Hi, I'm Elena. I'm a founder and engineer, currently building Holopin.
I've been shipping software since my early teens: building platforms, open source tools, and productivity apps.
Now
I'm the Founder and Head of Engineering at Holopin. We make digital badges people actually want to collect. Companies and communities give them out for open source contributions, new skills, and events. Here's my board:
More than 150,000 developers have collected over a million Holopin badges, from organizations including DigitalOcean & Hacktoberfest and Cloudflare. The badges are verifiable, built on the W3C Verifiable Credentials standard.
I was elected to the Advisory Board of W3C, the World Wide Web Consortium, in 2024 and re-elected for 2026–2028. My job there is making sure developers, small businesses, and open source have a say in how the Web evolves.
Background
Before Holopin, I ran Theta Labs, a consultancy building cloud native, open source products: infrastructure tooling, monitoring, API design, and developer experience. I still spend at least half my time writing code. It's the best way to stay close to the people you build for.
Before that, I was Product Partnerships Lead for Education at GitHub. I scaled the GitHub Student Developer Pack to over 2 million users and more than 100 partners, including AWS, Unity, and Typeform.
Earlier, I was an engineer at Inclusive Energy and HTTPie, and interned at Nasdaq while studying Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science at the University of Edinburgh.
Community
Hackathons have been a big part of my life since university. I started out hacking at them and ended up running them: first Hack the Burgh, Scotland's largest student hackathon, and now the hackathon at W3C's annual TPAC conference.
Some of what I built along the way is on my projects page.
Speaking
I speak at conferences and meetups about developer experience, open source, and web standards. Most recently, I explained why AWS is, undeniably, an experience.
- AWS: An ExperienceAWS User Group UK, Meetup #77 · London, UKMay 2026
- Guiding the Web: Navigating the Challenges of Developer EngagementW3C Advisory Committee Summit · Sophia-Antipolis, FranceMay 2023
- How to Motivate Customers to Take ActionGrow Up Week, Estonian Business School · Tallinn, EstoniaMarch 2023
Outside tech
Away from the keyboard, I make electronic music, do CrossFit, and run long distances. That's me at the Boston Half Marathon.
Languages are my other obsession. I'm fluent in English, Spanish, German, and Lithuanian, and I can follow TV series in Russian and Persian (sometimes with subtitles for Persian).
Get in touch
I like hearing from people building developer tools, running hackathons, or working on web standards. I also take on consulting projects and speak at events. Email is the best way to reach me.