Panel: Scaling AI in Engineering - Driving Alignment, Adoption and Impact

Peter is the Founder & CTO of Gather.dev, an invite-only brain-trust for CTO's and other senior engineering leaders building the future of the engineering org. He's writing a book for O'Reilly on Scaling AI in Engineering - a Leaders Guide to Driving Alignment, Adoption and Impact. He's the host of the O'Reilly CTO Hour and the CNCF Executive Summits at KubeCon and he's writing systems to wrangle agents to transform context into business outcomes. Previous he was SVP Engineering at General Assembly, built a team of 50 at Flatiron School in 18 months and taught Digital Literacy and Data Science at Columbia Business School.

Daniel Doubrovkine (aka dB.) is a seasoned Entrepreneur, people leader, open-source enthusiast, and lifetime artist. Daniel is former CTO of Artsy.net, led the Augmented Engineering team at Shopify, and served as Principal Engineer at AWS in New York, working on OpenSearch.

Rachana Kumar is a global CTO and product executive with more than two decades of experience leading high-impact innovation, scaling hyper-growth organizations, and driving transformation in e-commerce, media and entertainment companies. She has managed global teams of over 1,200 employees, overseen $1B+ in P&L responsibility, and consistently delivered double-digit revenue and profitability growth. As Chief Technology Officer at Etsy, Rachana led the company through a major AI and platform transformation.

She developed the strategy and scaled AI and the adoption of generative AI by 5X, embedding it in internal processes and the customer experience. Under her leadership, Etsy achieved 99.95% system uptime while maintaining 100% renewable energy for operations across a company that facilitated $13B in sales annually with $2.8B in revenue. She directed global teams across engineering, security, data, cloud infrastructure, and IT, with a deep focus on inclusive leadership and people development.

Rachana served as VP of Engineering and Managing Director of Etsy Mexico, where she launched and scaled the company’s first Mexico office, led a successful acquisition, and helped expand Etsy’s customer base from 46 million to 100 million. In earlier roles at Etsy, she played a key part in scaling the mobile platform and led product engineering through the company’s hypergrowth phase.

Rachana serves on the Board of Trustees for Liberty Science Center and SciTech Scity, a 300,000-square-foot innovation campus in the NY/NJ metro area and is a Tech Advisory Council Member at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, where she helps guide the future of digital engagement for one of the world’s most iconic cultural institutions. She is also an advisor and angel investor for several mission-driven startups.

She holds a Master of Public Administration from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Engineering from RV College of Engineering in India. A frequent keynote speaker and thought leader, Rachana has appeared at Web Summit, WSJ Tech Live, Microsoft Build, and Google Next. Her insights have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Tech Informed, and the IT Visionaries Podcast. Recognized among the Top 100 Leaders in Tech and the 50 Most Powerful Women in Tech.

Tom Janofsky is CTO of SpotHero and a veteran technology leader who has scaled teams from seed stage to global enterprises across SaaS, MarTech, and marketplaces.

Robert Duffy is an accomplished technology leader with an extensive background in product development and engineering. 

Previously, Robert served as the Chief Product and Technology Officer at Drizly, an Uber Company, where he played a pivotal role in bringing the company’s product and engineering teams together post-acquisition.

Robert has held engineering leadership positions at leading tech companies including Salesforce.com, Amazon, and Expedia. At Salesforce, he was the Vice President of Software Engineering, leading the team responsible for the tech driving the Lightning transformation.

With a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science & Engineering from Heriot-Watt University, Robert has consistently delivered top-tier software solutions that address complex business challenges. His leadership style emphasizes collaboration and innovation, making him a respected figure in the technology sector and he frequently speaks on team transformation at industry events and tech podcasts.

Gautam Guliani is a seasoned technology leader with over two decades of experience building and scaling engineering organizations across education, healthcare, and B2B SaaS. He currently serves as Vice President of Software Engineering at Cengage Group with a primary focus on responsible use of genAI tech for content development and production

Previously, Gautam led technology teams at AbleTo (a virtual behavioral health platform), and has held senior roles at HOMER, 2U, AppNexus, Prometheus Global Media, Kaplan, TheStreet, and The New York Times. Gautam is passionate about applying his hands-on engineering and architecture experience to driving large-scale digital transformation and AI-enabled product development.