Passionate about technology with a love for security, privacy and digital identity. With over 10 years of industry experience Chris has developed a vision for a better and more sustainable digital identity platform.

Former founder and CTO who held senior leadership and architect roles in the digital identity industry at successful hyper-growth scale-ups such as Auth0 (acquired by Okta) and ForgeRock (IPO), but also at established players such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Verizon, with international experience across Europe as well as the United States.

Chris holds a Master's degree in Computer Science Engineering with a speciality in cybersecurity from the University of Leuven. He's an AWS Certified Professional Solution Architect & Developer, and an AWS Certified Security, Data Analytics & Machine Learning Specialist. He's one of the founders and former organizers of TEDxAntwerp and the Benelux Identity Tech Talks.

Besides technology he also has a passion for science and culture, having studied Mandarin and Arabic at the University of Antwerp.

Passionate and rigorous, Kris has over twenty years of international commercial and leadership experience in technology and security companies - more specifically, fourteen years in the technology and software industry focusing on identity and security. He started his career in software at companies like Oracle, CA Technologies and SAP.

For the past years, he mainly focused on helping startups and scale ups by building and leading sales teams, such as hypergrowth companies like ForgeRock and Auth0 - driven by a passion for coaching individual contributors to perform at their best.

Participating in several panels, interviews and articles, he is seen as a trusted advisor for many European contributors. He is a fervent lean methodology advocate who loves to work in a fast paced agile environment that focuses on innovation and disruption.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” - Leonardo Da Vinci

Cybersecurity professional with a software engineering and pre-sales background and a passion for open source, automation and data privacy; strong entrepreneurial background and over 23 years of professional experience.
Chapter Lead at "DevSecCon Germany".

Having worked in Asia for almost a decade and in various different roles, including running his own software development company for 15 years, has provided him with a very broad spectrum of intercultural knowledge and experience.

Experience with hyper-growth pre-IPO companies in the identity and cybersecurity space, having been the lead DACH solutions engineer in the past at both Auth0 (IAM) and Snyk (DevSecOps / Cloud-Native Application Security).

Mathias studied Business Informatics at the University of Applied Sciences Wedel and University of Hamburg, Germany.

Motor biker, MotoGP+WorldSBK fan, tactical & stealth gamer, enjoying sports (running, cycling, basketball).