Bona Fides
I started using computers when I was eight. I built my first computer when I was 14. I got my first job in the Information Technology sector when I was 19. I worked in customer-facing, operational, and on-call roles until I started managing teams full time in 2015. I have spent most of my career talking to computers via a command prompt, and talking to people via phone, video, or chat. I've built teams from zero, taken over existing teams to assist with performance problems, and led teams through expansion, contraction, and elimination. I've been through layoffs, startups, acquisitions, scale-ups, scale-downs, and bankruptcies; and I've worked as a consultant, a solo-contractor, and an individual contributor in small and large teams. I remember the Agile Manifesto. I remember the birth of Site Reliability Engineering. I remember the first DevOps days. I saw the galley draft of the first State of DevOps from Puppet. I have, in so many words, Been Around.
Like many in my cohort, the stresses and pain of the 2008 Financial Crisis, 2016 US elections, and the COVID pandemic in 2020 forced me into a close and ruthless examination of my own center of being, and led me to the realization that I was transgender, specifically I was a trans woman. Like many of my cohort, I had disabled and at-risk friends who were isolated, ignored, and abandoned as the pandemic progressed into our present day. And like many people, I managed to avoid COVID until I was forced into exposing myself to it specifically because of work.
"We are, all of us, only temporarily abled." – Heidi Waterhouse
I experienced my first and so far only infection of COVID in 2022. I took six weeks to recover enough to return to work. But I have never fully recovered. In the years since, in addition to my anxiety and depression treatment, I've also been diagnosed with ADHD and started treatment for it while continuing to struggle with the after-effects of COVID, until finally getting a diagnosis of Long COVID in early 2025. In combination with all of this, I celebrated my 50th birthday in 2025. And it has taken quite a lot of the first half of the year to date to understand and accept that I am, in fact, no longer temporarily abled. Disability is now part of my everyday existence, and the hardest part of that is not actually the disability; it's the acceptance of the limitations that have been imposed on me by my body.
Everything that I am, everything I have been, and everything that has brought me to this moment has helped me laid the keel for my personal leadership ideology and methods. People are people-shaped. Listening is more important than talking. Leadership is about service to others. Everyone has intrinsic value independent of their skills, contribution, or social status. Helping people is more important than being right.
Managing is an essential service, and providing that service adds value. That's where I'm coming from. That's my position; my thesis. That's what I want to share with you.