KubeCon + CloudNativeCon EU 2026 | Donia Chaiehloudj, Isovalent & Anastasiia Gubska, JPMorganChase

Clips
More from KubeCon + CloudNativeCon EU 2026

Donia Chaiehloudj

Software Engineer

Isovalent

Anastasiia Gubska

Lead Software Engineer

JPMorganChase

play_circle_outline Merge Forward: CNCF diversity initiative uniting seven communities including deaf, blind, neurodiversity.

play_circle_outline Community growth: started by two founders, now 300+ members and volunteer core team.

play_circle_outline Merge Forward programs: buddy mentorship, CFP review help, KubeCon activities and community hub.

play_circle_outline How to join: CNCF Slack Merge Forward channel, CNCF group page, contact Catherine Paganini.

Info
Transcript

Donia Chaiehloudj, Isovalent & Anastasiia Gubska, JPMorganChase

Donia Chaiehloudj

Software Engineer Isovalent

Anastasiia Gubska

Lead Software Engineer JPMorganChase

In this interview from KubeCon + CloudNativeCon EU, Donia Chaiehloudj, software engineer of community at Isovalent, joins Anastasiia Gubska, lead software engineer at JPMorgan Chase, to talk with theCUBE's Rob Strechay about how the CNCF's Merge Forward initiative is expanding participation in the cloud-native ecosystem through accessibility and inclusion. Chaiehloudj explains that Merge Forward unites seven communities — from deaf and hard of hearing to neurodivergent contributors — to foster mentorship and broaden the open source contributor pipeline. Gubsk... Read more

explore Keep Exploring

What is Merge Forward, and what problem does it aim to solve? add

How did this initiative start, who currently leads it, how many members and volunteers does it have, where do members communicate, and what programs and activities does it run? add

What initiatives and activities does your community run to support newcomers (mentorship/onboarding), help with CFPs, and engage with people at KubeCon? add

Where should people contact you or go if they want to join the community? add

bolt Powered by CUBE AI

Donia Chaiehloudj, Isovalent & Anastasiia Gubska, JPMorganChase

search

Rob Strechay

>> Hello and welcome back to KubeCon + CloudNativeCon EU, live from Amsterdam. I'm really excited about this segment. We've done it a couple times and it really is showing just how the community is growing and talking about everyone's abilities, and how really the people have leveled the playing field for all, especially here at KubeCon. For this, I'm really excited to have Donia Chaiehloudj. I got that right, I think.

Donia Chaiehloudj

>> Yay.

Rob Strechay

>> Okay, excellent. And I have Anastasiia Gubska. I think I got that right.

Anastasiia Gubska

>> Yes.

Rob Strechay

>> Donia, you're a software engineer of community for Isovalent and Cisco.

Donia Chaiehloudj

>> Yeah.

Rob Strechay

>> And Anastasiia is a lead software engineer for JPMorganChase and also an ambassador here at the CNCF. So welcome both of you. Donia, let's start with you. For those who may not be familiar with what Merge Forward is and what problem you're trying to solve, give people an idea what Merge Forward is about.

Donia Chaiehloudj

>> Yeah, definitely. Merge Forward is a CNCF initiative all about diversity. We're a home of seven communities. So we have the deaf and hard of hearing, the blind and visually impaired people, stuttering and speech diversity of the people, Women in Cloud Native, Deep Roots, Friends of Dorothy and neurodiversity. So all these groups are part of the Merge Forward, and what we try to do is to foster this diversity to do mentoring for people and to provide support analyze. So this is what we do basically at Merge Forward.

Rob Strechay

>> Anastasiia, can you walk us through your journey in the cloud native community and what changed you professionally and personally and how the deaf and hard of hearing working group has helped get that?

Anastasiia Gubska

>> Yeah. So I never really imagined that I would become so visible as a deaf engineer because before I joined the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Working Group, I had a vision about what my future would look like and I thought I might just be a coder. I'd be given tasks. I'd get on with them at work. And now, I'm originally from a country where accessibility is not on a level with the UK or America, and so that's what I thought my life would always be like. And when I heard about the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Working Group, I decided to join. After doing so, I remember within such a short time, I went to KubeCon Paris and I was part of a keynote panel and that was absolutely incredible. After that experience, I was given the opportunity to meet loads of incredible people in the community and I learned so much from the community about public speaking. So currently I'm using British sign language. It's not actually my first language. My first language is Ukrainian sign language. So I've had to learn British sign language, also English, spoken and written English. And it's thinking often about how I can translate things appropriately for interpreters to be able to voice me correctly. It's a big challenge, and coming to this conference has been a fantastic opportunity. The community, the cloud native community has given me, opened that door for me to speak publicly. I never thought that would be something I can do. And now I regularly speak at KubeCon conferences. So it's been really brilliant.

Rob Strechay

>> That is fantastic. I'm very glad that you've actually embraced that and because I think it shows so many people across the entire spectrum. And Donia, from a broader cloud native perspective, why should they care about Merge Forward and why should they embrace it even if they don't look at accessibility as one of their chief day-to-day pieces of their work?

Donia Chaiehloudj

>> Yeah, that's a really good question. So I will take the angle about OSS in general. So we all know that in open source we are missing definitely a lot of people. We have many projects that are maintained by one, two main maintainer or core contributor. I mean, we've seen with NGINX. I'm sorry to say that, but that's terrible what happened because we were missing people and we are not able to make project leaves. So here it's about like bringing a new community and open the doors to those people and bend them and just onboard them in open source and help them to contribute. So people should care because it's not only about a good vibe initiative and being accessible, it's all about all the future of the ecosystem of open source and at the end also about business and what we are building. So I think that's why we want to bring deaf people more visible and also make all these spaces more accessible to them.

Rob Strechay

>> I love that. My brother and my mother are both blind.

Donia Chaiehloudj

>> Oh, wow.

Rob Strechay

>> And so I understand how it is for getting these, having abilities to go and do stuff. In fact, my mother is probably one of the most technically savvy blind people I know besides my brother who works in the industry, actually in entertainment, the entertainment industry. But when you see that and you bring other people in, I think it helps people think differently as well. So Anastasiia, how did you see finding mentorship and really building a global network through the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Working Group, how did those relationships really turn into real opportunities for you, not just speaking, but contributing to open source and ultimately helping you advance your career?

Anastasiia Gubska

>> Yeah, good question. Thank you. So for me, mentorship has played a huge role in the development of my career, but also in my personal life. The first time I met up with the Argo Project Maintainer and a Helm Project Maintainer, I didn't really have confidence on stage. I didn't know that I would be on stage. And also at that time I was signing in ASL, which is not my first language. People were really supportive. I was able to prep my speech beforehand. I also was able to apply to become a speaker myself. So along that journey, I've learned so much about being involved in the community and also introducing other people. For example, in the past there were projects I'd be really interested in joining, but I'd be too shy to approach people because I use sign language and people, my mentor, other people within the community would introduce me to people and really help me network. And now this is my third KubeCon. I feel much more confident. I feel there are people that I know. I'm really confident and happy to approach people and introduce myself. And that's been a huge change for me. I think that's been a massive advantage. And also being part of the community has really helped me network. That global network has helped me believe in myself. I know now that I can do more than I thought I could. I did think I would hit a glass ceiling and I'd just be a software engineer and now I know I can be more than that. I never thought I'd be a speaker. Potentially I have an aim now to become a principal engineer in the future. My mentor has been fantastic at pushing me to kind of push my goals and move forward more. And also I can't thank enough Rob Koch, who was, he's our co-chair of our Deaf and Hard of Hearing Working Group. And he really shown me with the success of his career, he's been a huge inspiration. And of course, working with interpreters, having access to events, he's really inspired me in the way that he works in his career, and that's absolutely changed my life.

Rob Strechay

>> I love that. That is such a great story, and I think it's so great to see the community embracing that. Donia, Merge Forward launched only less than a year ago, and it's seen some great adoption. Can you kind of talk to how the community has evolved and really how the projects you're driving and what you've brought to KubeCon this year?

Donia Chaiehloudj

>> Yeah. So it started with two persons actually, Catherine Paganini and Emily Fox that started the initiative as just an initiative, like let's bring more union between the different communities and get together. Two persons starting an initiative is just not easy, but the CNTF help a lot sponsoring this initiative, listening to them. And then we have a new member in the, not the chair, like the co-chairs, I would say, the leading groups. We have Stéphane Este-Gracias now and also Beatriz Rodgers with Catherine Paganini still. So this is the three person actually leading today, the group. And we have more than 300 members today. We have in the Slack channel on the group, on the CNCF page. So that has been an amazing journey on that point of view. And also we have a bunch of people volunteering because we all volunteer to make that happen. We have a core of like 15, 20 people participating, organizing different initiative inside. So we have a buddy programs for mentorship actually, helping people to onboard an open source, make their first contributions. We also have the CFP program where we help people to craft their CFPs, review them, or just brainstorm if you need help to brainstorm with ideas. And the last one is about KubeCon activities and we are trying to do our best here to be visible again and make sure we are meeting a lot of people. We have a kiosk at the Project Pavilion and all the communities where they're, hour after hour to meet people and just to share about how, I mean, how they do, about their careers, just sharing their experience. And if people have question also, they can ask them. So that's great that we had that kiosk. We also have the community hub. So we are organizing different events by the different communities. We had to Merge Forward meet together like the first day so people can actually see each other and network, build the network and other, sign language course you can come and learn. That was my first time that I did it at last KubeCon I learned a ton and now I try to just ... If I just see a sign, I'm just , okay, that's like that, so I can just reproduce it and you can communicate easily also. So that's just a way to learn about how it is for other people when you're not in their shoes. So that's very important for that. And we also have tonight in this game room a party. So you're going to come to learn, practice about Kubernetes stuff, access different rooms. And at the same time, you can pair with a bunch of people to ... So again, you network, you learn, you have fun. And it's actually sponsored by Buoyant. And I mean, we are always looking for people and companies if they want to sponsor because again, diversity and open source is very important. So just, hey, if you interested, we would love to have you as a sponsor.

Rob Strechay

>> Where should they contact you or go?

Donia Chaiehloudj

>> Okay. So Catherine Paganini is definitely the main contact for that.

Rob Strechay

>> Okay, excellent.

Donia Chaiehloudj

>> LinkedIn, Slack. I mean, you will find her.

Rob Strechay

>> And if people want to join the community?

Donia Chaiehloudj

>> Okay, so if people want to join the community, there are different aspects. So you can join the Slack channel on the CNCF, the Merge Forward, and then there are all the subgroups also. You can join the page group on Merge Forward on the CNCF chapter and you will have all the newsletter in your mailbox, so that's easy. And if you have any question, please just ping one of us, definitely. I just want to add one thing about what we do and what the community does is that there is a glossary on all the vocabulary about the cloud and the cloud native that has been made and YouTube videos on the website of the CNCF, maybe you're ... I mean, you know better than me, but I think that's one of the initiatives that is .

Anastasiia Gubska

>> Yes, that's right. So I remember when we first started attending KubeCon, it became a bit of a struggle because there's so much jargon, so many softwares and projects going on and so the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Working Group got together to create a sign language glossary about how to sign some of the products that come under the Kubernetes cloud native community. So hopefully we've been teaching that at the sign language course. So for example, this is the sign for Kubernetes, this is OTel, this is Argo, but yes, it's not easy because there are so many different products, but that's something that we're continually working on.

Rob Strechay

>> So as the first deaf CNCF ambassador, what do you hope you can do with your voice and how can you help look to help others as well get into the cloud native space and what still needs to be done in the future to make it more accessible?

Anastasiia Gubska

>> Yeah, so I would say the CNCF community has gone to great efforts to make our events accessible and I don't think that's always true of other events. I think public visibility really helps the industry to understand why our community is so important. And I think a lot of other events, a lot of other spaces in the industry have started to adopt the practices of the CNCF because it's just been so fantastic. Deaf people are sometimes limited in the local events that they can attend. And I really aim to be a role model for other deaf people working in tech and particularly deaf women who are working as engineers. I see a lot of deaf men who are working as engineers and that's great, but I'm really keen to encourage more women to come into the space. So I hope that through my effort, I can grow that network potentially in years to come in future generations, we'll see many more deaf women working in the tech world. So that's a real aim of mine.

Rob Strechay

>> Well, Donia and Anastasiia, I really appreciate you coming on. This has been fantastic. I love doing this segment because it does help raise the visibility, as you said, and show the abilities that are coming to help cloud native come in all different packages for that matter. So thank you very much for coming on board.

Donia Chaiehloudj

>> Thank you.

Anastasiia Gubska

>> Thank you.

Rob Strechay

>> And thank you for watching this episode of theCUBE, live from KubeCon + CloudNativeCon EU. We'll be back with one more after this. Stay tuned.