Leadership doesn't have to be guesswork

Weekly insights on building trust, influencing decisions, and leading teams that actually work. Written by someone who's done the job.

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Every Tuesday morning · 3–5 min read

Kelly Vaughn

Sr. Engineering Manager at Zapier · kvlly.com

I write what I wish I'd had years ago: clear frameworks, honest takes, and practical tools for real leadership problems. No fluff, no guru speak—just advice from someone who's managed sprints, debugged production incidents at 2 AM, and explained technical debt to CEOs.

Most leadership content is written by people who've never led technical teams. The Modern Leader exists because engineering leadership has unique challenges that generic management advice doesn't address.

I write for individual contributors stepping into leadership roles, engineering managers drowning in meetings, and senior leaders who want to build teams that actually ship. My approach: take complex leadership concepts, break them into actionable frameworks, skip the motivational poster wisdom.

What readers say

"Kelly's newsletter is one of the very few emails I genuinely look forward to and enjoy reading. There is always something new to learn or a perspective you haven't considered before."
— Matthias Miltenberger, Optimization Support Manager at Gurobi Optimization

"At a time when newsletter subscriptions are exploding in popularity, Kelly's value-to-verbosity ratio is second to none. I look forward to reading her thoughts knowing that I'll learn something valuable every time."
— Martin Gostisha, Principal Software Engineer at Microsoft

"Working in the engineering talent space for over 13+ years I could count the number of engineering leaders that actually understand people on two hands and Kelly makes that cut."
— Taylor Desseyn, VP of Global Community at Torc

For when a newsletter isn't enough

I'm working on courses for technical leaders who want structured frameworks for the hardest parts of the job. Designed for people who prefer learning systems over motivational speeches.