I build websites and software for small businesses. Before that I spent years as a product manager and managing teams, which mostly meant sitting with someone while they explained how the work actually gets done, then working out what should exist to make it stop hurting.

The part I like most is watching someone who has just told me they’re “not a tech person” work out what’s actually possible. Usually they’ve been handed tools built for someone else’s business, by people who never bothered to ask how theirs works. Fix that, and the technology stops being the hard part.

I’m also drawn to the problems other people have given up on. If you’ve been told the thing you want can’t be done, or quoted something ridiculous to do it, that’s the conversation I want to have. In my experience “unsolvable” usually means nobody has sat down and looked at it properly yet.

Away from work, my family is the whole point of it. I’m married with two teenagers who are far funnier than I am, and two rescued dogs who are quite certain they count as children too. Most of what matters to me happens in that house.

I’ve also been a surrogate three times — three families who wanted children and now have them. It’s the thing I’m proudest of outside of raising my own, and honestly it comes from the same place as the rest of this: I love helping people reach something they couldn’t get to on their own.