISO/IEC 5230:2020) Partner, Source Code Control Limited.

Phil Weir

Director at Flax & Teal & Director at Open UK

Phil is an experienced scientist, web developer and data engineer, having a PhD in mathematical simulation and professional experience in web development, machine learning and numerics. He has worked on everything from public sector data validation to surgical simulation and advanced engineering. He has run a wide range of Kubernetes-driven projects, including for data analysis, and is a certified Kubernetes architect. He is a scientific Python trainer, including for international business and universities, and has presented in Canada, New Zealand, Brussels and London on numerics, innovation and data science. He has delivered a range of web-based data solutions and strategies for global entities, public sector bodies, R&D start-ups and third-sector bodies, including the Open Data Institute.

John Whelan

Technology Transfer Case Manager at Trinity College Dublin

John has a PhD in Physics and worked as a software developer and business analyst in Davy stockbrokers and Daiwa Securities in Tokyo. Founder of three tech start-ups two of which raised 7 figure venture capital rounds. One of these Alatto traded for 9 years. More recently a consultant to Vodafone Ireland and since 2008 has been a Technology Transfer Case Manager at Trinity College, Dublin responsible for the commercialisation of ICT research. While in Trinity he set up and ran Trinity College's start-up accelerator LaunchBox, and became Executive Director of Blackstone LaunchPad at Trinity College, Dublin. Also, he designed and secured European funding to implement Trinity's Connected Health accelerator “Validator “and a Europe-wide Tech Transfer training programme. Adjunct Lecturer in NUI Galway where he teaches the Innovation and Technology Transfer module as part of Masters in Technology management. Most recently as a part of his role in Trinity, he has set up and managed Trinity's Open Source Programme Office. The mission of this office is to promote and support the principles of open source, and open data in knowledge transfer and industry engagement for TCD researchers.

Rhoda Kerins

Head of Open Data at the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform

Rhoda leads open data policy, the implementation of the Government’s Open Data Strategy and the National Open Data Portal, data.gov.ie. She has 30 years of experience leading public sector ICT projects and was previously head of the Open Source Practice Centre in the LGMA.

Mark Conroy

Director of Development for Annertech

Mark Conroy is Director of Development for Annertech, one of the leading Drupal development agencies in Europe. He is a core maintainer of the open source CMS Drupal and also front-end lead for the LocalGov Drupal distribution, which seeks to provide a free and open source CMS for local council websites.

Gar Mac Criosta

Product Manager Health Service Executive Ireland and also the Chairperson Public Health Advisory Committee at Linux Foundation Public Health (LFPH)

Gar Mac Críosta is an IASA certified architect and spends much of his time trying to figure out what being a sociotechnologist is; so he can be one. He regularly engages in humane human experiments and is very certain that he spends most of his time being uncertain. Gar has worked as a Digital Advisor to the CIO in the HSE since early 2019, Product Lead for the COVID Tracker App in the Health Service Executive (HSE) in Ireland (www.covidtracker.ie) a COVID-19 pandemic response app. Gar has been an active contributor to IASA Global since 2006, developing & delivering education and certification programs. Gar has facilitated the development of change programs with C-level executives, senior managers, technology leaders, and executives in the areas of business model innovation, digital strategy, architecture, and design across various indus­tries. Gar is a Certified Architect Professional (IASA CITAD), a Fellow of the Irish Computer Society, a LEGO Serious Play Practitioner (LSP) and in the process of becoming a Cynefin Practitioner.

Joel Ratnasothy

Chief Executive Officer at Interneuron CIC

My career aim is to improve our population's health through the best use of technology. I have worked as an executive for global technology companies, as an NHS surgeon and as an academic at Imperial College London. I believe technology can help us deliver better healthcare and I’ve created Interneuron to help solve this problem. Interneuron is a technology organisation that has been created to address the problems in the health + care industry. Problems with data sharing, usability, and cost. As such we are set up to be open: our software is open source, we adhere to Open Standards, and as a Community Interest Company, we follow a not-for-profit Open Business Model.

Barry Lowry

Irish Government CIO, Department of Public Expenditure & Reform

Barry Lowry has been the Chief Information Officer for the Irish Government since April 2016 with the primary task of taking forward the Government’s digital agenda. This includes developing the use of shared services, digital ID, digital services and data to better serve the people of Ireland and ensure that Ireland is well-placed to influence and exemplify the EUʼs digital ambitions for 2030.Barry is also the Chief Adviser to Government on all Digital matters affecting the State and its citizens.Barry was previously the Director for IT Shared Services and Strategy and Head of the IT Profession within the Northern Ireland Civil Service. He is a Fellow of the Irish and British Computer Societies, a former winner of the BCS Northern Ireland IT Professional of the Year and in 2017 he was awarded an OBE for services to the Government and IT Industry in Northern Ireland.

Leslie Hawthorn

Senior Manager Open Source Program Office, Red Hat

An internationally known open source strategist and community engagement expert, Leslie Hawthorn has spent her career creating, cultivating, and enabling open source communities. She has driven open source strategy in Fortune 10 companies, pre-IPO startups, and Foundation Boards including senior roles at Red Hat, Google, the Open Source Initiative, and Elastic. She currently leads the team responsible for vertical community strategy within Red Hat’s Open Source Program Office in the Office of the CTO.A frequent speaker on all topics open source, digital transformation, and user centric solutions, Leslie enjoys dreaming about how open source and open standards can create citizen-centric Smart Cities. Born and raised in Silicon Valley, Leslie has called Europe home since 2014 and resides in Bonn, Germany with her daughter, their two canaries, Elle and Nana, and a small cat named Fee.

Stuart Mackintosh

CEO, OpusVL; Co-founder & Director, OpenUK

Founder and CEO of OpusVL Stuart J Mackintosh is leading the Open Digital Approach, (document published in 2018) and has over 25 years of experience in delivering mission critical Open Source solutions to a variety of organisations both large and small across public and private sectors. More recently, he has worked both in the UK and internationally on policy and economics of acquiring and maintaining Open Source software, particularly in the health and care sector.Working with foundations and organisations like the United Nations and the NHS, he is helping increase impact by changing digital investment decisions through developing business models that ensure product sustainability and quality.

Jovanka Gulicoska

Software engineer at Keitaro

Jovanka is a Software Developer with more than 11 years of experience. She is an Open Source and Free Software enthusiast and has been part of Free Software Macedonia for more then 10 years. She is always up for new approaches on how to utilize open-source software in everyday life. Jovanka has been working with CKAN and Open Data for more than 6 years resulting in the successful delivery of projects and empowering companies and organizations around the world. Her goal is to bring impact through technology in different aspects of the world, resulting in society and business significant achievements.

Michelle Kearns

Head of IT, Boots Ireland

Michelle Kearns is Head of IT and a member of the Irish Leadership Team for Boots Ireland. Michelle is responsible for the IT functions, a multi-faceted role that includes internal systems and boots.ie. Michelle joined Boots Ireland following almost 17 years working for Caredoc, a GP co-operative providing healthcare services throughout Ireland, most recently as the Chief Information Officer, a role she fulfilled for the last four years of her tenure with the company. During this time, she was seconded to the HSE as a founding member of the Council of Clinical Information Officers and spent time as an adviser to the World Health Organisation. In 2016, she founded, and still holds the role of Director, at One HealthTech Ireland, a network that supports and promotes openness, inclusion, kindness and diversity in health innovation.