Amy Abel
Senior Consultant at Straight Path
Salt Lake City, Utah, United States
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Amy Abel is a Senior Consultant at Straight Path with a background in Database Administration, Site and Database Reliability . She has experience supporting critical, high-transactional healthcare systems and specializes in automating complex processes, reducing toil, and resolving database challenges.
Amy is passionate about automation, database reliability, SQL challenges, and continuous learning. She inspires others through speaking, blogging, and mentoring. She is completing her Master’s degree at the University of Denver and holds two degrees in computer science from Weber State University.
Outside of work, Amy enjoys hiking, off-roading in her Jeep, traveling, trying new food, and writing about technology.
Area of Expertise
Topics
Reactive DBA to Proactive DBRE, From Burnout to Buy-In
Are you buried in constant firefighting and alert fatigue? This session shares the practical framework I developed as a Tech Lead to transform a burned-out, reactive DBA team into a calm, proactive DBRE unit.
This is not just a high-level success story. I will walk you through the specific concepts and operational processes I implemented to stabilize the team. We will cover how to shift the focus from endless ticket queues to strategic roadmaps, how to quantify toil to gain management buy-in, and the specific planning techniques that allowed us to escape the chaos.
You will leave with a proven guide to changing team culture and a set of tools to build resilience in your own organization.
AI Meets Data: Redefining Reliability in the Age of Intelligence
The role of the Database Reliability Engineer (DRE) is evolving fast—no longer just guardians of uptime and performance, but architects of intelligent, autonomous data systems.
In this session, a seasoned DRE and an AI/DevOps specialist explore how AI is revolutionising database reliability—from predictive failure detection and anomaly detection to self-healing systems and AI-augmented incident response.
We’ll share awesome practical demos of how large-scale environments are using AI to optimize query tuning, automate runbooks, and surface reliability risks before they impact users.
We’ll also address the cultural shift necessary to trust AI in critical paths and how to strike a balance between automation and human oversight. Whether you’re a DRE, SRE, DBA, or Data Platform Engineer, learn how AI is helping us move from reactive firefighting to proactive, intelligent reliability engineering.
DBA Horror Stories and Practical Advice for Surviving Your Worst Day
Every DBA collects lessons the hard way. Most of them come from incidents we never want to repeat, yet these are the moments that truly define a career. In this high-impact panel, moderator Amy Abel leads a discussion with seasoned professionals Ben Miller, Kellyn Gorman, Rob Volk, and Eric Peterson. Together, they share real production horror stories from the front lines and reflect on how those high-pressure moments changed the way they work forever.
The session is built on firsthand accounts of failure and recovery. Each panelist will recount a specific story of what went wrong, followed immediately by a breakdown of the specific lesson they learned and the practical advice they now give based on that experience. Rather than focusing on blame, the panel will surface common patterns behind outages to help you recognize those patterns before they become incidents of your own.
The goal is to move past theoretical best practices and into the messy reality of what happens when the unthinkable occurs on your watch. Attendees will gain a better understanding of how to identify warning signs, stay effective under extreme pressure, and implement the technical defensive strategies needed to prevent routine tasks from spiraling out of control.
You may not experience the exact same incident as our panelists, but one day, you will recognize the moment.
Creative GitHub Strategies for the Modern Database Professional
GitHub often gets pigeonholed as a tool strictly for software developers or a basic storage locker for SQL scripts. If you are a database professional who only uses it for version control, you are leaving a massive amount of functionality on the table.
In this session, Amy Abel and Rob Volk challenge that mindset by demonstrating how to turn GitHub into a creative playground for the data professional. We will explore how to apply a new way of thinking to the platform, uncovering solutions to problems you might not even realize could be handled here. You will see how to bend the rules to handle operational oddities and manage your work in unexpected ways, whether you are using the interface or the terminal.
Attendees will leave with a fresh perspective on their existing tooling and a flexible set of ideas to make their work easier and more interesting.
7 Simple Strategies to Combat Imposter Syndrome
Do you feel like a fraud? Do you constantly question your ability to do your job? This is imposter syndrome, and you are not alone. The reality is that most professionals in tech have navigated these feelings at some point in their careers.
In this session, we will identify the warning signs of imposter syndrome and examine exactly how it can stall your career growth. I will share the specific strategies that have helped me overcome self-doubt throughout my own journey. You will leave with actionable steps to recognize your value, silence the inner critic, and own your success.
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