Our Team

Meet our team of values-driven, creative, and skilled people who are redesigning citizenship in the 21st century

Base Team

Alvaro Maz

Managing Director

Alvaro is an entrepreneur with a passion for public issues, technology and social change. In 2013 he launched his first venture, Creative Suburbs, an online platform to help more people make a difference in their cities. He then co-founded Code for Australia in late 2014 which led to launching Code for Aotearoa.

Alvaro’s background is in international development, philosophy and urban planning, none of which he has really practised. On his spare time he works on fun projects like this one and is also cooking plans to go sailing around the world.

Lina Patel

Chief Operations Officer

Lina is a facilitator and collaboration designer and makes sure all the Code for Australia programs (Fellowship, Academy, Tech for Non-Tech) are humming beautifully.

She spends most of her time with people and teams in the Code for Australia community who know where they are headed; who aren’t sure how to get there; and are open to iteration.

People frikkin love her workshops and meetings.

Grace O'Hara

Head of Marketing

Grace is a digital native, a tech aficionado and lover of all things coffee. After cutting her teeth in start-up land, Grace spent a year travelling the world, seeing the power of technology in all shapes, sizes, and efficiencies.

Grace loves telling meaningful stories and connecting people in authentic ways. In her spare time you might find her attempting to make edible things or learning how to swim.

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Facilitators

Alec Sloman

Tech for Non Tech Lead

Alec Sloman is an educator, facilitator, and software developer with over 15 years of experience in IT.

In the not too distant past, he worked as a Lead Instructor at General Assembly and as a Technical Recruiter at Lookahead Search where he gave career advice to hundreds of candidates and worked with many of the most prominent tech companies in Melbourne. He now spends most of his days running a code school in the heart of North Melbourne.

Alec is passionate about driving reform and improving lives with technology. Oh, and he loves hip hop.

LinkedIn

Cam Elliott

Sandpit Lead

Cameron has a passion for supporting authentic leadership, innovation, collaboration, strategic thinking and wellbeing in organisations through effective facilitation, training and coaching.

As a facilitator of the Sandpit Program, Cameron supports innovators from the public and private sector to collaborate on solving some of the toughest issues the public sector faces.

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Sara Rickards

Sandpit Lead

Sara AKA The Sustainability Ninja and F**kgiver, is trained as both a Biomedical Scientist & Environmental Engineer. She is an ignitor of big ideas such as Re:Purpose for Good.

Sara is a passionate connector, putting purpose and positive impact at the core of everything she does. She is on a mission to unlock human potential and specialises in creating connected and conscious communities.

In a previous life she was the Education For Sustainability Manager at Macquarie University, Co-host for the Un-school of Disruptive Design and Associate Editor of the International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education.

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Board of Advisors

Kate Bennett Eriksson

Head of Innovation, PwC Australia

Kate’s experience and network spans across some of the most iconic digital businesses in the world such as Google, Facebook, Skype and Twitter. Kate has advised corporate boards of various businesses about how they can drive innovation across multiple industries of government, financial services, telecommunications and media.

Jithma Beneragama

Director - Digital Engagement, Dept. of Premier and Cabinet Victoria

A digital executive with international experience driving businesses to succeed, Jithma spent several years in the private sector. He now heads the digital engagement team at the Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet.

Dan Groch

Co-Founder and Entrepreneur

Dan Groch is a technology entrepreneur who founded Hero Boyfriend and co-founded Code for Australia and Fig & Bloom. Dan helps corporations and governments achieve more with less by leveraging open data, human capability and behavioural economics. In his spare time, he likes baking scones.

Jacob Lindsay

Co-founder & Digital Service Designer

Jacob is a multi-disciplinary designer based in Melbourne. He is working on how emerging technologies impact our cities and the built environment as a Digital Service Designer within the Digital Futures team at Aurecon. He is also one of the co-founders of Code for Australia, and Creative Suburbs. He enjoys living among a mountain of bike parts, a fridge stocked with cheese and his sidekick-cat Maximus.

Samantha Wijesinha

Ex-Fellow and Full Stack Developer

After many years managing and supporting technology projects within utilities, superannuation and not-for-profit industries, Sam took the leap and learned to code. In 2017, Sam graduated from the Full Stack Web Development Immersive Course at General Assembly, before combining her project management and web development skills as a Code for Australia Fellow.

Sam is passionate about digital technology and creating useful applications for humans. When not coding, Sam is geeking out on comics, reading and watching science fiction, and spending way too much money on holidays.

Current Fellows

Victor Nava

Government Partner: City of Melbourne

Victor is a Software and Electronics Engineer and Designer-in-Training.

He has an inquisitive nature and loves solving problems, especially when they have a positive social impact.

He also enjoys extremes – flying paragliders and free diving deep into the ocean.

He wants to be an astronaut when he grows up.

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Kyreena Hay

Government Partner: City of Melbourne

Kyreena is a self-titled Human Centred Designer, using HCD for business strategy, services, and user experience. She started her career as a UI Designer and Frontend Developer, then found joy in ensuring the right things are made by understanding and including the humans those things affect.

She’s an avid skilled volunteer in the Human Rights sector, cyclist, and synchronised swimmer in the feminist performance group, The Clams. And before you ask; her accent is from South Africa and New Zealand, with an Australian twang sneaking in there.

Jonathan Castillo Bello

Government Partner: City of Melbourne

Jonathan is an software engineer from the Politécnico Grancolombiano (Colombian University). He is passionate about how the solutions in the digital space improves the user’s life and currently working in civic tech.

He has been building software in several areas (Government, E-commerce, Technological) in multiple roles across the software development process since 2008.

He also loves tennis, hanging out with friends and learning from different cultures.

LinkedIn

Scout Quinn

Government Partner: Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission

Scout is a non-binary creative technologist and software engineer specialising in backend development. They have worked on developing ACMI’s museum operating system, have a background in science communication and statistics and really know their way around a differential equation.

Outside of work they are a keen sport fencer and occasional slam poet.

Jing Jing Wang

Government Partner: Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission

Jing Jing is an Experience Designer. What gets her out of bed each morning is knowing that she’s doing something positive in this world. Outside of the fellowship, Jing Jing volunteers her time on the board of the Southern Migrant and Refugee Center. She is also a member of the Access and Inclusion Committee at the City of Casey Council.

When she gets the chance to play, Jing Jing loves to play Shadow of War, travel and try delicious new foods.

LinkedIn

Alex Reid

Government Partner: Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission

Alex is a web designer and developer who enjoys making people’s lives easier, using technology.

For the past 10 years, Alex has been taking on projects big and small, working with agencies such as McCann Worldwide, Carter Digital and The Word Collective, and pushing pixels for clients ranging from Maybelline to the Australian Government and everything in between.

In his spare time, you can find him playing party music for party people.

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Michael Lai

Government Partner: Department of Housing and Public Works (QLD)

Michael is a serial problem solver with experience in public, private and not-for-profit organisations. Originally trained as a scientist, Michael has meandered through some interesting professions and currently plays the part of a UX practitioner using his skills in research and data visualization design.

If he’s not asking questions on UXSE or working on one of his many side projects (blockchain, social responsibility, ethical design and more) then Michael is probably teaching origami for mental fitness and trying to change the world one origami model at a time.

LinkedIn

Kate Currie

Government Partner: Department of Housing and Public Works (QLD)

Kate is a frontend web developer and entrepreneur. Her background is in Computer Science with a dash of Psychology. She’s passionate about usability and believes web applications should be intuitive to use and easy to understand. They should also look awesome.

Kate loves seeing her work have a positive impact on those who use it. She also loves coding, attempting latte art and hanging out with her amazing family. In her spare time you’ll find Kate trying to persuade her kids that zucchini muffins are a good idea.

LinkedIn

Wilson Mok

Government Partner: Department of Housing and Public Works (QLD)

Wilson is an engineer who is motivated by the technologies that shape our daily lives and digital preservation.

Wilson completed his Bachelor of Computer Systems and Network Engineering at RMIT, and has worked within the private and public sectors. He has experience in mechatronics and coding and finds himself most at home with tinkering with embedded systems.

LinkedIn

Claramae Gonsalves

Government Partner: Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation

Clara is a user experience designer with a background in software development and business analysis. She enjoys exploring real user problems and designing solutions that enhance everyday experiences. Clara is always curious about human behaviour, and how technolgy impacts it.

Outside of work, Clara loves to DIY random things, and is always on the hunt for good food.

LinkedIn

Elise Chant

Government Partner: Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation

Elise is a creative technologist passionate about building meaningful solutions for the right problems. With a formal background in Industrial Design, Elise came into Software Engineering by pure curiosity and an urge to understand the digital landscape.

Elise was formerly working with Australia’s Digital Transformation Agency and believes strongly in the purposefulness of #civictech.

Associates

Rikke Winther-Sørensen

Government Partner: Victoria Legal Aid

Rikke is a Product Design Engineer with a passion for product development focusing on context and user experience. Working as a technical consultant, she has improved workflows and finished projects by delivering customized software solutions.

She is excited about design with a socio-technical focus and is eager to become involved in projects that have a real impact on people’s everyday life. She (unashamedly) dresses up if you invite her to a costume party and if there is a friendly kick about on the footie pitch, Rikke will be there!

LinkedIn

Christian Arévalo

Government Partner: Victoria Legal Aid

Christian is a software engineer graduate of computer science from Politécnico Grancolombiano. He is passionate about web development technologies.

He has experience working with startups and commercial projects in Colombia and Australia, also he has been part of teams focused on improving e-commerce and business applications.

Christian also loves playing and watching soccer, video games and hanging out with his friends.

LinkedIn

Ezekiel Kigbo

Government Partner: Neighbourhood Justice Centre

Ezekiel is a full stack developer with a background in Computer Science. He spent the last 7 years working in Tertiary education and as a freelance developer for startups and small businesses.

Ezekiel is excited by the future possibilities of the internet of things, open data and open APIs and is passionate about digital media, collaboration and creative coding. When he is not coding, you can find him taking photos, writing music or out on the football (soccer) field.

2015 Fellow

Peter Welte

2015 Fellow

Steve Bennett

2015 Fellow

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