We would like to extend a very warm welcome to the newest AWS Community Heroes:

AWS Community Heroes share their knowledge and demonstrate their enthusiasm for AWS in a plethora of ways. They go above and beyond to share AWS insights via social media, blog posts, open source projects, and through in-person events, user groups, and workshops.

Mark Nunnikhoven
Mark Nunnikhoven explores the impact of technology on individuals, organizations, and communities through the lens of privacy and security. Asking the question, “How can we better protect our information?” Mark studies the world of cybercrime to better understand the risks and threats to our digital world.

As the Vice President of Cloud Research at Trend Micro, a long time Amazon Web Services Advanced Technology Partner and provider of security tools for the AWS Cloud, Mark uses that knowledge to help organizations around the world modernize their security practices by taking advantage of the power of the AWS Cloud.

With a strong focus on automation, he helps bridge the gap between DevOps and traditional security through his writing, speaking, teaching, and by engaging with the AWS community.

SangUk Park
SangUk Park is a Chief Solutions Architect at Megazone, which became Korea’s first AWS Partner in 2012 and is the only AWS Premier Consulting Partner to provide AWS support in Korean.

He served as a System Architect for KT’s public cloud and VDI design, and led the system operation of YDOnline and Nexon Japan, one of the leading online gaming companies. Certified both as an AWS Solutions Architect – Professional and AWS DevOps Engineer – Professional, SangUk has authored AWS books, including DevOps and AWS Cloud Design Patterns, and translated four books related to the AWS Cloud.

He’s been making efforts to revitalize the local AWS Korea User Group community as co-leader by presenting at AWS Korea User Group meetings and AWS Summits, and helping to establish small group gatherings such as the AWSKRUG System Engineers in Gangnam. Also, he has done many hands-on labs and has been running a booth as a leader of the user groups at AWS events to cultivate developers and system engineers.

SangUk maintains a close relationship with the Japanese AWS User Group (JAWS UG), using his excellent Japanese communication skills and experiences in Japan. He makes every effort to participate in events held between Japanese and Korean user groups as a facilitator and translator, and will promote cross-regional communications beyond APAC going forward.

James Hall
James Hall has been working in the digital sector for over a decade. He is the author of the popular jsPDF library, and is a founder/Director of Parallax, a digital agency in the UK. He’s worked as a software developer on a wide variety of projects, from LED Billboards, car unlocking apps, to large web applications and tools.

Parallax built an online recording studio for David Guetta and UEFA using Serverless technology shortly after API Gateway was released. Since then they have consulted on various serverless projects and technologies. They run the AWS Meetup in Leeds, and help companies around the world build their businesses online. James has contributed to and promotes the Serverless Framework which allows you to elegantly build web applications on top of Lambda and related services.

Drew Firment
Drew Firment works with business leaders and technology teams from organizations that seek to accelerate cloud adoption. He has over twenty years of experience leading large-scale technology programs, enterprise platforms, and cultural transformations in a fast-paced agile environment.

After migrating Capital One’s early adopters of AWS into production, his focus shifted toward accelerating a scaleable and sustainable transition to cloud computing. Drew pioneered the intersection of strategy, governance, engineering, agile, and education to drive an enterprise-wide talent transformation. He founded Capital One’s cloud engineering college, and implemented an innovative outcome-based curriculum oriented towards learning communities. Several thousand employees have enrolled in his cloud-fluency program, enabling well over 1,000 AWS certifications since its inception.

Drew has earned all three of the AWS associate-level certifications, enjoys developing custom Amazon Alexa skills using AWS Lambda, and believes serverless is the future of cloud computing. He also serves as an advisory partner to A Cloud Guru and is editor-in-chief of the their community-sourced publication.

Welcome
Please join me in welcoming to our newest AWS Community Heroes!

-Ana