About me

Photo of me smiling
Photo taken in 2018 by Kelly Benvenuto

My name is Lea Verou* (Lea being short for Michaelia or ĪœĪ¹Ļ‡Ī±Ī®Ī»Ī¹Ī±) and I wear many hats. My day job is researching how to make web programming easier at MIT CSAIL, working with David Karger in theĀ Haystack group.

I have a long-standing passion for open web standards. Iā€™m an elected W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG) member as of Jan 2021. The TAG is a special W3C working group that ensures all new Web technologies are well-designed and consistent with the rest of the Web Platform, and do not expose Web users to harm. Iā€™ve been one of the few Invited Experts of the W3C CSS Working Group since 2012 and co-edit several CSS specifications, so if youā€™re a Web developer, you probably use bits of my work daily. In the past, I have also worked at W3C/MIT as a Developer Advocate.

I love sharing knowledge and haveĀ given over 100 invited talks at web design/web development conferences around the world. My talks are known for their interactive style and are often cited as one of the few examples of live coding that doesnā€™t suck. I have also written a bestselling book on advanced CSS and several articles.

Selfie from 2018 to commemorate my (still unbroken) personal record number of hair colors šŸ˜…

I love designing and building tools that enhance peopleā€™s lives and/or make their tasks easier and have designed and launched over 30 tools, most of them open source. Some of them are:

I hold a MSc in Computer Science from MIT and a BSc in Computer Science from Athens University of Economics and Business, and Iā€™m currently finalizing a PhD at MIT. Despite my technical pursuits, Iā€™m one of the few misfits who love code and design equally.

In the more distant past, I grew up in Greece, and started my career at the same time as my studies, in 2005. For the first few years I was freelancing for graphic design and web development projects, and in 2008 I co-foundedĀ a startup called Fresset Ltd there. It created and managed several popular Greek community websites that my co-founder and I had created since 2005. I left in 2011 and the company was sold in 2013.

You canĀ email me at leaļ¼ verou.me (donā€™t copy/paste it) if you are so inclined.

* Until 2013 I officially had both my parentsā€™ last names (Komvouti-Verou / ĪšĪæĪ¼Ī²ĪæĻĻ„Ī·-Ī’Ī­ĻĪæĻ…) though I had been going by Lea Verou for over a decade. In 2013 I finally did the paperwork to only keep my motherā€™s surname, for simplicity and brevity. I think itā€™s awesome that my parents left the choice up to me, and not the patriarchy, and I have strong opinions on last name politics. Of course, my daughter also has both my and my husbandā€™s last names. šŸ˜Š