The Future is Decentralized by Michael Montano, Preeti Kaur

Michael Montano leads Twitter’s global engineering team. Before joining Twitter, he co-founded BackType to focus on organizing online conversations and helping people follow what was being talked about. The company created and open-sourced the Apache Storm project, a distributed realtime computation system. BackType was acquired by Twitter in 2011. Since joining Twitter, Michael has led teams across the platform, advertiser products and the consumer product.

Michael grew up in Canada and studied Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto

Preeti is EVP, Head of Engineering at Honor, where she leads the development of innovative solutions for in-home care, focusing on client and care professional acquisition and retention. With experience spanning tech giants like Adobe and innovative startups like Carta, she has consistently transformed industries through scalable engineering solutions. At Honor, she has driven operational efficiency through workflow mechanization and GenAI adoption, making in-home care more affordable and reliable. Preeti's people-centric leadership philosophy—"If you don't have a passion for people, you have no business leading them!"—drives her commitment to building collaborative environments where teams thrive. She champions iterative development, continuous learning, and breaking down silos to deliver impactful business outcomes.