MADECURIOUS - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Colabs Lead - Facilitator
Abbie's daily to-do list is a long one. She takes care of our valuable clients, organises everything and everyone, and puts the "help" in Help Desk. A former journalist, you'll find her fingerprints on all things written, from client advertisements and web pages to our social media accounts. Need something done in a hurry? Abbie is receptive to bribes including, but not limited to, wine, blue cheese and green tea. When not at the office she's up in the Port Hills with her dog, Kevin or teaching a boxing bag some lessons.
With a background in corporate and commercial law, Abigail delights in dotted i's and crossed t's to an extent the rest of us reserve for smooth deployments and long weekends. With her shift to take on the GM responsibilities, Abi's role is still making all those things that need to "just happen" happen but on a larger scale. Abi gets her kicks out of all things people, culture and curiosity and seeing the MadeCurious team growing and doing work they can be proud of.
Adi is the calm, utterly professional backbone of partner support. However, still waters run deep. Behind the scenes this experienced administrator is a real creative whizz. From painting and making jewellery, to studying Kathak (a classical form of Indian dance) and hosting her own YouTube channel, Adi always has something she's working on. She also loves to travel, but since moving from Qatar, Adi has calmed her restless feet by embracing the lifestyle balance offered by living in Christchurch.
Job Titles:
- Service Design & Delivery
If you're after a football-mad dog person who can speak Dutch and loves electronica, Alex is your guy. He's also a specialist in some useful things - like business analytics and data science, stakeholder relations and User Experience. Alex's background is in industrial psychology, which sparked his interest in all things data. When he's not neck-deep in detail, he's all about finding that perfect flat white, frequenting the local surf breaks, or producing some drum and bass tunes.
Job Titles:
- Practice Lead - UX & Visual Design
Andrew has a body of work to his name which most can only aspire to. He has the rare knack of being able to take an idea and distil it down to its raw ingredients, thus providing the basis for a thoughtful design. Andrew inspires our teams to constantly try new things and to evolve. He's always inside the mind of the user, and ensures User Experience is at the core of everything we do. Andrew moonlights as the office DIY advisor, and when he's not tinkling the ivories on his home piano he's eyeing up his next home improvement project.
Callum is an expert at picking up the ball and running with it. Both literally and metaphorically. In fact, thanks to his seven year's experience as a Rugby Performance Analyst and Coach, Callum brings a lot of complementary skills to his role at MadeCurious. He's into learning new tech and building cool stuff in environments that put the end user first, but when he's not in the office you'll often find him hiking with his dogs Theo and Riley.
If you combine the extreme attention to detail of a trained pharmacist and a passion for UI you get Catherine. A Javascript specialist with React experience, Catherine applies her unique background to great effect doing what she loves best - building great things with great people. She's also a big fan of true crime documentaries, which makes complete sense when you think about it.
Eila's superpower is thinking about a problem in one language and communicating it in another. Which is perhaps why she's so darned good at helping our partners find creative solutions to complex problems. She's also a passionate environmental advocate with extensive government experience, making her a real asset to our Colabs team. Her family have called Canterbury home for over a decade, where they take full advantage of living so close to the mountains and the sea.
Job Titles:
- Partner & AI Outcomes Manager
Emma is an expert relationship-builder and problem solver who honed her skills at AI/data technology start-ups and early stage businesses. That means she has a zeal for applying new technology to create positive societal change, but comes with the entrepreneurial know-how for getting that done. Outside of work, Emma loves nothing better than trying out new culinary experiments with her young family, diving into books on quantum physics, and dreaming about recreating the farm she used to live on in Wales.
Kite Surfer, Glider Pilot, Yachtsman. George wears many hats but when he's not playing wind sports (or wearing hats) you'll find him pulling strings, peddling our wares and generally keeping the MadeCurious wheels spinning.
Building open source education platforms requires a fierce mix of diligence and vision. You have to sweat the details while not losing sight of the big picture. But that's the exact mix of qualities that helped Jack charge ahead in that field for over 10 years as a senior software engineer. Jack's other passions include Python, UX, and internationalising/localising software. In his spare time, he loves listening to music, gardening, cooking, board games, and spending time with his young family.
We're always happy to have Jacquie in the room because she's fantastic at giving voice to those who are not. Her deep passion for human-centred design and a wealth of experience working in the New Zealand and Australian public sectors give her an unerring focus on the needs of end users. And we love that! Away from work, Jacquie soaks up as much culture as her native Christchurch can provide while enjoying downtime with her partner and a retired racing greyhound called Kalani.
Job Titles:
- Service Design & Delivery
A fanatical rock climber and drum and bass head, James says things like "super duper rad", owns five named chickens and counts an avocado tree among his prized possessions. He's relationship and people focused, ensuring we are delivering value in our partnerships. James is most at home in the complex, dynamic and nuanced problem spaces we specialise in and is always finding ways digital practices can transform and improve our future. He has more than 15 years experience in projects and roles spanning geospatial, product development, data analytics, change management and process improvement.
Job Titles:
- Graduate Software Engineer
Jamie is all about coding with cool people and windsurfing. Which is lucky for us as we're fairly affable and work in an office overlooking the Ferrymead estuary (otherwise known as windsurfing central). As our graduate developer, Jamie is getting stuck in learning new skills and techniques that will add to his already formidable software skills. Away from the office/windsurfing central, Jamie loves climbing and spending time in the great outdoors.
Jess is active with a capital A. In the MadeCurious. office, she has an unrelenting curiosity for all things Silverstripe and loves nothing more than finding multiple solutions to the complex challenges posed by content management systems. Outside the office she's just as energetic, enjoying a packed schedule of winter netball, summer touch rugby, and frequent visits to the gym.
Two dogs, a cat, and a classic Datsun B310 keep Joseph occupied when he's not experiencing the great outdoors or developing awesome software. A former mechanic hailing from Nelson, Joe has 10 years of full stack experience across multiple tech stacks and has worked on everything from mobile apps to e-commerce solutions. He relishes a challenge and any chance to learn something new, which makes him a perfect fit at MadeCurious.
A keen problem solver with an eye for detail, Jordan never stops learning - whether it's new tech stacks or Jiu Jitsu. Jordan comes to MadeCurious with 5 years experience supporting Microsoft Data Centres in Japan. He's all about diagnosing problems and working through them methodically. Jordan is also fluent in Japanese and when he's not motorbike trail riding you might find him in front of the TV enjoying the odd Japanese game show.
Job Titles:
- Director and Shareholder in
- Director, Developer & Mentor
Joshua has been a director and shareholder in MadeCurious since 2004. His passion for social change and giving back led him to found Enspiral, a social innovations company, and Dev Academy, a 12 week program training web developers. Joshua provides strategic direction and mentoring to the development teams at MadeCurious.
Job Titles:
- Software Engineer
- Relationship Counsellor
Julia is the ultimate relationship counsellor, deftly ensuring design, UX and development play nice in all our projects. A CSS whiz, she's focused on consistency and has a keen eye for detail, bringing practicality and flare to her work. Give her a problem, she's sure to come up with the best fix! If she's not eating, drinking or cooing over animal memes, she's lounging in the sun with her dog, Spyro, or lounging on the couch binge watching Netflix with her dog, Spyro.
Job Titles:
- Administrator
- Office Manager
In the Venn diagram between master list-maker and professional sourdough baker sits Kat, our multi-talented office manager. Kat sports a career that has taken in everything from planning marketing campaigns to creating professional baked goods. Fortunately she gave up the 4am starts to join MadeCurious, where she applies her organisational skills to help us deliver more for our partners. Outside of work, Kat enjoys mountain biking, skiing, sewing, and good food (not necessarily sourdough).
Kirsty wears a lot of hats, and she wears them well. From project manager to awesome administrator, she's spinning plates, wrangling cats and herding zebras - and all with a seemingly unstoppably positive attitude. Kirsty is your go-to for getting stuff done, smoothing the road ahead and ensuring our team and partners are enjoying the ride. She brings a huge breadth of experience, a love of 1950s floofy skirts and a passion for all things David Bowie. Despite her self-described "breakable" age, she also owns a pair of proper roller skates.
Lee describes himself as a good asker of questions. Which is certainly an understatement considering his 28 years of experience straddling software development, architecture and strategy in sectors as diverse as banking and health. However, he's never lost his passion for engineering. Lee loves nothing better than getting into the weeds of a problem, whether he's working out a proof of concept for MadeCurious or following his passion for music production or repairing vintage computers.
Rembrandt and van Gogh have nothing on our very own Dutch master - at least when it comes to user interface and user experience design. Mar hails from Alkmaar in the Netherlands, where she developed a love of cycling, art house movies, and digital design. Creating smooth, intuitive user experiences is Mar's MO, especially when it's for projects with real world impact.
Mark plays the role of tech lead with skill and is an Agile master with a love of Javascript-based technologies. He's a dab hand in web, server and mobile development and can wrangle a group of devs like nobody's business. Calm under pressure, Mark's your man for project leadership, pipeline planning and Agile ceremonies. He's all about living the Kiwi DIY dream, tinkering with his car, and hitting the outdoors with his family.
Niall sees plenty of Canterbury sunrises at the weekend - not because he parents a toddler, but because he's a dedicated Formula 1 groupie trying to live on European time. When he's not watching the racing, he's all about working with Linux and Docker and coding in Python, figuring out how to solve the next complex problem. He's passionate about using new tools to build bigger, better and smarter things, giving computers tasks that free up the user to focus on their best work.
A polish lad with a fondness for Scotland and industrial cities, Przemek's love of code includes everything from debugging and user interaction right through to databases and middleware. Whether it's learning new programming languages or working on slick new web apps, his happy place is nutting out problems and automating processes. Przemek is a man who loves to walk, climb and stare at mountains. He'll also get pretty excited about the right coastline. Canterbury has both in spades and he's gearing up to see them all.
Sharmaine lists her specialties as spreadsheets, nagging, timesheet tracking and ordering the weekly Learning Lunch eats. While these are incredibly valuable skills in our team (probably among the most valuable, if we're honest), what Sharmaine really brings to the team is a superb eye for detail, an ability to juggle a To Do list as long as her arm and her knack for ensuring we're always improving our efficiency and working smarter. In her down time she's out exploring Canterbury and binge-watching murder mystery shows.
Job Titles:
- Service Delivery Manager / Product Owner
Deep diving the detail gets Shelly out of bed in the morning. That, and walking her horse-sized rescue dog Loki. With a history in the analysis, support and testing spaces, she brings a diverse range of skills to the MadeCurious team. She has a passion for change management, and the desire to improve lives using clever technology. In her spare time, you'll find her cycling, pounding the pavement, at the gym - or just 'refuelling' from all that exercise.
What do you get when you combine 20 years of DevOps and SysOps experience with a head full of obscure knowledge, a red speedo and a passion for DIY, and craft beer? Well, you get Steve - the Sumner-based British expat keeping the MadeCurious lights on (and shining at premium brightness). Steve specialises in fault finding, optimising systems and processes and ensuring our projects get the love and care they deserve long after they venture out into the real world. Ask him about his free range backyard rabbits…
Steve is a fixer, a builder, and a remover of obstacles. Not to mention the go-to supplier of office confectionery. When he's not keeping our developers on a productive sugar high, he is all over the internal workings of the business, helping MadeCurious to continuously improve. Steve knows his tech, but if he's developing anything it's our awesome people-first culture. Outside the office, Steve is a keen collector of Lego, Apple gadgets, and places to have brunch with the fam.
If there's a dog around, Subhra will find it and pat it. That's a fact. Second to dogs is coding. Subhra brings some serious passion and a love of learning to his craft as a MadeCurious full stack dev. Coding is his jam, and he's up for any language or framework on offer. Despite having lived in Canterbury for only a few years, he's just as passionate about his new home, and captures some stunning shots on his regular photographic adventures.
When it comes to understanding the user, there's a lot to be said for a background in service industries. Tesh's jam is putting humans at the centre of it all, challenging assumptions, actively listening to users, and bringing them into the problem space to generate genuinely effective solutions. With an eye for design and a willingness to jump into anything, Tesh is a Colabs powerhouse. Oh and she also pours a hell of a flat white.
Tim's head is in the cloud, but we wouldn't have it any other way. Tim is a Full Stack Engineer with more than 20 years' experience across generations of content management platforms and software development languages. Keeping pace with the ever evolving discipline of building cloud platforms is his enduring pursuit. In other words, he's a real problem solver - whether he's delving into software archaeology or planning a weekend excursion.
Tineke says she can tolerate mess, as long as it's not in the code. Which is fantastic because, with more than 25 years of experience under her belt, Tineke really helps set the bar at MadeCurious as one of our senior software engineers. As you might guess, she is a big fan of creating elegant software solutions and great user experiences. But Tineke is also passionate about the environment, knitting, LGBTQIA+ rights, long hikes and wild swimming.