Meet the Volunteers

Subcommittee Leader - Education

Digital Strategist, Sam Parnell from Measured Brilliance uses her considerable knowledge to guide SMEs through the ever-changing world of digital marketing and software development. Her expertise is being able to analyse the core of a business and provide a comprehensive digital plan, which she can then help implement through training.

Sam founded the popular monthly meetup SIMS - Suffolk Internet Marketing Specialists, offering a digital education programme. Sam’s considerable expertise combined with her amazing energy make her a unique entity, perfectly placed to work with SMEs helping them to grow.

Sam says “My day-to-day job involves teaching non-technical people technical things; all those why’s and how’s. I help to plan digital strategies, working out how any business can use digital tools to grow. My job is to empower businesses and demystify technology.”

Subcommittee Leader - Cyber Security

David, from Mobile and Secure, specialises in assuring the quality of complex IT products and services. He is passionate about his profession and provides his clients with a comprehensive suite of testing services. He has carved a niche for himself as a well-known Technical Tester. Able to quickly assess a clients needs, develop a bespoke Test Strategy, and carry out functional, automated, performance and security testing. David provides his clients with the right solution.

David enjoys a challenge and loves learning something new. When not engaged on client-facing projects David writes articles, gives talks and provides training. He enjoys networking and is involved in several IT community groups. He is a Chapter Leader for OWASP Suffolk.

Toine is a game designer and software developer who is passionate about technology, education and music. He has worked in the gaming industry for almost 20 years, and has been involved in tertiary and community education for most of that time. Outside of work, Toine can usually be found creating electronic music or building synthesizers.

Subcommittee Leader - Recruitment

Andy is a specialist IT recruiter who has been operating in the East of England since 2002. Since establishing Bristow Holland in 2013 Andy has become a key local figure in the technology recruitment world, sought after by businesses both large and small looking for advice and guidance on how to attract and retain technology specialists and get ahead of their competition.

Paul is the Head of Delivery and a member of the senior leadership team for SETL Ltd, a Fintech Company specialising in enterprise grade, secure, permissioned distributed ledger technology. Whilst at SETL, Paul’s team has overseen the technical development, testing and implementation of financial grade systems for multiple Global Investment Banks, European Asset Managers and G7 Central Banks. Paul’s role incorporates working alongside SETL’s business development and technical teams to understand their clients needs and provide innovative solutions to their legacy problems, thereby enabling SETL’s clients to reduce both financial and operational risk. Prior to working at SETL Paul worked for both Swiss and US Investment Banks in London and New York.

Paul lives just outside Ipswich and when not at work he enjoys running and spending time with his wife and two children.

Subcommittee Leader - Diversity

Kara Thurkettle is an in-house Senior Marketing Consultant at Coderus, an app and software development company based in Ipswich, Suffolk in the United Kingdom. At Coderus, Kara is in charge of managing the company’s SEO, PR and content marketing strategies and leading the development team on website improvements. As a neurodivergent bilingual woman at Coderus, she is also working alongside Coderus’ HR team and local organisations to improve diversity and inclusion in the workplace and the tech industry overall.

She is also the CEO of Stress Buddy Limited, a mental health technology start-up she began in 2019 after winning Innovate Suffolk’s Mental Health Hackathon. Kara is also the Innovation Award Winner for the 2020 DevelopHER Awards and a Girlguiding Leader. Besides this, she’s leading Coderus’ Marketing Partnership with Adastral Women in Tech at Adastral Park and was a mentor in the Women in Tech SEO 2020 Mentor Programme.

Specialities:
SEO Strategy/Consulting | Mentorship & Motivational Coaching | Culture Transformation | CSR Strategy

Subcommittee Leader - Innovation

Abi, founder of All About Users, specialises in supporting user experience (UX) design for businesses, from startups right the way through to large corporates.  She provides research and design expertise of the end-user interaction with a company, its products and its services. 

Her job is to stop customers from having to think about using something. In fact, great experiences should be invisible.  Think about the noise of the shutter sound on your phone when you’re taking a picture.  That was her idea from the 90’s when she was working with BT & Nokia on defining 3G mobile experiences.  There’s no physical shutter, but the sound tells you the picture has been successfully taken.

Why is user experience important businesses?  Effective UX design increases sales, increases customer retention, boosts referrals, lowers support costs and it’s also proven to reduce development costs of building the wrong features or fixing usability issues.  Abi takes an evidence-based approach, initially gathering any business data, analytics and metrics to identify impacts to your business and provides opportunities on how to solve them.

Subcommittee Leader - Conference

Paul, WS Software Development Manager at Managed Services Kafka, has been working in the local tech industry for just over twenty years with a range of experience from smaller companies through to large multinational corporations - for the first half mainly as a Software Engineer... and for the latter as a manager of teams.

He is passionate about technology, makes multiplayer games for mobile and browsers in his spare time and loves to future-gaze towards Augmented Reality & how emerging technologies will change the world.

Richard, MD at Simple Click (and his team) have worked with a broad range of businesses to create user-friendly, intuitive websites.

He started his career in website development in 1997 as a Webmaster (definitely in the 90s) for a leading photographic wholesaler. Then in 2000, he moved to a website development company where he was promoted from Junior Developer, to Project Manager, and finally Director. He stayed there until he founded SimpleClick in 2008.

A personal life-goal, he started SimpleClick to demystify web development. He wanted to create an agency that takes clients on a personalised journey where they feel truly involved and engaged throughout the lifespan of a project.

He’s responsible for the day-to-day running of the agency; from business planning and accounts to HR, Sales and Marketing. He’s a busy man but gets just as excited by the creation of new functionality within SimpleClick’s bespoke CMS, Doddle, or the launch of a website for a client!

Richard co-founded SimpleClick to create an agency where the entire team feels inspired to help clients realise their online potential.

Subcommittee Leader - Conferences

Ewan Slater started out as a research scientist and then drifted into IT. These days Ewan has over twenty years experience in the technology industry and a lot less hair. He joined Oracle when they acquired Thor Technology in 2005, intended to stay for six months and is still there.

Ewan is currently a director in Oracle’s EMEA Cloud Centre of Excellence, focussed on helping customers and partners adopt a cloud-native approach to development. Outside of work, Ewan enjoys cycling and walking in the Suffolk countryside.

Having founded 3 tech companies locally David has considerable experience of the highs and lows experienced when running a business but is still passionate about what he does and encouraging others to do the same. Offering opportunities to try out new ideas is the key to innovation and David works on a number of projects encouraging others to try something out and find others who can add to great ideas.

Kish is an experienced Technical Project Manager with over 10 years professional experience working within software companies and marketing agencies. Kish now forms part of the team at Pretty Technical part of Rokker, who provide curated solutions to the gaming and finance industries. Having delivered a wide variety of digital projects over the years including e-commerce, digital transformation and website migration projects, Kish brings a wealth of knowledge and in-depth understanding of market leading industry software platforms and tools.

David brings extensive experience from working across a variety of industry sectors, which has given him a unique view of how people interact with technology in the workplace and the impact that change can have to both employees and overall business success. Being able to see both sides of the fence, so to speak, enables him to provide invaluable advice to both internal stakeholders, external partners and clients alike identifying opportunities that are often overlooked.

As Business Development Director at Xperience Group Ltd (formally Green Duck Ltd), a technology, and cyber security solutions provider based in Bury St Edmunds, puts his skills in both client relationship and operations management to use in driving client business performance, efficiency and productivity. As a service-led organisation, Xperience Group provide Managed IT support, cloud services, connectivity, and Cyber Security services to companies across a wide variety of sectors, in the East of England and throughout the UK.

When not involved with work, David can be found cycling his way around the stunning Suffolk countryside in an attempt to stay fit and healthy, or spending quality time with his family (including Sophie and Lola, his adorable black Labradors)

Having been a secondary school teacher and Head of Department for many years, Nicola moved into Local Authority roles working with Communities and Skills in 2019. Nicola now works as Skills and Employment Policy Officer in Suffolk County Council, leading on the development of the Suffolk Digital Skills Programme and linking into local Enterprise support and Sports and Physical Activity Sector Skills Programmes as well as linking digital skills into other key sector areas.

Nicola works with a huge variety of stakeholders in support our local skills system to deliver high quality opportunities across all of our Suffolk residents and geographies. She uses current labour market information and links with employment and skills partners to ensure skills interventions and funding are directed in the appropriate way and promotes national opportunities to our local market.

Hannah is a Search Specialist with almost 15 years’ experience. Awarded Digital Marketer in 2018 and Inspiration award in 2019, she is also a WIT mentor, industry contributor and conference speaker.

Having worked at some of the top agencies in the UK, Hannah has delivered results for many of the nation’s leading brands. Now running her own consultancy, she supports both agencies and clients across organic performance, data-driven strategy and improved measurement.