Welcome to the central spot for my virtual stuff! 🦉

Who am I? Let’s find out together…

Hey there! I’m Melanie (though you might know me as M, Warrick or nyghtowl in different corners of the internet). I’m a perpetually curious and adventurous human who has spent a good chunk of my life wrangling code, leading teams, and building AI-driven products that hopefully make life a little easier for others.

The Professional Stuff 💻

I’ve spent years deep in the tech and business world, in many different spaces. Lately I’ve dug into healthcare because I’ve spent way too much time navigating the maze of medical systems for people I love, and it turns out that experience is both heartbreaking and incredibly motivating. There’s nothing quite like personal experience to fuel your drive to build better solutions.

In 2025, I’ve been channeling that motivation into building Fight Health Insurance with my co-founder Holden Karau. We’ve worked to make healthcare more accessible and help people navigate insurance challenges more effectively.

The Human Stuff 🌊

When I’m not buried in strategy docs or code, you’ll find me:

  • Diving deep (literally) - I’m a scuba Divemaster who finds peace 30+ feet underwater watching fish go about their lives
  • Loving sci-fi - because reality is fascinating, but imagined futures are chef’s kiss
  • Gaming & storytelling - D&D campaigns are my jam, and I live for chaos.
  • Time with my friends - making time for the people who matter is the most important thing, full stop

Fun fact: If you dig deep enough into my past, you’ll discover I studied film and even worked in the industry for a bit. I’ve even got an IMDB page, which seems crazy considering there are less than a handful of credits. Turns out storytelling skills transfer really well to explaining why your code does what it does (or doesn’t do what it should).

The Learning Never Stops 🚀

I’m driven by an insatiable need to learn and explore. Whether it’s picking up new skills like how to fit LLM training into limited VRAM, understanding how octopi camouflage, or figuring out why my latest deployment broke (again), I’m here for all of it.

This site is where I keep track of the journey and link out to the various places where I share different aspects of my work - the wins, the face-palm moments, and everything in between.

TLDR: I build things, break things, fix things, and occasionally remember to share it in different forms.

LinkedIn has the formalized “about” version if you need that too.