hey, i'm lelia 🍍

🤔 what's in a name?

• My name is often confused with more common names like leila or lila, but I assure you, it's different — and probably how I managed to snag this handle 😛
• How to pronounce lelia? It's somewhat up for interpretation, but the easiest way to remember is that it's like amelia, delia, celia — just with an "L".
• What does my name mean? Well, if noted authority babynamewizard.com is to be believed:

Lelia is a contracted variant of Eulalia, a compound name composed of the Greek elements eu (well, good, fair) and lalein (to talk): hence, "well-spoken".

Hey, I'll take it!

👩‍💻 what do I do?

• I'm currently a Senior Solutions Architect @ Buildkite 🪁. Previously, I worked as a technical architect in open source at both Cisco and Wayfair, serving as a foundational member of the Open Source Program Office (OSPO) for each.
• Prior to open source work, I held roles as staff engineer and technical lead for platform engineering at Wayfair, focusing on frictionless testing at scale, developing plugins for Buildkite, and founding a department-wide mentorship program.
• Before all of that, I worked at a handful of technology companies — spanning everything from enterprise security to storage servers to consumer robotics 🤖

💻 how do I work?

• I'm a big fan of keyboard shortcuts, workflow improvement, and automating things.
• My preferred Terminal-based text editor is Vim, but I won't fight you if you use Emacs 🤓
• For IDEs, I tend to stick with VSCode (for Bash, Python, PHP, Javascript, etc.) and IntelliJ IDEA (for Java and Rust) — always with Vim key bindings.
• Since I hail from a non-CS background (film major!), I'm always on the lookout for unique and interesting ways to learn. If given the choice between a densely-packed textbook and an interactive tutorial which teaches practical applications of a technical concept, I'll choose the latter every time.

✨ what else do I do?

• After displaying a degree of helplessness in the kitchen that led to my mom gifting me the book How to Boil Water, I decided it was time to learn how to cook — and accidentally wound up loving it 👩‍🍳 As with programming, I've found that the more you learn, the more you realize how much more there is to know — which is both terrifying and exciting. I'm especially fond of sauces and spices, and enjoy blending traditional flavors from different cuisines to create new culinary experiences in Flavortown ™️
• I also love languages and linguistics, and consider myself a lifelong learner — which extends to my native language, English! I've spent the most time studying Spanish — helped by my brief stint living in Miami 🇨🇺 — and know a little 🇮🇹 Italian and French 🇫🇷, too. As a stretch goal, I'd love to learn conversational Cantonese 🇭🇰