Google Cloud Sketchnote Advocate Priyanka Vergadia | Generated by AI
Question: Who is Priyanka Vergadia, the Google Cloud developer advocate?
Answer:
Priyanka Vergadia is a prominent figure in the cloud computing and developer relations (DevRel) space. She is best known for her work as a Staff Developer Advocate at Google Cloud, where she focused on helping developers and enterprises understand, adopt, and build on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) services.
She is widely recognized by her nickname “The Cloud Girl” and for her unique approach of using hand-drawn sketchnotes, illustrations, and visual storytelling to explain complex cloud concepts in an accessible and engaging way.
Key Highlights of Her Career and Contributions:
- Role at Google Cloud — Served as a Developer Advocate (later Staff level), working directly with customers, creating educational content, speaking at conferences, and building community resources. She joined Google around 2019–2020 and was active in that role for several years.
- Visual Learning Resources — Created the popular GCPSketchnote series on GitHub — quick visual summaries of Google Cloud products, architecture decisions, certifications, and best practices. These sketchnotes became widely used by learners preparing for Google Cloud certifications and interviews.
- Book — Authored the best-selling book “Visualizing Google Cloud: 101 Illustrated References for Cloud Engineers and Architects” (published 2021/2022 by Wiley), which uses her signature sketches to explain GCP services and architectures. It is considered one of the most visually oriented cloud books available.
- Content Creation — Produced numerous YouTube videos, blog posts (on cloud.google.com and her personal channels), cheat sheets, and conference talks — especially around Conversational AI, Dialogflow, serverless, data engineering, and general cloud architecture.
- Community Impact — Known for making technical content beginner-friendly and fun during the COVID period when in-person events stopped; her drawings helped many people connect with and learn Google Cloud remotely.
- Background — Originally from India, she moved to the United States and built her career in tech, eventually landing at Google. She holds a Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect certification and has experience in QA engineering, developer advocacy, and technical evangelism.
Note (as of 2026 context): Priyanka has since moved on from Google Cloud and is now working at Microsoft (as a visual storyteller / developer advocate role), continuing her work in cloud education, authorship (she has multiple best-selling books), advising, investing, and board membership. However, she remains most famously associated with her impactful Google Cloud Developer Advocate era and her visual Google Cloud content.
She is active on social platforms (especially X/Twitter @pvergadia, LinkedIn, YouTube “The Cloud Girl”, and her website thecloudgirl.dev), where she shares cloud insights, career advice, and visual explainers.
References:
- Google Cloud Blog - Meet Priyanka Vergadia
- Her book on Amazon
- GCPSketchnote GitHub repository
- The Cloud Girl website
- LinkedIn profile