What Makes Me Different
AI-Enhanced Leadership
I use AI to make my job easier and my teams more effective. I’ll use it to synthesize patterns from multiple retros or organize feedback from different team members, but I’m not about to let AI make decisions about people or team dynamics. That’s human work. My teams benefit because I can process information faster and spend more time on the stuff that actually matters.
Remote-First Excellence
I’m experienced in leading distributed teams across multiple time zones. I don’t just “allow” remote work—I design meeting structures and communication patterns specifically for remote teams to be effective.
Team Transformation
I’ve turned around multiple struggling teams. Different sizes, different technical challenges, different organizational messes. There’s usually a pattern: unclear expectations, broken communication, and people who’ve lost trust that things can get better. I’m good at untangling that stuff.
Civic Tech
Most of my recent work has been democracy infrastructure: IRS Direct File at Truss, which served 140,000 filers in 2024 and scaled to 32 million in 2025; campaign finance transparency at MapLight; and voting coordination at Sway. I didn’t set out to specialize in it, I keep choosing the same kind of problem.
Federal contracting experience, including work requiring a security clearance.
How I Lead
People Leadership
I make 1:1s actually useful for the people I manage. It’s their time, their agenda, their space to figure out what they need. I’ve built onboarding processes that don’t suck and frameworks for handling both performance issues and personal crises without making everything worse.
Process Development
I like to experiment with how teams work together. Not everything needs to be a permanent change, but most things can be improved if you’re willing to try something different and are honest about whether it’s working.
Communication & Collaboration
I’m good at translating between different groups—helping product folks understand technical constraints and helping engineers understand why certain features matter to users. I can navigate organizational politics without getting cynical about it.
Some Things I’ve Done
Team Transformation
I took over a cross-functional team that had been struggling for months. They had low morale, were missing sprint goals, and the client had lost trust in our ability to deliver. I built psychological safety, restructured how we ran meetings, and implemented better planning processes. The team became the highest-performing team at the company within 4 months, and other teams asked us to share what we were doing.
Technical Leadership
I inherited a legacy frontend codebase with poor test coverage and accessibility problems. I led the team through a React Testing Library migration, elevated testing standards, and drove accessibility improvements. Test coverage went up 40%, developer experience improved, and we achieved accessibility compliance.
Crisis Support
I had a direct report going through a personal crisis that was affecting their work. I worked with HR to create a support plan with clear expectations and timeline. The report was able to return to full capacity within 3 months, and the framework we created became a resource for other managers dealing with similar situations.
Why Engineers Trust Me
Frontend and Full-Stack Work
I’ve led teams building React applications, worked with GraphQL, and dealt with the usual frontend performance and architecture challenges. I know enough about backend work to get my hands dirty when needed, but more importantly, I can lead and collaborate effectively with backend engineers because I understand the full picture. I care about testing, accessibility, and not building technical debt on purpose.
Accessibility
I don’t just want teams to meet compliance requirements—I want them to understand why accessibility matters and build it into how they think about features from the start.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
I help teams ship features that actually solve problems for users. That means understanding both the technical constraints and the business needs, and helping everyone else understand them too.
Things I’ve Made
Most of what I make is about helping people work better. Documentation, process, and the occasional science fiction magazine.
I founded it in 2010 and still publish it. A fully distributed volunteer team, grown from just me to a team of 20, shipping a quarterly magazine for seventeen years.
A curated guide to writing better, kinder, more helpful documentation and learning materials.
Self-care resources for people in tech, built with Astro.
How I run a team, written down, so you don’t have to find out the hard way.
I coach engineers and engineering leaders through leadership transitions and career moves.
What Colleagues Say
“As my manager, JP was very supportive and cared a lot about my career trajectory and sought out to help me reach my goals. She always provided sound advice and the tools/opportunities I needed to advance in my role. JP ensured we had a safe, open, and supportive space within the team, which fostered great team collaboration and growth.”
- Belle Poopongpanit, Software Engineer
“JP is one of the most thoughtful, kind, and proactive engineering leaders I have ever had the pleasure of working with. She excels in multiple areas, including understanding how to balance competing priorities across complex initiatives, caring for team members and their development, and elevating feedback from across many teams to leadership at the right time.”
- Chris Weekley, Product Leader
“JP is an incredible team lead who excels at breaking down complex engineering tasks and getting the team to work cohesively despite their obstacles. It always amazed me at how great she was at ensuring that her team was running efficiently and delivering solid work despite the circumstances.”
- Prakit Mohal, Product Manager
“JP makes every situation better, every team better, and every person she works with better by establishing clear processes and expectations. She listens with empathy before acting, but then acts decisively and effectively. It was an honor and a pleasure to work with JP.”
- Andrew Hobson, Senior Software Engineer
“JP led an amazing team that was a pleasure to work on. She balanced the impossible: filtering down the ever-shifting needs of a volatile project, while her team consistently delivered sprint after sprint; advocating for autonomy and excellence among her team members, while exhibiting genuine care for us and our work-life balance; standing at the center of a group of people from both sides of the project who shared a casual rapport, day after day.”
- Scott Ries, Software Engineer
