Deana Solis
is the youngest daughter of Filipino immigrants and the mom of a biracial son. She and her spouse love to cook together, tag team a diy renovation project, and when the weather is right, kayak or paddle-board on the Columbia River near their home in Vancouver, Washington.
Born in Los Angeles, California, Deana attended public schools from grades K-12, and played on baseball, softball, and volleyball teams throughout. She later studied at a community college and state universities in California, Washington, and Oregon, earning her bachelor’s degree in humanities and a graduate business degree. Though she continues developing her expertise with industry and technical certifications, Deana reflects often on the early, nontechnical jobs that don’t appear on her Linked In profile. They taught her how to move out of her comfort zone as an introvert.
professional nerd
As a senior FinOps engineer, Deana draws from over two decades of technology and infrastructure management experience. She considers the practice of cloud financial management and the study of economic incentives and behaviors in cloud engineering as a natural progression toward sustainable operations.
In 2022, the FinOps Foundation, named her FinOps Evangelist of the Year at the first annual FinOpsX conference. She continues to serve as an official ambassador at Women in FinOps and other networking meetups.
Only two months after joining Smarsh in 2021, she was elected to co-lead its Inclusion Advisory Council, an employee led group with a mission to advance a culture of justice, equity, belonging and inclusion by acknowledging privilege, confronting unconscious bias and demanding safety for groups that have been marginalized and excluded from equal access to opportunity. She now facilitates virtual gatherings to support BIPOC networking within the company.
She volunteers as a mentor, blog contributor, and speaker at Portland Women in Technology, PDXWIT. She hopes to pass along all she has learned and unlearned about how to define purpose and achieve meaningful success.