Hi there! 👋 I’m Valerie. I’ve spent over 15 years working with databases at the heart of some of the world’s most demanding applications, from email marketing and wearable fitness tech to streaming media and financial services. My experience runs deep, not just in scaling systems or tuning performance, but in building confidence for teams who rely on their data layer every day. I’ve weathered late-night war rooms and urgent production issues, which has given me a strong sense of empathy for what it takes to keep databases running smoothly and reliably.

Whether it’s automating upgrades across hundreds of servers, architecting high availability for global restaurant chains, or crafting cross-regional data layers for grocery inventory, my focus is on making sure your databases support your business goals. I enjoy sharing what I’ve learned, mentoring teams, and helping others develop the skills and intuition that come from years of hands-on experience with critical systems.

Select projects include:

• Improving performance of opens and clicks analytics – email marketing
• Automating upgrades and other maintenance of 100s of database servers – media streaming
• Scaling databases to meet holiday traffic – wearable fitness tech
• Designing high availability to avoid outages – telecommunications
• Automating health checks across a cluster to give insight into performance – meeting and collaboration software
• Accelerating data ingest from IOT devices – electric cars
• Architecting database modernization and high availability – international restaurant chain
• Tuning database replication and reads to reduce failures – social media
• Crafting a low-latency cross-regional data layer – grocery chain inventory system
• Planning for consistent writes across data centers - financial services