About Me

An enthusiastic teacher turned librarian turned support engineer, I have a diverse background and broad interests. While primarily working with web technology, I have interests in general computing and technology, instruction, accessibility, information management, technical services and metadata, and documentation among others.

I am always on the look out to improve existing services and implement new ones. While not a programmer or developer, I like to learn and I am not afraid to work with and dig into code. My methodology is very much user oriented in all my projects and work (at least as much as possible), and my aim is to improve the user experience and quality of life (at work) for team members.

Outside of GitLab, I mentor students as part of the UBC Arts Co-op Students’ Association mentorship program, which is a one-on-one mentorship program, mostly helping students with their applications, interviews, and professional development. I also mentor through the Aspire mentorship program by Support Driven.

Last but not least, I help with organizing conferences and workshops whenever and wherever I can (see the list below).

You can follow me on mastodon or find me elsewhere through about.me.

Current Employment

At GitLab (2018 – Present)

Staff, Strategy and Operations (Office of the CEO, formerly named Chief of Staff to CEO Team) (2023 Nov – Present)

Job description:

  • Achieve results on assigned projects and activities
  • Translate practical needs into technical and/or business requirements
  • Fill in knowledge gaps of the Chief of Staff to the CEO
  • Identify procedural gaps in existing workflows and work to resolve with optimization, automation, and data
  • Support the creation of prepared materials (documents, decks) for the Chief of Staff to the CEO and the CEO
  • Support special projects that are urgent and important
  • Execute on projects and ongoing assignments for the Chief of Staff to the CEO
  • Readiness to partner directly with the CEO, CoST to the CEO, or other Strategy and Operations Team members on high priority initiatives
  • Determine long-term owners outside of the Strategy and Operations team for initiatives and asks that are best served through a functional home. Partner with future owners to ensure that ownership and responsibilities are understood and agreed upon
  • Demonstrate GitLab values in all work

For select accomplishments, see 6th year reflection post.

Staff Support Engineer (previously: (Senior) Support Agent, (Senior) Support Engineer) (2018 Jun – 2023 Nov)

  • Engaged and solved customer problems through email and video.
  • Understood and debugged at an expert level.
  • Collaborated with engineers and the GitLab Community to escalate and fix bugs, and build new features.
  • Liaised and worked alongside and across other teams to define and shape goals, priorities, and strategy (including feature prioritization, scoping, and MVCs); collaboratively improved the software, processes, and user relations; and delivered on projects relating to customer experience and success.
  • Wrote in-depth documentation and clarified communications that share knowledge and radiate GitLab’s technical strengths.
  • Mentored, with focus on levelling others up (to Senior/Staff), and trained other members, especially in areas of expertise and new features with office hours, pairings, deep dives, and more.
  • Built efficient and iterated on processes, especially in collaboration with the Support Operations team.
  • Identified and worked on significant projects that result in substantial cost savings or revenue increases.
  • Defined and worked on quarterly OKRs that helped improve the team and increased positive interactions.
  • Contributed to internal tooling/projects.
  • Assisted in hiring by reviewing assessments, and performing interviews (both in and outside of Support); and onboarding of team members.
  • Participated in the GitLab.com Incident Management rotation to provide 24/7 emergency customer response in coordination with the Production team.
  • Participated in company-wide initiatives, including mentorship program (as mentor), Women’s Team Member Resource Group (TMRG), TeamOps (as trainer), and various one-off events.
  • Participated in Support, and Technical Writing/Documentation communities, including attending and presenting at related conferences.

Strategy and Operations Internship with Chief of Staff to CEO Team (2023 Mar – 2023 Oct)

  • OKRs
  • Updated handbook documentation to ensure any member of the Chief of Staff to CEO Team (CoST) can perform Company/CEO OKR related work.
  • Ensured prioritization and implementation of required features for effective use of OKRs in GitLab by engaging in discussions between Chief of Staff Team, Product, and Engineering, to outline needs for internal usage, identify features to iterate towards desired results, provide prioritized list of feature requests, and follow up on issues.
  • Entered Company OKRs into GitLab, and updated the handbook as needed.
  • Made OKR project public by developing and implementing an action and communication plan.
  • Revised GitLab usage for Company OKR alignment and handbook documentation when new OKR related product features were made available for improved visibility of OKR relationships and scoring.
  • TeamOps (Workplace)
  • Assisted in running working group by notetaking, following up on assignments and tasks, observed cross-functional decision making, and updated issues and handbook page around assignments and deliverables.
  • Ensured correct organization and content of TeamOps pages after migration to new handbook.
  • Made content updates according to direction from TeamOps lead.
  • Authored a total of 9 merge requests, and reviewed/approved 10 merge requests to ensure up to date and correct content.

Acting Chief of Staff to CTO (2022 Nov – 2023 Jan)

  • Initiated and guided the CTO team OKR process according to the OKR schedule (in partnership with the Chief of Staff to the CEO team).
  • Managed, tracked, and moderated OKRs for Engineering to ensure CTO Staff remains on track, and know their attention points throughout the quarter.
  • Created ‘OKRs in GitLab’ guidance for the Engineering division to supplement company guidance.
  • Created a CTO transition framework to help the future CTO start up quickly.
  • Reviewed all Engineering Working Groups’ handbook pages and work with facilitators to update them.
  • Improved, reviewed, and managed the Engineering week in review to improve usage and readership through engaging Engineering team members, and soliciting and analyzing their feedback.
  • Participated in weekly Engineering leadership meetings, including (but not limited to) setting the agenda, asking questions, providing insights and analysis to inform strategic conversations. Documented and communicated decisions and action items from meetings. Ensured follow-up and closure of action items to increase accountability.
  • Participated in all Engineering Division Key Review meetings by asking clarifying and strategic questions.
  • Promoted the role and provided support for the process of selecting the next Acting Chief of Staff to CTO.
  • Maintained and fostered a close partnership, collaborating effectively with others outside of Engineering, such as Chief of Staff (team) to CEO, People Business Partners, and Product leadership on strategic initiatives.
  • Generally, supported CTO Directs, Engineering Working Groups, Top Initiatives, and others as requested by being a resource, providing feedback, completing requests, and making changes.

I also freelance and consult in various areas as time permits, including

  • accessibility,
  • web services,
  • user experience,
  • metadata and technical services,
  • automation and workflow,
  • documentation and technical writing, and
  • project management.

Previous Employment

My previous professional experience includes:

  • website redesign/development,
  • web accessibility,
  • user studies/user experience,
  • documentation,
  • accessible digital and physical materials,
  • supervision,
  • library systems administration,
  • collaborative software (such as wiki) implementation and administration,
  • cataloguing,
  • information management,
  • project management,
  • change management,
  • process and workflow improvement,
  • reporting,
  • research,
  • planning,
  • collection management,
  • reference,
  • training, and
  • instruction.

For details, please see my LinkedIn profile.

Other previous experience include teaching, research support, tutoring, office/clerical support, and customer service.

Current and Recent Volunteering

Recent Speaking & Writing

Education

I finished my Master’s in Library and Information Studies (MLIS) at the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies (SLAIS) in December 2011 and officially graduated in May 2012.

Previously, I completed a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Psychology, then a Bachelor of Education also at UBC, but began as a student in Software Engineering and Mathematics (at what is now SFU Surrey, but used to be TechBC).

Selection of Work

My previous presentations, articles, and blog posts cover accessibility, web technology, library services, managing projects and teams, and work/community culture. Since continually adding to the list will get too long, a selection of all blog posts and externally published work is below, broken down by topic, then in reverse chronological order:

My journey

Career Development

Work/Community Culture & Similar

Project Management & Workflow

Topics without recent additions

Accessibility

(Web) Design, Development, User Experience & Usability

Technical Services, Library Collections, & Metadata