PagerDuty Blog

Introducing Our PagerDuty Summit 2019 Keynote Speakers

Every year, we love getting the PagerDuty community together to share industry best practices, discuss the importance of real-time operations, and celebrate our wonderful customers, partners, and users. This year, PagerDuty Summit19 takes place September 23–25 at the Westin St. Francis, located in San Francisco’s iconic Union Square. In addition to opening remarks from our CEO, Jennifer Tejada, we have an amazing lineup of keynote speakers that will bring timely topics into the Summit spotlight.

While more speakers will be announced as we get closer to the event, here’s a sneak peek at our current keynote lineup. If you haven’t signed up already, you can join us on the Road to Real Time by registering for Summit19 today!

Chris Bertish, Professional Speaker, Surfing Champion, Guinness World Record Holder

Chris Bertish’s mantra, “Dream It. See It. Believe It. Achieve It.” has led him to redefine his approach to success—not only across multiple sports, but also as a respected author, filmmaker, and professional businessman.

in March 2017, Bertish became the first person to single-handedly cross the entire Atlantic Ocean (over 7,500 km or 4660 mi) in 93 days on a stand-up paddleboard. Bertish also coupled this thrill-seeking achievement with philanthropy, raising over $400,000 for several South African charities that provide medical operations for children. In addition, he is an accomplished professional surfer, winning the Mavericks Big Wave Surfing Contest in 2009.

Bertish’s motivational speaking tours have taken him all over the world and he just recently launched his new speaking series, beginning in South Africa and touring the globe.

Jan Eißfeldt, Lead Manager, Wikimedia Foundation

Jan Eißfeldt is the Lead Manager of Trust and Safety (T&S) of the Wikimedia Foundation, a nonprofit charitable organization that hosts free knowledge projects, including Wikipedia and Wikidata.

Having volunteered for the organization’s projects since 2004, he joined the Foundation’s staff in 2013 and guides the T&S policy, product, and operations. Eißfeldt began contributing to Wikipedia in 2004 within Wikipedia’s German language version. He has since contributed to other platforms on topics like philosophy of macroeconomics, science, and logic, as well as argumentation theory.

Andre Iguodala, Professional NBA Player, Tech Investor/Advocate

Andre Iguodala is a 15-year veteran NBA player and 3-time NBA Finals champion with the Golden State Warriors. He boasts a 2015 Finals MVP trophy, three championship rings, and a slew of defensive accolades.

Iguodala also wields an extremely successful business portfolio. With investments in Zoom Video Communications and PagerDuty, as well as a seat on the Board of Directors for Jumia, dubbed the “Alibaba of Africa,” he has found success both on and off the basketball court.

Additionally, Iguodala is a leading advocate for athletes in the NBA to invest in the tech industry. Due to his extensive business partnerships and investments in Silicon Valley, his work has led to the creation of the Players Technology Summit, an annual event established as a platform to set a discourse and shape conversations for athletes’ financial futures through opportunities within the tech industry.

Jeff Lawson, Chief Executive Officer, Twilio

Jeff Lawson has been a serial tech inventor for over 15 years. Before co-founding Twilio, Jeff was founder and CTO of NineStar, founding CTO of Stubhub.com, as well as the founder and CTO of Versity.

In almost every business Lawson has been involved in, he has been able to identify a critical customer need and leverage technology to innovate and create memorable customer experiences, whether it’s selling event tickets online, hosting a retail e-commerce platform, or enabling developers to leverage APIs to power business communications.

Lawson is also a Michigan grad, so the professional friendship he and Jennifer Tejada, another Michigan alumna, have built together over the years is no surprise. Go Blue!

In addition to our exciting keynote lineup, we will also feature several speakers from leading organizations who will share best practices, lessons learned in the field, and interesting use cases across four different topic tracks. Register today and join us!