about

all persistence comes from love

summary of intent

this site isn’t to impress. it’s to remember. to gather all the pieces of who i am and give them a home. whenever i come back to my personal website, i’m always wrestling with the question of who exactly is the target audience. these kinds of things always end up as part biography, part resume, part mirror. it’s for me and it’s for you, but i’ve come to the decision that it’s mostly for me. if you want my cv it’ll be somewhere.

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Hi, I’m Shayna

i’m a software engineer, but that’s not the whole story.

my work focuses on building systems that help small businesses grow, automate thoughtfully, and connect with their communities through human-centered design. i draw inspiration from anime, games like chess and mmos, and aesthetics that live between minimalism, brutalism, and soft gradients. to me, the best technology feels like empathy disguised as engineering.

the work i love most happens at intersections:

  • between technical and non-technical teams who need to understand each other
  • between what clients think they need and what will actually solve their problem
  • between enterprise-grade capabilities and small business budgets
  • between “we have an idea” and “we have a working system”
Technical I work here Human

i build bridges. sometimes that looks like code. sometimes it looks like conversations. usually, it’s both.

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how i got here

university of illinois at urbana-champaign

learned to write clean code and think in systems. loved database systems, systems programming, and ethical & professional issues in cs

amazon

learned to design and implement elegant technical solutions for scale. built data pipelines and dashboards and drank a lot of coffee

five star transportation

learned to translate technical solutions into actual business value. businesses don't need a "web app," they need something that either saves money or makes money

lenilani

putting it all together now! connecting growing businesses to enterprise technology they think is out of reach. translating between "we can't afford this" and "actually, you can"—bridging capability to budget, complexity to usability, ideas to implementation.

i’ve lived and worked across chicago, indianapolis, honolulu, seattle, silicon valley, and next is tulsa through tulsa remote. traveling is fun! new experiences are fun!

direction

  • i want to build something that makes people feel loved through technology.
  • i want to become an expert in systems — in data, ai, and design.
  • i want to live a creative, balanced life of continual exploration.

my guiding question is simple:

what can i build that would make me, and others, genuinely happy?

in the next few years, my goal is to gain enough domain expertise to build something truly my own — something that blends empathy and technology into an experience that feels human, connected, and alive.

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