Hi, I’m Michael DiBernardo. Many people call me ‘Debo.’

I’m a software engineering leader in Toronto, Canada. I have worked in the software industry since 2006.

I am an engineering leader at Cambridge Cognition. Until recently I was VP Engineering at Winterlight Labs, which was acquired by Cambridge Cognition in January 2023.

Before that, I was VP Engineering at Wave. I was responsible for growing the engineering team and its practices as the company scaled. I was also the primary architect of Wave Payments, which has processed billions of dollars in payments since its release. Wave was acquired by H&R Block in 2019.

I’m certified in Mental Health First Aid, and have experienced psychophysiologic disorder. I have great faith that mental health practice will drastically improve in the next 20-30 years, and I hope that we can pick up the slack until then.

I’m a Buddhist.

I co-organized PyCon Canada 2012 and 2013, and was the editor of 500 Lines or Less, the fourth book in the Architecture of Open Source Applications book series.

My favorite Unicode character is Person In Business Suit Levitating 🕴️. Thanks to some dear friends, I am a Bronze Sponsor for this character.

I used to write publicly about mental health and stress illness, but I don’t anymore. I don’t write much of anything anymore on this blog, because I don’t think I can write with a sense of safety if my name is attached to it.