Meet the Grafana Labs team: Melaina Valentine, our global webinars program coordinator
As Grafana Labs continues to grow, we’d like you to get to know the team members who are working behind the scenes on the cool stuff you’re using.
Meet Melaina!
Name Melaina Valentine
What do you do at Grafana Labs?
As the Demand Generation Associate, I help to manage and execute the global webinars program. I always feel silly telling people I “only do webinars,” but the incredible amount of work it takes to organize, promote, and produce webinars — plus the subsequent reporting and analysis — all make it worthy of a full-time job, I promise. Typically, I tell others if you think it looks super easy, then I’ve done my job well.
Why did you join Grafana Labs?
I decided to join the team because I love working on webinars, and everyone I met during the interviewing process was an ideal colleague — friendly with a sense of humor, reliable, and also very direct with feedback and questions, which is how I operate as well. Grafana Labs is also on an upward trajectory, and remote-first culture is important to me. It’s been amazing working with people from over 40 countries, so far!
“Everyone I met during the interviewing process was an ideal colleague — friendly with a sense of humor, reliable, and also very direct with feedback and questions.”
What timezone do you currently work in?
Eastern Time Zone within the United States of America
What open source projects do you contribute to?
I’m in marketing so the extent of my GitHub commits (I’m @mnvalentine313) are related to building out new webinar registration pages and updating the webinars and videos landing page. But I have proudly shared my GitHub contributions image like it’s a Wordle!
If my camera is off in a meeting, that usually means …
I’m interacting with my senior Rat Terrier dog, Stout — either talking to him or covering him with a blanket.
What do you like to do in your free time?
What’s a “free time”? I do like to explore new recipes, both for baking (my No. 1 love) and cooking. Starting the first cold weekend in 2021, I began something I coined “Soupy Sundays” where I make soup every Sunday and usually pair it with bread. I post photos of my bowls of soup and the recipe links in our internal #food-and-beverages Slack channel, and it seems to be fairly popular based on the private messages I’ve gotten in response. My favorite soup I’ve made so far is a tomato bisque with grilled cheese (just sourdough and sharp cheddar for the latter). Otherwise, I moved into a 1960s house last year with my fiancé. It needs a lot of work, so we are still working through repairs and updates.
What’s your new favorite app that you can’t live without?
The Elevate app. Back in September 2014, I was in a big car accident that changed my brain, and the speech therapist whom I saw afterwards told me to use apps like this and Lumosity to help “rebuild and strengthen” my brain. I love this particular app for the way it gamifies practical applications, such as quickly calculating tax or tips, eliminating redundant parts of speech, and testing short-term memory (where I am greatly lacking).
What’s the last thing you binge-watched?
BoJack Horseman. I made sure to plan an entire week off between my last job and starting at Grafana Labs just to do this.
What’s your best WFH tip?
Having a manual sitting/standing desk makes such a difference in how I feel physically and how I function mentally. Standing also helps me focus once that starts to slip. I chose manual because I won’t have to worry about any motors or tech, but they also happen to be MUCH cheaper.
Share three memes or gifs that showcase your personality.
Thank you for asking this because I have an entire Memes album in my iPhone that is much older than the gif keyboard, haha! And, I’ll tell you, it’s hard to find three that are work-appropriate. But here they are:
The emoji I overuse is 😬 because …
I am proudly awkward (please see “I am uncomfortable” meme above).
Learn more about the Grafana Labs team and our remote-first culture, and find out how you can become an official Grafanista by visiting our careers page.