The Great Ignite Race

Dux is the CMO of AvePoint. With over 20 years of business and technology experience, he’s been a driving force behind digital transformations for commercial, educational and public sector organizations all over the world! A sought after public speaker who’s best friends with the camera—and exceptionally personable too—he’s also a published author of “SharePoint for Project Management.” As a Microsoft Regional Director (RD) and Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP), he’s a tireless advocate of diversity, inclusion & technology who’s written numerous whitepapers, articles, and delivered engaging interactive presentations at leading industry events worldwide. When he’s not globetrotting, or invigorating audiences, Dux lives in Washington, DC with his amazing wife and 2 kids. In his free time, he enjoys running along the Potomac River, sampling the most exotic foods ever (grilled scorpion, anyone?)

Jeffrey Snover is a Microsoft Technical Fellow, PowerShell Chief Architect, and the Chief Architect for the Azure Infrastructure and Management group which includes Azure Stack, System Center and Operations Management Suite. Snover is the inventor of Windows PowerShell, an object-based distributed automation engine, scripting language, and command-line shell and was the chief architect for Windows Server.

Dona Sarkar is the newly minted lead advocate for Citizen Developers (and the Power Platform) at Microsoft. For the past three years, she was head of the Windows Insider program at Microsoft. She's also a fashion designer who always is at the ready to #DoTheThing, including the virtual racer thing! (note: she is virtual racing only)

Rick Claus engages with the worldwide IT Pro community on behalf of Microsoft. Unofficially, Rick is focused on spreading his enthusiasm, passion, and excitement on all things technical to anyone who has the time for a coffee or a pint.

Aaron Suzuki is the CEO and Founder of SmartDeploy, an innovative Windows desktop management software manufacturer in Bellevue, WA. In addition to SmartDeploy, Aaron also co-founded Prowess Consulting in 2003, a technical consulting firm with clients that include Microsoft, Intel, and SAP. With both of his businesses rooted heavily in technology, Aaron is immersed in the world of business and consumer computing trends and views technologies from a holistic and customer-centric perspective – anticipating new and better ways that he can apply technology to his life both personally and professionally.

Tony Redmond is an independent consultant who specializes in Microsoft collaboration technology. He runs his own consulting company and advises many companies on how to best develop, use, or exploit Microsoft technology, He is the lead author of the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook, the only constantly-updated book covering Office 365 and associated technologies.

Mary Jo Foley is All About Microsoft. She's also All About Community Magnat(e)ing at Petri.com. And more often than not, she's also All About Craft Beer. She is a virtual-only Ignite Racer, as her driving and directional skills are non-existent (blame it on NYC).

Paul Robichaux is a professional nerd with a long history of developing, managing, writing about, and teaching about Windows-based enterprise software. (He’s even worked as a Mac developer but don’t say that too loudly!) He’s also a (slow) triathlete and a (private) pilot—will that give him an edge in go-kart racing? We’ll find out at the Great Ignite Race!

You may know him for his fast writing fingers, or his book about Surface, but Brad is also a terrible racecar driver. Having zero training on how to handle left turns, he is all gas, no brake, and bounces from wall to wall.

Paul Thurrott is an award-winning technology journalist and blogger with over 20 years of industry experience and the author of over 25 books. He is the News Director for the Petri IT Knowledgebase, the majordomo at Thurrott.com, and the co-host of three tech podcasts: Windows Weekly with Leo Laporte and Mary Jo Foley, What the Tech with Andrew Zarian, and First Ring Daily with Brad Sams. He was formerly the senior technology analyst at Windows IT Pro and the creator of the SuperSite for Windows.

Harjit Dhaliwal is a Microsoft MVP, ConfigMgr Admin, Systems Administrator, Technology & Social Media Evangelist, professional photographer, diversity advocate, speaker, blogger, and now a racer for Petri.

Microsoft Senior Software Engineer Gary Pretty is on the Bot Framework SDK engineering team at Microsoft and co-founded the Bot Builder Community project. He is also a craft beer lover and obsessive Disney fan.

Maurice brings more than 15 years of IT experience to the Devolutions team. For 12 years he served as an avionics technician and instructor in the Canadian Army. As Devolutions’ Business Architect, Maurice leads and manages our development and customer success teams.

Max has extensive experience in product management, communication and advertising. As VP Sales and Marketing at Devolutions, Max leads Devolutions’ international market research and development efforts, along with customer relations and overall business development.

Dan is the Director of Product Marketing at Microsoft for SharePoint and Yammer. With a career spanning over 2 decades, the shadow of Dan’s influence and guidance have been felt across the globe. Dan has lived across the US from Hawaii (yes, Hawaii!) to Colorado, and now resides in Seattle. Dan has also served as the Microsoft Technology Consultant for NBC Olympics in Rio, Sochi, London, Vancouver, Beijing, and Torino. Now, Dan is petitioning for Go-Karting to become a major Olympic event, and he plans to launch his campaign for the Gold Medal at the Great Ignite Race.

Since 2009 Stephen has led IT pro product marketing for a wide variety of products at Microsoft including Windows, Surface, Office 365 and OneDrive. He now sits in the marketing and storytelling for the Microsoft 365 team which brings his career full circle. Stephen holds over 20 technical certifications and been certified since Windows NT 4.0 and (sadly) still remembers what an IRQ is. It is also possible that Stephen may be the last living member of the Columbia House Record and Tape club.