Skip to content
Michael Rishi Forrester

FDE training. Enterprise AI adoption.

Thirty years in operations, DevOps and cloud infrastructure, across four waves: cloud, DevOps, Kubernetes, and now AI. I am the AI Workforce Transformation Lead, FDE and AI-Native Programs, at Accenture LearnVantage, advising CIOs, CTOs and CISOs on putting agentic AI into production without losing control of it. I wrote Agentic DevOps with Claude Code (2026) and am an exam developer for a wide range of certification exams, including the Linux Foundation's MCP exam. Author of Agentic Covenants, a model for enforcing agent guardrails in infrastructure, in addition to the AI tool. I ship the reference implementations, not just the strategy.

GitHubLinkedInSessionizeEmail

Latest post: Opinion: Make Friends With Your Users, and Get the Agents Off Their Laptops

I speak on platform engineering, agentic AI security and governance. Speaking and appearances →

Where the thirty years went

Read it as a journey, one road through thirty years

  • 2026 – nowAccenture LearnVantage, AI Business Stream Lead for Leaders and OrganizationsTitle of record per mrf-knowledge. As AI Workforce Transformation Lead, FDE and AI-Native Programs, advises C-suite, security and engineering leadership on production AI adoption and governance, and works on Claude and generative AI adoption with governments and forward deployed engineers.
  • 2023 – 2026KodeKloud, Principal Training ArchitectCurriculum strategy across AWS, CNCF and AI ecosystems. Quality gate for all curricula and trainers.
  • 2019 – 2025The Performant Professionals, Founder and PrincipalDistributed consultancy delivering transformation and technical enablement to enterprise clients in insurance, banking, transportation, manufacturing and technology, staffed across India, the Philippines, California and Atlanta.2022 – 2023 Amazon Web Services, Certification Technical Architect2020 – 2021 ThoughtWorks, Senior Principal Consultant and Platform Architect2019 – 2023 Web Age Solutions, DevOps and CloudOps Architect
  • 2018 – 2019Honeywell, Principal Digital Architect, Connected EnterprisesGlobal architect for the Sentience and Forge IoT platform. Primary architectural advisor to the CTO and CEO across $2B+ in initiatives.
  • 2017 – 2018IgnitionOne, VP of Technical OperationsScaled a Fortune 500 marketing platform from millions to billions of daily transactions.
  • 2014 – 2016Inform, Inc, Director of Engineering Operations and DevOpsEleven direct reports across infrastructure, support and data services.
  • 2013 – 2014inBloom, Senior Manager of IT Operations
  • 2011 – 2013WorthPoint, Director of Infrastructure and OperationsIncluding a full data-center-to-AWS migration.
  • 1999 – 2012Majere Enterprises, Founder and OwnerA twenty-person consultancy in infrastructure, CI/CD and team performance.
  • 1998 – 1999BellSouth.net, Unix and NT administrator, trainer for IS
  • 1996 – 1997Compris Technologies, Technology and training manager

Current certifications

19 current, generated from Credly. Expired credentials are not listed.