KotlinConf '26 Keynote to Address Leadership in Volatility
KotlinConf '26 has announced that Lena Reinhard, a VP of Engineering and SaaS founder, will be a keynote speaker. Her talk will reportedly address industry shifts and leadership strategies for navigating volatile times. The selection highlights a focus on management and strategy for engineering leaders at the upcoming conference.
- Lena Reinhard's experience in the developer tools space includes serving as VP of Engineering for two major CI/CD platforms, CircleCI and Travis CI. - She entered the tech industry after a career in finance, arts, and media, co-founding her first SaaS startup at age 26 and becoming its CEO. - The software built by her first company was designed to support Ebola outbreak response teams in West Africa, placing her in a high-stress leadership environment early in her career. - Reinhard currently works as a leadership coach and organizational developer for companies ranging from pre-founding startups to large corporations and NGOs. - A frequent keynote speaker at conferences like QCon and The Lead Developer, her past talks have focused on DevOps transformation, organizational scaling, and leading teams through rapid growth and change. - She hosts the "Leadership Confidential" podcast, which focuses on the less-discussed challenges of leadership, such as imposter syndrome, navigating power dynamics, and supporting neurodivergent team members. - Her writing and speaking often address how leaders can manage team stress and burnout, a theme she explored in the O'Reilly series "Tech Leadership Tuesday". - In recent podcast episodes and articles, she has analyzed the impact of industry-wide layoffs and the rise of AI, discussing how these shifts affect engineering leaders and team priorities.
