About Me
Hi! I’m Malyn Long Lopes (pronouns they/them or she/her).
When I was nine, my dad (who worked in IT) taught me how to make a basic web page using HTML. It was fun, and it was something my dad and I could share. So I loved it.
Still, he warned me, when I was a teen, not to make a career of tech. Too unstable, he said. It would always be stressful. Better to find a job in another field, an established field, that could guarantee a stable life.
Spoiler alert: I didn’t avoid tech (shocking, I know!).
I did try, for a while. I tutored while I got a degree and teaching credential, then taught at a middle school for a year before realizing, with some heartbreak, that I’d always have too many students to be able to give them each the same attention and connection I did as a tutor.
A chance conversation on a road trip led to joining a friend’s new company building basic-but-solid sites for people just starting a small business, charging them a reasonable amount that wouldn’t require them to sell a kidney to make it happen.
At first, my role was writing instructional documentation to help clients maintain their sites once built–but I picked up more site-building skill along the way, honed it with study and practice, and starting building and fixing sites for clients. Over the ten years since then, the rest of the business has shifted over to me, too, and now I’m carrying this dream forward on my own.
Along the way, I’ve seen an awful lot of what can go wrong on a site, and what can go right, and how to get from one to the other. I’ve built sites from the simple to the complex, and out-stubborned plenty of styling details and other issues that didn’t want to budge. I’ve also seen the relief in our clients’ faces and voices when they realize they have someone in their corner, and don’t have to figure it all out themselves anymore.
Because my dad was right. Tech really can be stressful, for a whole lot of people. And there’s very little that makes me happier than taking that stress away.
When I’m done for the day, I relax by spending time with my husband and our cats, reading or gaming. I’m also a novelist, an obsessive rock climber, and the type of person to tinker with a good dozen other hobbies just because they seemed interesting. Feel free to ask me what’s taken over my brain lately!
And, if you’d like to work together, please reach out. I’d love to help make your tech hum along smoothly again, or help bring it into being for the first (or second, or fifth) time.