As OpenDaylight's executive director, Nicolas “Neela” Jacques works with the OpenDaylight community to advance SDN and NFV with a developer-driven open source platform for products and technologies that expand the intelligence, programmability and performance of network infrastructures. He oversees and provides guidance for all aspects of the project, from governance and technology to community and marketing and reports to the OpenDaylight board of directors. Formerly at VMware, Jacques was part of the core team that took virtualization from a niche development and testing product to ubiquitous use. He developed and took to market the company’s software-defined data center vision and strategy including VMware’s vCloud Suite. Jacques also founded and launched VMware's first cloud computing initiative in 2007. Prior to VMware, Jacques was a consultant with Bain & Company. He received his MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business with High Honors and a Bachelor of Science from Georgetown University.