Tim Cappalli
Tim Cappalli (he/him) is a Standards Architect at Okta, where he works on standards and strategy for the verifiable digital credential ecosystem, phishing-resistant authentication, and identity-related Web Platform APIs.
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He is active in the FIDO Alliance, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the OpenID Foundation, and the IETF. Prior to joining Okta, Tim was a Standards Architect at Microsoft, where he led work on developing the first generation of passkeys. He collaborated with the FIDO Alliance, W3C, Google, Apple, developers, regulators, and other stakeholders to introduce phishing-resistant credentials as the baseline for user authentication online. Tim’s expertise bridges technical innovation and strategic collaboration, driving the evolution of secure, user-centric identity solutions to advance digital trust and enable individuals to engage with technology securely and effortlessly.
Sarah Cecchetti
Sarah Cecchetti is a seasoned technology executive driving product strategy at Semperis. She co-founded IDPro and co-authored NIST SP 800-63-3C Digital Identity Guidelines.
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At AWS, she led Amazon Cognito to triple-digit growth as Head of Product and led the open-sourcing of Cedar, a new access management language.
Sarah has designed secure identity systems for corporate clients as well as US and Canadian governments and is recognized as a top identity professional by Okta Ventures and OWI. She’s a keynote speaker at global identity conferences like Identiverse and Authenticate.
Heather Flanagan
Heather Flanagan is the Principal at Spherical Cow Consulting, co-convener of the Identity Salon, and a recognized leader in digital identity and open standards.
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Named to the Okta Identity 25 in 2025, she has spent the last 15 years bridging technical and policy communities through roles with the IETF, W3C, and IDPro.
Heather currently co-chairs multiple standards groups, including W3C Federated Identity and IETF SPICE, was recently elected onto the W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG), and advises organizations such as the SIROS Foundation on global digital trust initiatives. Known for her ability to “translate geek to human,” she brings both strategic insight and practical experience to advancing identity standards worldwide.
Mike Jones
Michael B. Jones is on a quest to build the Internet’s missing identity layer. Kim Cameron recruited him to pursue that quest with him in 2005 and he’s been at it ever since. He wouldn’t be in the digital identity space without Kim’s leadership and mentorship. He is passionate about mentoring the next generation of identity leaders, just as Kim mentored him.
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Mike is an editor of the OpenID Connect specifications, IETF OAuth specifications, including JSON Web Token (JWT) and DPoP, the IETF JSON Object Signing and Encryption (JOSE) specifications, FIDO 2.0, and W3C Web Authentication. In the Digital Credentials space, he is an editor of the W3C Verifiable Credentials specs, the JSON Web Proofs (JWP) specs, and a contributor to the OpenID4VC specs. He co-chairs the IETF COSE working group, which is doing post-quantum algorithms work for COSE and JOSE.
contributor to the IDPro Body of Knowledge, and co-leads the IDPro Happy Hour in his adopted home city of Seattle, WA.
Outside of his professional work, Dean is passionate about traveling the world, cycling, camping, board games, food and drink, and spending time with his wife, two kids, and two dogs.
Michael was recognized as a Distinguished Engineer by the OpenID Foundation and was granted a lifetime achievement award by Kuppinger Cole for creating simple, secure, ubiquitous, interoperable digital identity solutions since 2005. As a long-time member of the OpenID Board of Directors, he architected the award-winning and globally adopted OpenID Certification program. Michael’s Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University led to a lifelong career in digital identity, computer security, privacy, and networking. His professional Web site is https://self-issued.consulting/ and he blogs at https://self-issued.info/.
Rifaat Shekh-Yusef
Rifaat is a seasoned software engineer with over 30 years of industry experience spanning both startups and established global corporations, with extensive experience in product security and Identity and Access Management (IAM).
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Combined with over 15 years of leadership in Internet standards development, currently serves as Product Security Architect at Ciena, a leading optical networking systems company.
He is an active contributor to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) with 4 published RFCs and 4 active security-related drafts. Currently chairing three key IETF working groups: OAuth, WebBotAuth, and Security Dispatch, driving the evolution of internet security standards and protocols.
Rachelle Sellung
Rachelle Sellung is a Senior Scientist Researcher in the Identity Management Competence Team of the Department of Human-Technology Interaction at Fraunhofer IAO in Stuttgart, Germany.
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She has been a former Kim Cameron Award Winner and recognized as one of the Top 100+ Women in Cyber Security by the Women4Cyber of the European Cyber Security Association. She conducts socio-economic and user experience research on a variety of emerging technologies in Identity Management and Cyber Security.
She has worked in many EU and German funded research projects and Industry projects focused on Trust management (e.g. LIGHTest, TRAIN), Digital Wallets (DECIDE, ONCE, MGOV4EU) and Identity Management (FutureID, Skidentity and SSEDIC).
Dean H. Saxe
Dean is a Principal Security Engineer at Remitly and an identity standards architect with over 20 years of experience in information security.
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At Remitly, he is responsible for assessing and managing the IAM practices across the company, including consumer, enterprise, partner, and workload use cases.
Professionally Dean is deeply engaged in shaping the future of identity through active participation in organizations such as the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the OpenID Foundation (OIDF). At OIDF, he co-chairs the Death & The Digital Estate Community Group (DADE CG). Previously, he served as co-chair of the FIDO Alliance Enterprise Deployment Working Group, and the OpenID Foundation’s Interoperability Profiling for Secure Identity in the Enterprise Working Group (IPSIE WG).
Dean is a founding member of IDPro, a contributor to the IDPro Body of Knowledge, and co-leads the IDPro Happy Hour in his adopted home city of Seattle, WA.
Outside of his professional work, Dean is passionate about traveling the world, cycling, camping, board games, food and drink, and spending time with his wife, two kids, and two dogs.