About Me

Who Am I? #

Hi, I’m Coty and I’m glad that you’ve decided to spend some time reading some of my thoughts! I’m a father of four energetic kids, a proud member of the Waccamaw Siouan Tribe of North Carolina and dedicated contributorto the tribe’s STEM Studio Program, and a Senior Software Engineering Manager at Red Hat. After more than five years in people leadership, I still stay hands-on with code and open-source work because it keeps me close to the craft I love.

I previously served on the boards of the Triangle Native American Society (Vice President) and Natives in Tech (Secretary). I also founded and chaired Red Hat’s Native + Indigenous Employee Resource Group for more than six years before stepping aside to let new leadership grow. Supporting Indigenous voices in tech remains central to my purpose.

My partner and I make our home in North Carolina with our four kids and a collection of pets. Life is loud, busy, and wonderfully full.

What Do I Do for Work? #

I’m a longtime contributor to Apache Tomcat as a committer, PMC member, and part of the Security Team, and I maintain both the Fedora Project and Red Hat Enterprise Linux tomcat (and a few other) packages. I still pitch in on related projects like Apache HTTP Server and OpenSSL when time allows.

At Red Hat I lead a team delivering the productized version of Apache Tomcat and several companion libraries bundled together. My leadership style is people-first: clear expectations, continuous coaching, and plenty of space for engineers to innovateand grow.

What Do I Do When I’m Not Working? #

These days my personal-time sandbox is AI experimentation, from local LLM tinkering to business and workflow automations that make tech more inclusive and productive. I also partner with my wife on her small business, Simply Sutherland Studios, lending a hand with tech, strategy, bookkeeping, and the occasional late-night brainstorming session.

And, of course, most evenings are happily spent chasing four kids around the house, building wild LEGO creations, talking about Minecraft, or making up our own bedtime stories.

Life is good.