Meet Our Newest AWS Heroes – May 2026

AWS welcomes four outstanding community leaders as the newest AWS Heroes for May 2026, recognizing their dedication to education, mentorship, and community building.

Meet Our Newest AWS Heroes – May 2026

We’re excited to welcome four outstanding community leaders as our newest AWS Heroes. These individuals embody the spirit of collaboration and knowledge sharing that makes the AWS community thrive. From building AI-powered tools that help fellow builders navigate AWS re:Invent, to leading some of the largest AWS communities in Latin America, to sharing deep cloud architecture expertise across blogs and events. Their dedication to lifting others up through education, mentorship, and community organizing inspires builders around the world.

Damiano Giorgi – Pavia, Italy

Artificial Intelligence Hero Damiano Giorgi is a Cloud Solutions Architect focused on AI and its evolution, who transitioned from on-premises (on-prem) systems engineering to AWS and never looked back. He helps organize AWS User Group Pavia and AWS User Group Milan, and shares content on his personal blog, “Bass and Bytes.” Damiano developed the “Unofficial post:Invent Session Suggester,” powered by Amazon Bedrock and Amazon Nova, to help builders find AWS re:Invent sessions matching their interests. He speaks at conferences across Europe including AWS Summit Milan, AWS Community Day Italy, Adria, Greece, and the Netherlands.

Darryl Ruggles – Ottawa, Canada

Serverless Hero Darryl Ruggles is a Cloud Solutions Architect who spent many years as a software developer before focusing on AWS application and AI/ML architectures. He shares knowledge across serverless, containers, AI/ML, and FinOps through his blog, LinkedIn, and published projects. Darryl is an active member of many online AWS communities including “Believe In Serverless” and loves interacting with the community at events both online and in person.

Ricardo Daniel Ceci – Buenos Aires, Argentina

Artificial Intelligence Hero Ricardo Daniel Ceci leads the AWS User Group Buenos Aires, which is the largest AWS community in Argentina with nearly 2,400 members. He is also the principal organizer of the AWS Community Day Argentina and was recognized as the AWS Community Leader of the Year 2025 for LATAM. Ricardo hosts a podcast featuring conversations with cloud experts, AWS Heroes, and developer advocates across Latin America. He has over fifteen years of experience in cloud and web development, and is passionate about empowering Spanish-speaking builders and lowering the barrier to cloud and AI across LATAM.

Matias Kreder – Buenos Aires, Argentina

Artificial Intelligence Hero Matias Kreder is an AWS Certification Subject Matter Expert (SME) who contributed to multiple AI/ML certifications, including the AWS Certified AI Practitioner exam. His journey began with AWS DeepRacer where he qualified three times as a finalist, which sparked his community work organizing racing events and ML talks across the region. As an AWS User Group Leader for Buenos Aires, he organized the AWS Community Day Argentina 2025 and speaks at community events throughout LATAM.