I’d like to extend my congratulations and thanks to Hank Kafka as he retires both from his role as Vice President, Access Architecture & Standards at AT&T, and as chairman of the ONF Technical Leadership Team (TLT). His leadership and insights will be missed. He has made significant contributions to the ONF community as a member of the Technical Leadership Team (TLT) on a number of fronts since he joined it in 2018. During this period, ONF has experienced an exciting growth period where our open source platforms have been integrated into production operator networks around the world. Hank has been a vocal supporter of ONF’s mission to promote open source and disaggregation of carrier networks. He helped facilitate the ONF alignment of mobile RAN activities with O-RAN and AT&T. I wish him well in his retirement and look forward to continuing to collaborate with him.
Replacing Hank on the TLT for AT&T, I am pleased to welcome Mazin Gilbert who serves as Vice President Network Analytics & Automation where he leads the company’s R&D for its network and access transformations. This includes overseeing advancements in software engineering, data analytics, machine learning and AI to drive an open, efficient, automated and adaptive network, and to support forecasting, planning, optimization, design and construction of the AT&T mobility and fiber network. Mazin has been a big champion of open source and has led multiple open source initiatives for AT&T and the industry, including ONAP, Akraino, Acumos and O-RAN OSC. We look forward to the leadership and insights he will bring to the TLT.
