Derek Zimmer – President and Executive Director

Derek is a privacy activist, hacker and mathematician. He started his first business in 2000, selling hand-designed PCs to gamers, engineers, and businesses. In 2012 Derek helped found VikingVPN, a VPN service focused on speed, security, and privacy in response to the increasing problems with surveillance on the internet by marketing entities. The May 2013 disclosures by Edward Snowden motivated him to work in the privacy and infosec sector full-time, and to focus his work on countermeasures against advanced persistent threats like governments.

He has personally funded the entirety of the startup costs for OSTIF. He truly believes that the only real response to the death march of surveillance is technological in nature, not political. The ultimate goal of the OSTIF is to liberate the citizens of the world from the oppression of information.

In his free time, Derek enjoys nature, relaxing on a nice patio, reading, dining at new restaurants, travel, art, music, movies, theater and all forms of digital entertainment.

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Amir Montazery – Managing Director

Amir is a Chicago native that started his first business at 10 years old. While studying Finance at the University of Illinois, Amir gained exposure in wealth management and derivatives trading. Upon graduating, he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to work for multiple startups in the digital marketing and education space. After a short but enlightening tour on the west coast, Amir came back to Chicago to pursue an MBA and currently works as an IT Auditor focusing on governance and information security.In his free time, Amir enjoys swanky cocktail lounges and finding new restaurants to try. Also, Amir is passionate about self improvement through improving and empowering others. He firmly believes OSTIF is the ultimate empowerment tool for the masses, as improved open source technology puts the power back into the hands of the best people.

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Zach Graves – Design and Website Development

Zach is an Ohio native that started his career in education. He received a Bachelor of Science in Education from Ohio University and taught high school math for 6 years in Appalachia Ohio. After 6 years in the teaching profession he decided that he missed his childhood memories of farm life and manual labor and decided to switch his career to construction. Now Zach is working for a local electric utility company as a power lineman. Throughout both careers, Zach has always had a creative side and taught himself how to use Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, and After Effects. These skills and his drive to learn new things is what lead him to his position here at the Open Source Technology Improvement Fund.

Zach is a devoted husband and father and his hobbies include hunting, fishing, working out at the local gym, golfing, and gaming. He also loves to travel, design graphics on his computer, and complete renovating/remodeling jobs around his home in Chillicothe, Ohio.


Steve Donley – Community Manager

Steve grew up in south central Ohio. Raised by phone-company circuit designers, he learned different types of tech first hand. Currently employed as a Surveillance technician for a major gambling establishment, he observes both sides of privacy issues, learns about and tests new forms of identity tracking. Seeing the outrageous volume of information stored has shown him the need for OSTIF as a way for companies to secure all private information they collect. Doing so will help protect corporations large and small by protecting the privacy of citizens of the world.

Steve enjoys caring for and breeding assorted exotic animals, 3D printing, playing assorted virtual and tabletop games and keeping up with friends.


OSTIF Advisory Council

Our advisory council is a group of volunteers who offer advice in their fields of expertise to OSTIF. Their experience and wide field of knowledge help us manage our organization, problem solve, and advance our goals. These volunteers get monthly updates of OSTIF activity and offer their advice and opinions for management to consider when big decisions are being made about the organizations direction or actions.

Each advisory council member is listed below, showing their name and field of expertise or other organizations that they are members of that bring relevant experience to the council.

 

 

NAME POSITION COMPANY/ORGANIZATION
Mike Dolan VP of Strategic Programs Linux Foundation
Leslie Hawthorn Sr. Principal Technical Program Manager Red Hat
Alon Swartz Co-Founder Turnkey Linux
Mario Heiderich Director Cure53
Abraham Aranguren Managing Director 7A Security
Marita Markkula Community Manager F-Secure
Carrotcypher Community Manager Wireleap
Matt Caswell Programmer and Researcher OpenSSL
Samuli Seppänen Community Manager The OpenVPN Project
Daniel Davis Community Manager DuckDuckGo
Joeseph Soria Chief Executive Officer Flashrouters.net
Christel Dahlskjaer Open Source Lead London Trust Media
Markus Vervier Chief Executive Officer X41 D-sec
Fred Raynal Chief Executive Officer Quarkslab
JP Aumasson Chief Security Officer Kudelski Security
Daniel Guido Chief Executive Officer Trail of Bits
Sarang Noether Programmer and Researcher Monero Research Lab
Mounir Idrassi Technical Lead Veracrypt