Mike Herchel (mherchel)

Mike Herchel is a founder of Dripyard premium themes, and brings more than 18 years of experience in the Drupal ecosystem. A long-time and widely recognized core contributor, Mike is the primary developer behind Drupal’s default Olivero theme and a driving force in modernizing Drupal’s front end. He helped lead the effort to bring Single Directory Components into Drupal core, shaping the future of how teams build interfaces in Drupal. Over his career, Mike has delivered major Drupal implementations for organizations including the Syfy Network, the US Small Business Administration, IBM, the US Court System, and many others.

As Drupal core’s CSS subsystem maintainer, Mike is responsible for establishing standards, reviewing architectural changes, and ensuring that the platform’s CSS is performant, maintainable, and accessible. This work requires deep expertise in accessibility best practices, and Mike routinely steers core decisions to improve inclusive design across the administrative and front-end experiences.

Mike also led efforts to maximize perceived performance in the Drupal admin UI, including eliminating flashes of unstyled content and improving first-paint experiences for authenticated users. His contributions have had a meaningful and visible impact on the day-to-day experience of Drupal site builders.

He is a former community-elected board member of the Drupal Association and has been a primary organizer of Florida DrupalCamp for more than 10 years, helping grow it into one of the largest community-led Drupal conferences in the United States.

Mike is a frequent speaker on performance, accessibility, and modern Drupal front-end development. He has presented at over 10 DrupalCons and numerous other DrupalCamps and web development conferences around the world.