Susan Hares

Co-author of the BGP specification — the protocol considered industry-wide to be the most important on the Internet — Hares is an internationally recognized leader in commercialized advanced networking technologies and products with more than 30 years of experience in designing and deploying routing protocols and architectures. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan, and a Masters of Organizational Leadership from Regent University Business School, where she has been enrolled in the Ph.D. Program.

Hares led the technology qualification, development, and strategic planning functions at NextHop Technologies. Prior to launching NextHop Technologies, she spent 13 years at Merit Network Inc. where she most recently directed the Merit GateD Consortium. She has also served as a Senior Engineer at both Allen-Bradley Corp. and ADP Inc.

She then served as the Senior Director in the United States at Huawei Technologies, IPBU's Standards for the Network Product Line. During her tenure, Hares led a multi-national team of Internet researchers pushing the boundaries of Internet technology in optical, edge of the network SDN, and data center technology. She previously served as Director of Networking Solutions at Green Hills Software, where she guided a team to put routing software on a secure OS, and created the basis for a secure data center switch with multiple chassis.

She co-chaired the Internet Engineering Task Force's (IETF's) inter-domain routing group that standardized border gateway protocol. Hares has also served as a member of the NANOG (North American Network Operators' Group) steering committee. In 2013, she joined ADARA Networks as Vice President of Technology and Strategy, where she has been responsible for direction of ADARA's industry-leading software defined networking technology and strategy, participation and contribution to defining SDN standards, and collaborating with service providers and technology vendors in the advancement of OpenFlow, Interface to the Routing System (I2RS), Network Functions Virtualization (NVF), and other emerging SDN and virtualization technologies.