Dan Pitt has been a leading voice of the SDNFV movement since its inception. He served as executive director of ONF from its public launch in March 2011 until September 2016 and since January 2017 has been senior vice president of MEF, driving technical and ecosystem development. He has relentlessly championed open networking to put more people to work building novel solutions for more customers of all types. He also advises private and public companies to commercialize new ideas and stay abreast of new capabilities. Prior to ONF he ran and advised startup companies, served as dean of engineering at Santa Clara University, held executive management roles at Nortel Networks and Bay Networks, developed and managed networking technology and HP and IBM, and taught computer science and electrical engineering at Duke and UNC. He holds a B.S. from Duke and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Illinois. He lives in Palo Alto with his wife and son.