Cloud Foundry and Puppet veteran to scale ActiveState’s mission of securing the global software supply chain as enterprise demand for managed open source increases
ActiveState, a global leader in trusted, managed open source, announced it has appointed Abby Kearns as CEO. Stephen Baker, the company’s CEO since 2024, is joining ActiveState’s Board of Directors effective today.
With more than 25 years of successfully building and growing technology companies, coupled with a deep understanding of the open source landscape and community, Kearns brings a powerful combination of knowledge and expertise to the role. Prior to joining ActiveState, she held Chief Technology Officer and product leader roles at AIembic and Puppet (acquired by Perforce). She served as the Chief Executive Officer of the Cloud Foundry Foundation, a global open source software organization driving enterprise adoption of cloud and cloud-native technologies, partnering with global Fortune 500 executives on digital transformation strategies.
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“ActiveState has spent decades building the world’s most trusted library of built-from-source components. As enterprises grapple with the security risks of unmanaged open source software – a challenge amplified by the surge in AI-accelerated development – our role as a ‘one-stop shop’ for this foundational infrastructure has never been more critical,” said Kearns. “I am thrilled to lead this talented team as we help engineering and security teams move faster without compromising on security.”
Under its new leadership, ActiveState will continue its mission to help enterprises tame the complexity of open source software (OSS). 96% of enterprise applications include OSS, making it critical infrastructure for software development, yet most companies do not manage it as critical infrastructure. Unmanaged open source is now the dominant source of exploitable vulnerabilities, legal exposure, and software supply chain compromise. ActiveState acts as one stop for secure and trusted open source, helping engineering teams improve velocity and security teams strengths security posture, using the world’s largest library of built-from-source and continually remediated open source, delivered where and when they need it. This leadership transition represents a natural next step for the company as it scales to meet accelerating global demand for securing customers’ open source in mission-critical applications.
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“Leading ActiveState for the past two years has been an incredible journey of innovation,” said Baker. “We have built a foundation that reduces CVEs by up to 99% and saves developers thousands of hours in manual toil. As I transition to the Board, I can’t think of a better leader than Abby to steer our next phase of global growth. Her expertise in digital transformation and open source communities is exactly what our customers need as they scale.”
