How It Started
Hi, I'm Sabra.
Sabra Meretab is a writer, former Silicon Valley operator, and lifelong overthinker of ambition, identity, and what makes a life feel meaningful.
Raised in New Jersey as the daughter of an Eritrean immigrant father, Sabra learned early to take opportunity seriously. She carried that instinct from Stanford into Silicon Valley, working at Visa before joining Stripe, where she rose through product and technical leadership roles to become one of the company's youngest engineering leaders.
Outwardly, she became adept at navigating high-stakes problems with the requisite “executive presence.” Inwardly, the machinery was getting shakier: migraines, hair loss, burnout, and a persistent sense that no amount of achievement ever quite felt like enough.
Contact Sabra
How It's Going
A different question.
Rather than walking away overnight, Sabra did what years in tech had trained her to do: she started debugging. Journaling—and eventually a sabbatical—led her into questions she had spent years outrunning: What if success isn't the same thing as fulfillment? What if burnout is sometimes a symptom of something deeper? And why can it feel so terrifying to question a path you've already become exceptionally good at?
Those questions became the foundation for her writing and speaking. Today, Sabra lives in Pennsylvania and explores ambition, burnout, self-doubt, intuition, career pivots, and the complicated business of figuring out what you actually want. Her memoir, Insecure Overachiever, arrives in February 2027, and she writes the newsletter How to Feed Your Soul.
Between the lines
A few things that don't fit neatly into a bio.
- 01
Grew up in New Jersey, where she learned early that being good at things could take you a long way—just not always to the places you actually meant to go.
- 02
Once wrote a Stanford admissions essay about taking apart an Xbox 360. In her defense, it did explain a lot about how she approaches most things.
- 03
Started journaling mostly out of desperation, and somehow wrote her way into a book.
- 04
Spent years getting very, very good at succeeding before realizing she had almost no practice asking herself what she actually wanted.
- 05
Will trade nearly any meeting for a long walk, a little reflection, and a conversation that wanders somewhere unexpected.
- 06
Tends to approach existential questions with the instincts of an engineer: inspect the system, find the bug, and test something different.
- 07
Currently writing about ambition, identity, meaning, relationships, creativity, and the strange work of building a life that actually feels like your own.
These days
These days, Sabra spends more time paying attention: to what gives her energy, what makes her curious, what makes a life feel meaningful, and how difficult it can be to hear your own wants after years of getting very good at meeting expectations.
She writes about those questions in her forthcoming memoir, Insecure Overachiever, and in her newsletter, How to Feed Your Soul.
The official version
Sabra Meretab is a writer, speaker, and former Silicon Valley engineering leader exploring ambition, self-doubt, burnout, identity, and what makes a life feel meaningful. A Stanford graduate, she spent nearly a decade in technology, including helping lead large engineering organizations at Stripe during its hypergrowth years. She is the author of the forthcoming memoir Insecure Overachiever: A Story of Ambition, Burnout and the Courage to Change Course, publishing February 23, 2027 with Girl Friday Productions.
If you're also trying to figure out what comes after becoming very good at the life you were told to want, you're in good company.