President

Vividh Siddha

Director of Software Engineering, Apple

Vividh Siddha is Director of Software Engineering at Apple. Prior to Apple, Vividh led engineering for Bluebox, a security startup and Nimbula, a cloud computing startup. He was the VP of Product at Oracle leading Oracle Public Cloud and at IPInfusion.

He has also held engineering roles at Lucent Technologies, Bell Labs and at Siemens. He has over a decade of experience in technology development and management expertise in software, networking, security, cloud and wireless systems. Vividh is a member of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies and the ACM. Vividh graduated with a BS in Computer Science and Engineering from University of Pune, India.

Vice President of Technology

Jonathan Hui

Principal Software Engineer, Google

Jonathan Hui is a principal software engineer at Google, where he is responsible for Thread implementation in products and is maintainer of OpenThread released by Google.

Prior to Google, he was a principal engineer at Cisco, where he built some of the world's largest IPv6 mesh networks for urban-scale, enterprise and utility applications. Prior to Cisco, he delivered the world's first commercial 6LoWPAN networks at Arch Rock before its acquisition by Cisco.

Jonathan has also been deeply involved in standards bodies (IETF, IEEE, Thread, and Wi-Sun) and coauthored foundational specifications related to IPv6 in low-power wireless networks. He is also a co-inventor on more than 175 USPTO issued patents.

Jonathan has a BS in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, and an MS and a PhD in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Vice President of Marketing

Sujata Neidig

Director of Marketing, Wireless Connectivity, NXP

Sujata Neidig has 25 years of experience in the semiconductor industry and has served in a variety of roles ranging from product engineering to marketing and business development. 

She is currently Director of Marketing i.MX Processors Software and Customer Programs. She also represents NXP as the Vice President of Marketing of the Thread Group, an industry alliance that provides an IP-based wireless mesh networking protocol designed for homes and buildings. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

Vice President, Commercial

Vice President, European Region

Klaus Waechter

Global Standardization Manager, Siemens Smart Infrastructure Building Products

Klaus Waechter joined Siemens (formerly Staefa Control Systems) in Stuttgart, Germany in 1991 as an engineering and commissioning engineer for building automation systems, where he was responsible for systems across Germany, including internal training and global headquarters contacts.

In 1997, Klaus moved to the international headquarters in Stäfa, Switzerland, as a system test engineer and led the tests of the new DESIGO system. Two years later, Klaus returned to the German headquarters in Frankfurt/Main with the responsibility of introducing the DESIGO system to the German market, including internal DESIGO training.   In 2004, he returned to the global HQ of Siemens Building Technologies in Zug, Switzerland, as a product manager, with overall responsibility for DESIGO system issues and a focus on BACnet communication. In the same year Klaus joined the BACnet Interest Group Europe to represent Siemens in the marketing working group WG-M.  Since 2009, Klaus has been responsible for standardization management in the building automation department at Siemens Switzerland.

Klaus is head of the Swiss delegation for the CEN TC247 committee, Swiss expert for the ISO TC205 WG3 and IEC TC57 WG21 committees and BACnet expert for the ASHRAE SSPC135 committee.

• From October 2016 to September 2020, Klaus was President of the BIG-EU
• Klaus has represented Siemens AG on the Thread Group Board since May 2018
• Since March 2019 he has been Chairman of the eu.bac Business Development Group and on the Board of eu.bac
• Since February 2020 he is a board member of the KNX Alliance

Furthermore, Klaus is an active member of the CSA (formerly Zigbee Alliance) and thus also involved in the new Matter Standard.

Treasurer

Kevin Kraus

V.P. Technology Alliances and IoT Business Development Fortune Brands Innovations, Inc.

Kevin Kraus recently joined Fortune Brands Innovations, Inc. as part of the divestiture of Yale and August North America from ASSA ABLOY. Kevin is the V.P. Technology Alliances and IoT Business Development for Fortune Brands.

Kevin has over two decades of experience in the technology and security industry. Prior to his current role, he served as Vice President of Technology Alliances and IoT Business Development for ASSA ABLOY Smart Residential Group. Before that, he held the position of Director of Technology and Partner Integration, where he defined key product technologies and developed partner integration strategies for seamless lock integration. Kevin's journey with ASSA ABLOY began in 2009 when he joined as Director of Product Development for Yale Residential Locks, overseeing product strategy, development, and technology. Prior to his tenure at Yale, Kevin spent 11 years as Director of Product Management for electronic locks at the Schlage Residential Business. His career in the security industry commenced at Honeywell's Security Group, where he spent seven years as a Product Manager for Honeywell Residential Security Products.

Kevin’s extensive experience in the IoT, Residential Security, and Home Automation Business has him regarded as a subject matter expert in residential electronic locks, residential security and home automation systems, and residential systems communication technologies. Kevin has majors in both Electrical Engineering and Business Administration. In addition to holding the position of Treasurer and serving as a Board Director for Thread Group, Kevin is currently Vice Chair of the CSA Alliance and Treasurer for Z-Wave Alliance.

Secretary

Arnulf Rupp

Senior Director Standardization, Governmental Affairs and Intellectual Property, Inventronics

Arnulf Rupp is Senior Director Standardization, Governmental Affairs and Intellectual Property at Inventronics (OSRAM). He represents Inventronics in the board of directors and workgroups of multiple organizations including Lighting Europe, DALI Alliance and Thread Group.

Earlier he worked for AMS OSRAM in R&D, corporate strategy and standardization. He was responsible for product development in several product categories including LED light engines, power electronics and automotive lamps. Arnulf holds a diploma in physics from the Technical University of Munich and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Augsburg.

Director

Gabe Kassel

Principal Product Manager, Amazon

Gabe is a Principal Product Manager at Amazon / eero, where he is responsible for eero’s low power and smart home networking strategy. He also works across Amazon and with external device makers to continually improve the performance, selection, and reliability of consumer connected home products.

He has worked with Thread since 2016 and has experience building hardware, embedded software, scaled cloud infrastructure, and mobile user experiences.

Director

Faisal Feroz

Director - Partner Engineering, Google

Faisal has been at Google for over 10 years and heads the Nest Partner Engineering team. He is the original member of the Chromecast team. Faisal has helped build two ecosystems from the ground up: Cast as well as Smart Home on Nest. Before joining Google, Faisal was at Qualcomm for over 4 years, heading their Deployment Engineering team for BREW, managing partners like VZW and ATT. Prior to that he was leading an Engineering team at XIMIS Inc, building Radiology Information Systems (RIS).

Director

Jordan Crafts

Principal Engineer, Lutron

Jordan has spent 19 years in the wireless embedded systems group at Lutron Electronics. He has contributed to the development of several highly successful wireless lighting system products most recently including Athena, Homeworks QSX. and RadioRA 3. His technical interests lie in large scale wireless deployments for control applications. Jordan holds bachelors degrees in Computer Systems Engineering and Electrical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a Masters Degree in Computer Science from Purdue University.

Director

Krzysztof Loska

Technical Product Manager, Nordic Semiconductor

Krzysztof Loska is a Technical Product Manager at Nordic Semiconductor. He sets the strategy, roadmap, and feature definition for products targeted at smart home and building automation, such as Thread, Zigbee, Matter, Apple HomeKit etc.

Krzysztof has spent over a dozen of years in embedded systems and the short-range wireless industry and joined Nordic Semiconductor in 2014. He held various engineering and management positions within the company’s R&D and Product Management which gave him the opportunity to become familiar with various wireless protocols such as Thread, Bluetooth LE, ANT, NFC, Zigbee, Bluetooth Mesh, Wi-Fi. Since 2018 Krzysztof serves as a board member for the Thread Group. Krzysztof holds M.Sc.Eng in Electronics and Telecommunications and graduated in Software Engineering on postgraduate studies.

Director

Rolf de Vegt

Vice President, Qualcomm

Rolf de Vegt has been an active participant in the wireless connectivity industry since 2001. His areas of expertise include strategic marketing, market development, standards strategy and international business development.

After earning a Masters Degree from Twente University in the Netherlands, Mr. de Vegt entered a career in management consulting in the High Tech and Telecommunications industry.

In 2001, he Co-Founded Airgo Networks Inc. a start-up company based in Palo Alto CA; the first company to successfully commercialize MIMO technology for the WLAN market. Airgo was acquired by Qualcomm, in December 2006. He is currently a Senior Director in Qualcomm’s connectivity semiconductor business and he also serves on the Wi-Fi Alliance Board of Directors.

Senior Product Manager; Samsung SmartThings

Kyle Sporre

Kyle Sporre is a Senior Product Manager at Samsung SmartThings. He has over 20 years of experience in wireless product development and IoT solutions and has worked with numerous IoT technologies including Zigbee, Wi-Fi, BLE, cellular, Z-Wave and Thread. He has held roles in engineering design, leadership, and product management at various companies including Medtronic, UTC Fire and Security, DSP Group, and Digi International. While at Digi International, he was responsible for the popular XBee IoT product portfolio, while also participating in the PTCRB working group. Kyle received the BSEE degree from Purdue University and the MSEE degree from the University of Minnesota.

Director

Craig Babcock

Ecosystem Development Manager, Silicon Labs

Craig Babcock is an Ecosystem Development Manager at Silicon Labs, working closely with the major IoT companies to ensure device makers can successfully build and integrate products into the most ubiquitous Ecosystems of the industry. Craig’s current focus is on scaling the adoption of IoT through Matter and Thread.

Craig has been in the embedded wireless industry for over 10 years and was has experience developing IoT products for a number of low power IoT protocols including Zigbee, Z-wave, Thread, and various proprietary protocols. Craig has been involved with the Thread Group since 2015 and helped to bring some of the first Thread products to market.

Director

Jean-Michel Orsat

CTO, Somfy

Jean-Michel Orsat has over 25 years of experience in the home automation industry, within industry alliances and EU regulation bodies.

He is responsible for managing a software team, focusing on driver software and libraries for wireless protocols such as io-homecontrol, and other open standard solutions for the Somfy Group. He is also CTO at Somfy within the Data,Systems and Connectivity Solutions Division, overseeing technology partnerships and wireless networking technologies.

Director

Bill Smith

Director of Strategic Alliances and Standards, ASSA ABLOY

Bill Smith is Assa Abloy’s Director of Strategic Alliances and Standards. Prior to joining Assa Abloy, Bill held senior technical and executive positions at Latch Systems, PayPal, Sun Microsystems, and several startup companies. He has served as an officer and director at other industry consortia such as the Connectivity Standards Alliance, FIDO Alliance, Liberty Alliance, and OASIS. He holds degrees in Computer Science from Brown University.

Sagar Chinchani

Product Manager, Silicon Labs

Sagar Chinchani is a Product Manager at Silicon Labs, accelerating Zigbee, Thread, and Multi-protocol technologies for IoT Solutions. Before becoming a Product Manager, Sagar was on the Silicon Lab's embedded software team working on Thread for 6+ years. He has been a member of the Thread group since 2016 and served as a Chair of the Thread Range Extension working group. With technical interests in Wireless and Embedded Systems, Sagar holds a master’s degree in computer engineering from North Carolina State University.

Stuart Cheshire

Distinguished Engineer, Apple

While a student, Stuart created Bolo, the first widely-available graphical distributed multi-player game on the Internet. He received B.A. and M.A. degrees from Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and his M.Sc. and Ph.D. from Stanford.

At Apple, Stuart created Bonjour (also known as Zero Configuration Networking or Zeroconf), including the DNS Service Discovery and Multicast DNS protocols. Originally seen primarily in Apple products, these networking ease-of-use protocols are now available across the industry, including in Android, Linux, and Windows, and in many “Smart Home” and “Internet of Things” devices and accessories.

Stuart served on the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), was co-chair of the IETF Zeroconf Working Group, has published numerous research papers and RFCs, and is the author the O’Reilly book Zero Configuration Networking.

Alin Lazar

Connectivity Software Program Manager for Edge Processing, NXP

Alin Lazar has a significant expertise in wireless networking protocols for the IoT such as: Thread, Bluetooth, Zigbee, and Wi-Fi. At Freescale and NXP Alin has led development of stack software, SDKs and tools associated with these protocols. He has also a long history of contributions to connectivity standardization and certification support activities.

Alin is currently the Connectivity Software Program Manager for Edge Processing responsible with coordinating the integration of wireless connectivity technologies within the NXP microcontroller and microprocessor software portfolio.

Alin holds a BS in Computer Science from the Politehnica University of Bucharest.

Udo Preiss

Head of Business Segment Connectivity BU Digital Systems, Inventronics

Udo Preiss has joined Inventronics (OSRAM) in 2017 and is currently Head of Business Segment Connectivity in the Digital Systems Unit. Earlier he was leading the Project Management unit for the Digital Systems Business unit.

Prior to joining Inventronics (OSRAM) he worked in the Mobile Communication Industry for Nokia and Siemens as Senior Director in various functions like R&D, System Architecture and Program Management.

Udo holds an Electrical and Computer Engineering degree (Dipl.-Ing.) from the Technical University of Munich.

Tom Manley

Principal Software Engineer, Samsung SmartThings

Tom Manley has worked with connected devices and wireless protocols for 15 years. He has held multiple roles at Samsung SmartThings including Director of Engineering and is currently a Principal Software Engineer where he focuses on devices that connect to the SmartThings hub.

Lisa Corte

VP of Strategic Alliances, ASSA ABLOY

Lisa Corte serves as the Vice President of Strategic Alliances at ASSA ABLOY Group. Lisa has 10 years of experience in the security industry, with a significant focus on product management of commercial access control offerings. Lisa started her career in defense contracting, doing control law development and project management for various fixed-wing aircrafts and unmanned ground vehicles. Lisa holds a BS and MS in Electrical Engineering from Binghamton University and an MBA from North Carolina State University.

Ankit Premrajka

Sr. Product Manager, Amazon

Ankit Premrajka is a Sr. Product Manager at Amazon, responsible for the smart home hub experiences delivered on Echo Family Devices leveraging various connectivity protocols - Wifi, Zigbee, BLE and now Matter over Thread. He is passionate about sustainability and leads energy efficiency initiatives for Echo products. Ankit loves working on end to end consumer experiences delivered through tangible hardware products.