Staff
Aptivate’s multi-disciplinary team represents a wide range of commercial and international development experience. All the current members of staff volunteered for the organisation before employment – the team is highly committed. Aptivate is supported by a number of volunteers, with expertise ranging from rural fieldwork and programme development to GIS and micro-electronics.
Alan McNeil Jackson, Chief Technical Officer, Director
Alan is an expert in the use, risks and benefits of ICTs in the development sector. His key interests are Agile methodologies, Participatory approaches to international development and Consensus decision making. Alan constantly drives the team to innovate and comes from a successful commercial IT background. He is a qualified paragliding instructor and experimental musician.
Chris Wilson, Chief Engineer, Director
An exceptional programmer, Chris is Aptivate’s Chief Engineer and is responsible for implementing the company’s technology strategy. With expertise in bandwidth management, firewalls, network security and Linux, Chris has built much of the software on which Aptivate’s reputation is based. He works on several open source projects and enjoys nature photography.
Martin Burchell
Martin works on technical development. he has over ten years experience in commercial software engineering, working in embedded C programming and GIS systems. Outside of work he is involved in the fair trade movement, and enjoys cycling up mountains.
Tom Daley
Tom has a background in electronic engineering, and is responsible for Aptivate’s IT systems which include thin clients, hosted web services, knowledge management and collaboration environments.
Tom Lord
Tom works on project management and volunteer management for Aptivate, and has various experience in the private sector working on database design, software development, system administration and quality assurance. He maintains strong links with local community groups, from which Aptivate draws some of its volunteer pool.
Mark Skipper
As senior lecturer in computer science, researcher, IT trainer and consultant Mark has worked with Xerox Parc, Imperial College London, IBM and the BBC. Mark has worked for two years in Kenya, with VSO, as trainer for a rural IT college. He has a deep passion for the human aspect of learning, change and development. He has a certificate in education for sustainability from Schumacher College and expertise in non-violent communication.
Bjoern Hassler
Bjoern holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, and is a member of the UK national commission for UNESCO information society working group. His interests include open access in teaching and appropriate technology in education. He has worked on educational media in primary, secondary and higher education, rural ict use, institutional podcasting and resource sharing networks. His publications include the “Access to OER” UNESCO report.
Hamish Downer
Hamish has a number of years experience as a systems engineer and user requirements specialist. He has an extensive background in security, embedded systems and software development.
Nathaniel Whitestone
Nathaniel works as a project manager, trainer and facilitator. He has excellent facilitation skills including Formal Consensus having learnt from C.T. Butler. He is also an expert trainer.
Jay Alvarez
Jay is Aptivate’s lead web designer and has several years experience of user interaction and website design, specialising in low-bandwidth design.
Daniel Levy
Daniel has a history of software development in academic and voluntary settings. He is proficient in numerous programming languages, and becoming ever more so.
George Flatters
A versatile project manager, software developer, consultant and evaluator with over 13 years’ experience, George specialises in IT tools for monitoring, learning and evaluation. He has a MSc. in Human-Centered Computer Systems and is passionate about accessibility and usability. George has worked and travelled widely in Africa, Asia and Europe. He is a keen musician, which does not always come through in the projects he works on.
Marko Samastur
Marko has been working in technology for almost 15 years in a variety of roles before settling down as a developer specialising in front-end website development and interface design. Ideally he’d like to save the planet from ecological disaster, and currently focuses more on keeping the Web open, and building tools for better governance.