About
Friends call me Paw, and some even spell my name as “Pawlean”.
I’m a 28 year old human on a mission to live my healthiest, happiest and most fulfilling life. My blog is a place to document as much of that as possible.
I grew up online: updating my websites via FileZilla, tweeting since 2009 and creating communities in the “blogosphere“.
Where is home?
My accent keeps people guessing; I’ve been told I sound Aussie and American. But none of those is correct, and to be honest, I’m still trying to understand what accent I have. 🤪 You can judge for yourself by watching a video or listening to me on a podcast.
For the past 16 years, I’ve called Sheffield, a small green city in the North of England, my home. Though on the road, I sometimes tell people I’m from London or Manchester to avoid having to explain where my magical, alpaca-filled home is.
Although I call the UK my home, the Philippines will always be my home-home which explains why 90% of my conversations are about missing the sun.
In the last two years, I’ve been solo-travelling across Europe and eventually found another home in Greece where I now hilariously try to avoid the sun at peak times. 😆
Fun facts
- For personality enthusiasts, I’m an ENFT-J: a warm, forthright type who loves helping others and holds strong ideas and values.
- I’m over 6ft in personality, but my height is a mystery
- I have a degree in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Sheffield that I don’t use beyond occasionally sharing random scientific facts
- I have a non-identical twin who describes me as overly dramatic, but I like to remind her that this helped me get into a movie once
- Curating Spotify playlists like this one is a fun hobby because my life IS a movie
- I love to exercise! Right now, my favourite forms of movement are boxing, spin, weight lifting and yoga
- I’m a proud tech nerd
- While I struggle with learning new languages despite exposure to Tagalog, Spanish, and currently learning Greek, I find programming languages much easier to understand
- I love to write, both privately and publicly, as the Vault will show you
- If I could sing, I would be performing in musicals. Instead, I just speak at conferences
Being a “multi-hyphenate”
The multi-hyphenate, an individual with so many skills they need multiple hyphens to list them, might seem like a revolutionary form of labour agency within a prescriptive job market.
I’m a believer that anyone can learn anything with time and determination, my story is a great example of that. I don’t hold a Computer Science degree; my interest in tech sparked as I grew up on the internet, building websites for fun.
I now work at ▲ Vercel leading community efforts.
Previously, I worked as Head of Community at Gitpod for three years (2021 – 2024), a DevOps Engineer (2021), Site Reliability Engineer, Digital Engineering Graduate (2020), and Biomedical Sciences student (2018).
Learn more about my story into tech on my portfolio.
While I love my tech career, I try not to be defined solely by my job title.
I’m also a daughter of Filipino migrants, a sister (or your online sister), an explorer, a creative media enthusiast, a community builder, a speaker, a powerlifter, and a writer.
In other words, I’m a multi-hyphenate. 😁