ME!

It’s that time of the year again. I love this annual tradition of writing my year-in-review post primarily for taking a closer retrospective look at how things went and establishing themes I’ll return to as guideposts for the year ahead.

2025 is a special year because it’s the year I became a mom. The experience has been nothing short of transformative, rewarding, grounding, and deeply joyful. At the same time, it has reshaped how I relate to time, energy, and ambition in ways I didn’t fully anticipate. Becoming a parent changed me most in ways in which I approach each day with deep presence, patience and self-trust. What surprised me most was discovering that every new situation somehow resolves itself if I stay calm and trust my instinct. This year wasn’t just about doing new things, it was about becoming someone new in quieter, more durable ways.

If I had to summarize my 2025, it would be- Transformation through presence.

2025 Focus Area Recap

Do a few things better

The first half of the year was defined by anticipation and preparation to welcome my baby. Health (physical, emotional, and mental) was the clear #1 priority. The second half of the year marked the beginning of learning how to be a parent. Very much in “learning and testing in production” mode. Parenting became an exercise in chaos testing, systems thinking, adaptability, etc.
Professionally, this year involved a deliberate narrowing of focus. This meant less operational load and stayed anchored to a small number of high-impact priorities. With Datadog expanding into AI, there were plenty of learnings on the emerging field of LLMs and AI.

Learn and Teach

This year, I made two teaching and writing contributions that felt especially meaningful given my capacity and season of life.

The first was a guest lecture at San Jose State University, a full-circle moment that spanned nearly a decade. From taking Professor Rakesh Ranjan’s Enterprise Software Platforms course as a graduate student to returning as a guest lecturer for that same course, delivering a session on the state of observability and security in cloud-native software. Teaching always pushes me to articulate complex concepts in simpler terms, and what stayed with me most was how well received my lecture was, how I got every student in the class to actively participate and how engaged the students were. It reminded me why I value teaching because it blends clarity with curiosity for me.

The second contribution was a guest post for Venture in Security titled AppSec/ProdSec’s Reality Gap: Why Theory Doesn’t Match Practice. Writing this piece helped me put language to something I’ve experienced for years: that the gap between theory and practice in application security isn’t an inconvenient reality, it’s the defining challenge of the field. In the spirit of “less is more,” these contributions felt adequate and aligned with my capacity in 2025. More importantly, they felt intentional rather than obligatory.

Deep focus and a better reading routine

Deep focus looked different this year. Parenting demands constant mode-switching and there are no clean boundaries when a baby needs you. For me, this fragmentation was a reality of learning an entirely new system while keeping others running. Most of my reading gravitated toward pregnancy, childbirth and parenting related books, and the idea that stayed with me most was there isn’t a one size fits all approach to it, you do what feels right for you.

2026 Focus Areas

Flagship Intellectual Contribution

In 2026, I want to amplify my voice and expertise by committing to one flagship body of work. What I’m really after is exploring an idea that sits at the intersection of what the industry needs and what only a practitioner’s lens can reveal. Something underexplored, wide-ranging, and worth sustained attention. There’s a couple of problem spaces I keep returning to and 2026 feels like the right container to sit with it deeply. With modern AI tools, the gruntwork of tackling large, complex problem spaces has lowered, making it more feasible to sustain long-form, high-quality exploration without burning out. I have a few ideas I’m considering, and my intention is to choose one and stay with it for the entire year.

Energy-Aligned Work Design

For many years, I optimized heavily around time (calendars, efficiency, and throughput). That approach served me well until it started to become crystal clear that many times my best work came not because I spend a ton of time on it, it came because my energy was right to tackle it. In 2026, energy, not time will be the primary design constraint. This means designing weeks around cognitive and emotional energy, with clear differentiation between creation, execution, and recovery phases. This applies not just to professional work, but to personal projects and life rhythms as well.

Relational Infrastructure (Trusted Circle)

In 2026, I want to be far more intentional about my relational infrastructure specifically, my trusted circle. I believe deeply in the value of mentors, peers, and collaborators who think long-term and operate with alignment and integrity. In short, depth over reach will be the guiding principle here.

Sustainable Consistency

As much as pace matters, sustainable consistency is what everything ultimately comes down to. I’d rather make steady, repeatable progress than sprint toward something I can’t realistically maintain once life inevitably gets full. Ultimately, prioritizing health and wellness in all of life’s seasons sustainably can make a world of difference going through it and coming out of it. Only a few things in life can operate as sprints. Most meaningful pursuits are marathons.

Looking ahead

2025 was a year of becoming, not just doing. I learned new skills, became a different person( more patient, more present, more willing to let things unfold rather than force them into being). 2026 will be about building something sustainable from that foundation.