I spent 13 years building the systems one organisation ran on. Now I build them for businesses and nonprofits.

The long way round

I was born in South Africa to a British mother and a South African father. My mother was vegetarian, compassionate, and aware of animal rights long before it was common. My father was a strict businessman and an incredible networker. Between the two of them, I got a strange but useful combination: drive and heart.

I left South Africa. Went to London. Met an Australian. Moved to Australia and fell in love with the place and stayed.

Once in Australia, I heard about a farmed animal sanctuary called Edgar's Mission, just outside Melbourne. I started volunteering. Within months, I was the first paid staff member. The team eventually grew to over 20 people.

Over that time I did every role. Farm cleaning. Maintenance. Animal care. Accounting. Vet runs. Rescues. Social media. Fundraising. Photography. Tour coordination. Donor management. There was no software designed for a nonprofit farmed animal sanctuary, so I built the digital infrastructure from scratch. Salesforce, Airtable, Slack, Make.com automations stitching it all together. My wife Kelly built the social media presence to nearly 3 million followers across platforms.

After 13 and a half years, I left. It was late 2023, right as the AI wave was hitting. I moved north to a little property in New South Wales, about 45 minutes from Port Macquarie. Beautiful beaches, rainforests, whales migrating through. Quiet and rural.

I started consulting for nonprofits on AI and automations, and built AI Impact Hub around one idea: training that builds capability, so the skills stay after I leave.

Over time I noticed the businesses around me had the same problems I'd spent 13 years solving: too much admin, systems that don't talk to each other, and software that almost fits. So now I work with businesses too, starting here on the Mid North Coast. I build the fix, teach the team how it works, and make sure it's safe.

What I keep seeing

Most organisations do not have an AI problem. They have a visibility problem. Staff are buried in manual tasks they have never questioned, because they do not know there is another way, and the people who would benefit most are too busy being busy to step back and look.

Someone mentions a tedious job in passing, like copying URLs into spreadsheets or formatting donor data by hand, and when I say "that can be automated," the look on their face changes. That is the moment. Not when you show someone a new tool. When you show them that the thing they thought was just part of the job does not have to be.

The bigger win is doing things that were never possible before. A three-person team building an interactive web experience in an afternoon. A staff member turning an eight-minute voice note into a complete process document. An organisation asking questions of years of its own knowledge in a single conversation.

Off the clock

I live on two and a half acres roughly halfway between Sydney and Brisbane. There are rescue dogs, seven sheep, cats, and a rooster that arrived recently. My wife and I have a teenage daughter who is far more sophisticated with technology than either of us.

My accent is a mix that belongs nowhere and everywhere. In South Africa, everyone thinks I am Australian. In Australia, everyone thinks I am South African. In Europe, people think I am from somewhere on the continent. I have stopped trying to explain it.

I care deeply about animal advocacy. The thread through all of it, from volunteering at Edgar's Mission to building systems to teaching AI, is the same. Good tools and good knowledge in the hands of people doing meaningful work.