About Us

Team

Founder and CEO

Ingo Rübe

Ingo Rübe is founder of KILT Protocol and CEO of BOTLabs GmbH, the initial developer of KILT.

Previously he served as CTO of Hubert Burda Media, where he initiated and headed the Drupal-based CMS Thunder. Earlier he was IT Project Director at Axel Springer.

Ingo and BOTLabs is a founding member of the International Association for Trusted Blockchain Applications (INATBA) and the Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF). He also served on the Board of Directors of the Drupal Association.

Operations Director

Matthias Möller

Matthias has twenty years of professional and leadership experience in developing and shipping digital services for the internet and media industries.

Since the early days of the internet, he has been managing the development of front end and back end internet services for high traffic and scalable products.

General Counsel

Gustav Hemmelmayr

Gustav is an Austrian lawyer with over 20 years of experience of which he spent 15 years in startups and IT companies such as SAP.

He holds an M.Sc. in Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) as well as Master’s Degrees in Communication and European Integration and brings in all his expertise to KILT Protocol.

Design Director

Christian Langer

Christian is a designer, a product and service guy, a mentor for some, and first of all a dedicated road race cyclist.

He has 25 years of professional experience in UX/UI Design, focusing on context awareness and cloud services, as well as developing a distinctive design language and culture.

Marketing Director

Elisa Dratsdrummer

Elisa has a broad range of experience across marketing, interactive media, strategic communication operations and compliance communication.

At KILT she leads marketing, communications, public relations and community operations, coordinating community and event initiatives as well as working closely with the developer relations team.

She studied international business at the European University Viadrina.

UI/UX and Graphic Design Specialist

Andreas Krautzberger

Andreas is a UI/UX, web and graphic designer with 20 years of work experience.

He has worked on many important publishing and IT projects. Andreas is also a great Post-it artist and famous for his KrautzCats.

APAC Growth Lead

Rishant Kumar

Rishant has extensive experience working with enterprise technology and blockchain startups. Based in India, he is currently APAC Growth Lead for KILT Protocol and responsible for regional partnerships that drive adoption of applications built on KILT.

He previously worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers US as SAP Tech Lead for 7 years. Rishant started his career at HAL, Bangalore as an Aircraft Design Engineer and later worked with Caterpillar Inc. and Tech Mahindra.

He holds a degree in mechanical engineering from VTU, India.

Developer Team Lead & Developer Relations

Dudley Needham

Dudley leads developer relations for KILT Protocol. His main focus is supporting project teams as they integrate KILT and applications built on KILT, supporting developers from ideation through implementation.

He studied General Engineering at the Open University of Milton Keynes in the UK.

Dudley likes to spend his free time painting; he is also a game master for Tabletop RPGs.

Software Engineer

Antonio Antonino

Antonio is a Software Engineer from Italy with a joint M.Sc. in Cloud Computing from the Technical University of Berlin (Germany) and Aalto University (Finland). At KILT he is part of the core developer team with a strong focus on DIDs.

He has previously worked as a R&D software engineer for Ericsson Finland, working with blockchain solutions including Ethereum and Hyperledger.

He used to be a goalkeeper, and now he enjoys it in his spare time.


Software Engineer

Raphael Flechtner

Raphael was a student at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain and holds a degree in philosophy.

He is specialized in Social Cognition, Evolutionary Anthropology and Social Theory. Fascinated by KILT’s goals in the disembodied online world, Raphael has contributed to shaping the vision of KILT and drafting the KILT whitepaper. He is now part of the KILT developer core team with the focus on the SDK.

DevOps Engineer

Gerawork Aynekulu

Gerawork is a DevOps engineer who has previously worked on migrating multiple fintech products to Azure.

He graduated from University of Belgrade with MSc in Computer Science. He also enjoys comedy.

Software Engineer

Andrés Rodríguez

Andrés began his journey at KILT as a software tester and has since transitioned into a role focused on maintaining and developing decentralized applications on KILT.
He currently studies Electrical Engineering at the Technical University of Berlin and previously served as a math tutor. He is fluent in Spanish, German, and English and enjoys spending his free time dancing and swimming.

Community Moderator

Aybars Ayan

Aybars Ayan is currently studying Electrical Engineering at Konya Technical University in Turkey, and has worked in software development for 6 years.

He began his journey with mobile application development, and 3 years later jumped on to Python and Deep Learning.

Team Assistant

Irena Pocrnja

Irena has a Master’s degree in Journalism (Public Relations) from the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Zagreb.

She has more than 5 years of experience in event and project organization and in the planning, implementation and coordination of administrative tasks. She is our master of the books.