Dan Pitt received the B.S. degree in mathematics from Duke University and M.S. and Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Illinois. He worked at IBM in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina and at IBM Research Zurich on network technology and architecture, mostly for local area and ATM networks, and at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Palo Alto on broadband networks and services; in these roles he held leadership and contributory positions in IEEE 802, FDDI, the ATM Forum, and DAVIC and taught CS and EE at Duke and UNC.. He spent five years as vice president of Bay Networks and Nortel Networks directing the architecture lab and technology center, including managing university relations and endowing a chair at UC Berkeley, followed by a five-year term as dean of the school of engineering at Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley. After running and advising startup companies in Silicon Valley, Canada, and Australia, where he has advised CSIRO and NICTA for many years and still advises startups, he joined the Open Networking Foundation in 2011 as executive director, a position he held for almost six years, championing software-defined networking (SDN). Since then he has been serving as senior vice president of MEF (formerly Metro Ethernet Forum) and continues to advise startup and established companies through his consultancy Palo Alto Innovation Advisors. He has published about 50 papers and book chapters and resides in Palo Alto, California.