About

Hi! People often ask me for a bio. One of the ones below should suffice :-)

Instagram Bio

Founder & CEO of @alpineparrot • lover of animals, flan, and languages • 🙌🏽 🙌🏽 🙌🏽

Shorter Alpine Parrot Bio

Raquel Vélez is the Founder and CEO of Alpine Parrot, an outdoor apparel company whose mission is to celebrate and foster equitable access to the outside for people of size. In a previous life she was a robotics engineer and software engineering manager, but now she spends her time focusing on great fit, finding amazing materials, and building an inclusive community centered around body neutrality, spending time in nature, and finding joy in any environment. She was named one of Outside Magazine's Outsiders of the Year in 2021 and Well+Good Magazine's Changemakers in 2023.

Official (Long) Alpine Parrot Bio

Raquel Vélez is the Founder and CEO of Alpine Parrot, an outdoor apparel company that caters specifically to people of size and people of color. She brings with her almost two decades of engineering experience, having received her degree in mechanical engineering from Caltech, worked and studied as a robotics engineer, and eventually shifting over to software engineering and engineering management. Now, as an apparel engineer, she's creatively tackling one of the oldest (and most polluting) industries by creating sustainable, inclusive clothing for a market of people who have so often been neglected in the outdoor space. As a plus sized Latina who discovered her love of the outdoors later in life, Raquel has put an incredible amount of careful consideration into the design of each product, focusing on great fit and quality construction. She was named one of Outside Magazine's Outsiders of the Year 2021 and one of Well+Good Magazine's Changemakers 2023.

Old Tech Bios

Twitter-ish Bio

purveyor of flan, platypus caretaker at @slackhq, former wombat caretaker at @npmjs, polyglot, craft engineer, speaker of things at places

Conference Bio

Raquel Vélez was the engineering manager of the Platform App Discovery team at Slack Technologies, Inc. in San Francisco, CA. Before her tenure at Slack, she was employee #1 at npm, Inc, helping the company grow to 30 people. Before that she worked at a variety of startups and institutions around the world, ranging from robotics to JavaScript. Raquel took both experiences to help found the Nodebots community, and she is a co-author of the book Make: JavaScript Robotics. In her off time, you can find her sewing, driving fast cars, speaking, and hanging out with her hilarious husband and two cats dressed in dog suits.

Generic Bio

Raquel started playing on the web after ditching the never-going-to-happen robot revolution. She worked at Slack Technologies, Inc as the engineering manager of the Platform App Discovery team, and has previously worked at places like npm, Caltech, and NASA JPL (among others). She's fairly certain laughter and chocolate will cure almost everything. She is a co-author of the book Make: JavaScript Robotics.

Big Kid Bio

Raquel Vélez is an American technologist and community leader with a global perspective. She studied Mechanical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and worked as a roboticist for 8 years at a variety of institutions, including the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the University of Duisburg-Essen, the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, the University of Genoa, and Applied Minds. Raquel's career shifted to web development in 2012, wherein she specialized in Node.js (JavaScript) before switching gears into Engineering Management. She has worked at Skookum Digital Works, Storify, Sauce Labs, and npm, Inc. She was the Engineering Manager of the Platform App Discovery Team at Slack Technologies, Inc. and speaks at conferences around the world. She is a co-author of the book Make: JavaScript Robotics: Building NodeBots with Johnny-Five, Raspberry Pi, Arduino, and BeagleBone. Raquel has lived in 4 countries, speaks 5 languages, and currently lives in Livermore, California.