---
layout: news_item
title: "Meet Jekyll's New Lead Developer"
date: "2018-02-19 20:48:09 -0500"
author: parkr
categories: [team]
---

Jekyll has a new Lead Developer: [Olivia](https://liv.cat/)!

After over 5 years of leading Jekyll, many releases from 0.12.1 to 3.6.0, and
countless conversations in GitHub Issues, Pull Requests, Jekyll Talk, and
more, I am passing on the torch as Lead Developer of Jekyll.

Olivia has been working with the Jekyll community for some time now. You
may have seen her around in issues and pull requests on the various Jekyll
repositories. She started as a contributor, then joined the Core team as our
community lead. Olivia joined the Jekyll Core Team with experience in the
Node.js community, both online and as a volunteer organizer with JSConf EU.

In my conversations with Olivia, it is clear that Jekyll's vision of
simplicity for the user ([no magic!](/philosophy#1-no-magic)) and letting
users' [content be king](/philosophy#3-content-is-king) will remain a top
priority. In just the last few weeks as the transition has been occurring,
we have seen some incredible work on performance that will make future
versions of Jekyll work better at scale. She will be prioritizing work on
innovative improvements to make Jekyll that much better for all of us.
Olivia balances an eye for quality with the need for shipping well.

When Tom Preston-Werner met me at GitHub HQ 2.0 in January 2013 to pass on
the torch, I could never have dreamed of all the amazing experiences this
community would share with me over the next 5 years. From visiting @qrush
in Buffalo, NY for a hack night on Jekyll to attending a Jekyll planning
session hosted by @benbalter at GitHub to Google Summer of Code which gave
us jekyll-admin, I am eternally grateful to all of you for the opportunity
to lead this excellent community. I'm confident Olivia will continue to
lead Jekyll to even greater heights.

As always, Happy Jekylling!

Parker

*Curious about who else runs this show? [Check out our excellent team.](/team/)*
