Elle Meredith

Elle is a well-rounded executive consultant and leadership coach with a background in software engineering. Her strengths are asking difficult questions while focusing on the bigger picture and business goals, growing high performing teams and leaders, and communicating with all relevant stakeholders.

Elle is passionate about creating an environment that brings out the best in people. While she is an accomplished technologist, she believes in balancing business results with people retention. She leads with curiosity, understanding the “why” gives her the context to lead with integrity.

Elle is a software engineer with more than twenty years experience. Currently, she is a consultant, and an executive and leadership coach at Blackmill. Before Blackmill, she was Head of Engineering at thoughtbot.

Elle developed and ran two six-month engineering academies for Qantas Hotels and Disco. The curriculum covered programming fundamentals, clean code, refactoring, and agile workflows.

Elle was on the Victorian Government's Industry Advisory Panel to help assess digital skills training courses for the new Digital Skills and Jobs Program.

In 2021, she completed a post-grad certificate in Psychology for Business and Management at Curtin University. In 2025, she started her Masters in Leadership and Management (organisation dynamic) with NIODA.

She believes in writing clean code, driven by automatic tests, with agile practices, an even work/life balance, and a respectful and inclusive team culture. She constantly works to improve her understanding of technologies, techniques, anti-patterns, and what is considered best practice. Her aim is to deliver clean, functional and user–friendly applications in an appropriate timeframe without wasting resources.

Elle has a passion for helping people learn to work better. She appreciates the value of strong communities. In 2014, she organised Rails Girls events in Sydney, RubyConfAU 2014, and was a member of the Ruby Australia committee. In 2015, she co-organised Gotham Ruby Conference (GORUCO) in New York City, and started a monthly work jelly for women in tech. In 2016, she co-organised Rails Camp USA East Coast in the Catskills, NY and once again co-organised GORUCO X. In 2018, she helped with the last GORUCO conference.

When she is not immersed in the Ruby community, she is probably immersed in water, or lately, in bread flour.

Work values

Lately, people have been asking me what are the things I look for at a workplace. Different people value different things. For example, some would like to work on a product that will make a difference. Others would like to work where at diverse workplaces or with other parents where there are good family benefits. Some want parts of each of those, and more. Here are mine:

  • Work with friends, or people who will become my friends (because work is not just a job)
  • Write clean code accompanied with tests (so there is not a constant pressure to push out features without any regard to the quality of the code)
  • Has a learning and growth mindset culture (preferably with people I can learn from)
  • Values collaboration as well as people's opinions
  • Has good work etiquette and respect for peers (code reviews is a great place to check that)
  • Maintains work-life balance (so there is no expectation to work late)
  • Flexible with remote work
  • Allows for autonomy and agency
  • Good pay

I can work without some of these things, but I typically choose not to.

Talks

  1. Dying Kittens and Vendor Prefixes Dramas, Brisbane Web Design Meeting, Feb 2012
  2. Intro to Minitest, Rorosyd meetup, Sydney, Aug 2012
  3. Smarter CSS with Sass, Web Directions South, Oct 2012
  4. Sass Primer, Girl Geek Dinner Sydney meetup, Dec 2012
  5. Better Web Typography with Modular Scale, What Do You Know Sydney, Mar 2013
  6. Source Maps for Debugging, Web Directions Code, Melbourne, May 2013
  7. Regular Expressions with Ruby, What Do You Know Sydney, Apr 2014
  8. A Case Study in Time Zones, Railscamp Perth, Nov 2014
  9. Introduction to TDD in Ruby, Railscamp Sydney, June 2015
  10. Just in Time, Brighton Ruby, Jul 2015
  11. Just in Time, Rails Israel, Tel Aviv, Nov 2015
  12. Feedback Matters, Ruby Conf AU, Gold Coast, Feb 2016
  13. Self-learning is a Marathon, not a Sprint, Ruby Nation, Washington DC, June 2016
  14. Conference organisers Panelist, Write/Speak/Code, Chicago, IL, June 2016
  15. Self-learning is a Marathon, not a Sprint, Ruby Conf AU, Melbourne, Feb 2017
  16. About Product Design Sprints, Ruby Melbourne meetup, May 2017
  17. Two heads are better than one, Ruby Melbourne meetup, July 2017
  18. Re-imagining the hiring process for diversity and inclusion, Web Directions Code Leaders, Aug 2017
  19. Learning to learn, Elixir Girls Melbourne, Sep 2017
  20. Feedback matters, AlterConf, Melbourne, Sep 2017
  21. Algorithms to live by and why should we care, Full Stack Conf Toronto, Oct 2017
  22. Algorithms to live by and why should we care, Keynote, Keep Ruby Weird, Oct 2017
  23. Workplace culture and hiring for diversity, Web Directions Culture Workshop, Nov 2017
  24. Rediscovering Chrome DevTools, Web Directions Summit, Nov 2017
  25. Rails Anti-Patterns, Ruby Melbourne meetup, Nov 2017
  26. Algorithms to live by and why should we care, Keynote, Ruby Conf India, Feb 2018
  27. Story telling with Git rebase, Full Stack Conf Toronto, Nov 2018
  28. Algorithms to live by and why should we care, Ruby Conf AU, Feb, 2019
  29. Story telling with Git rebase, Write/Speak/Code, San Francisco, CA, Aug 2019
  30. Start your own apprenticeship program, Ruby Conf TH, Bangkok, Thailand, Sep 2019
  31. Story telling with Git rebase, Ruby Conf, Nashville, Tennessee, Nov 2019
  32. Start your own apprenticeship program, Ruby Conf AU, Melbourne, Australia, Feb 2020
  33. Story telling with Git rebase, workshop, Git Merge 2020, Los Angeles, LA, Mar 2020
  34. Work life balance, what it is and how to get it, Ruby Australia, Jan 2021
  35. A blessing in default, or so fetch, Ruby Australia, December 2021
  36. Grow your leadership style, Tech Leading Ladies, September 2022
  37. Strategies for saying no, Rails Conf, Atlanta, April 2023
  38. Writing a talk proposal, Tech Leading Ladies, May 2023
  39. Learn to delegate, like a boss, RubyConf TH, October 2023
  40. Confronting difficult conversations, Web Directions Code Leaders, November 2023
  41. Levelling UP — A Careers Special Panel by F-Factor, March 2024
  42. Rails anti-patterns, Ruby Conf AU, April 2024
  43. Overcoming communication failures, Teach Leading Ladies, August 2024