Cortney Nickerson

Cortney Nickerson is the Head of Community at Nirmata, where she leads strategy and engagement for both the Kyverno open source project and Nirmata’s commercial community. A self-taught, community-driven professional who entered tech later in her career, Cortney has become a recognized voice in cloud native, speaking at international conferences and keynoting KubeCon. She is passionate about open source, inclusive ecosystems, and empowering others to grow through community. As a mom in tech, Cortney brings empathy, curiosity, and real-world insight to her work—bridging the gap between contributors, users, and organizations to build meaningful, scalable impact.