About Me

I’ve always wanted two things in life:

to be in business and to be around computers.

Roots in Curiosity

I’ve always wanted two things in life: to be in business and to be around computers. The second came naturally — the first took time. Even as a kid, I was dismantling electronics to see how they worked. I’d spend hours on early machines, writing clunky code or trying to get modems to talk to each other. One of my first paid jobs was setting up network systems for local businesses around town — $50 a job. I even built a button-pressing machine for a printing company so they could automate several units at once. It was the ’80s, and I was already hacking together hardware before “automation” was a buzzword.

Differing Perspectives

I was raised by my grandparents, and my grandfather had strong opinions about the world. “Computers are just toys,” he’d say. “There’s no money in them.” His advice was to get a degree, aim for a government job, and play it safe. I tried. I moved to Brisbane, enrolled in university, and followed the path I thought I was meant to. But I couldn’t sit still long enough to make it work. My mind didn’t operate in straight lines. I packed up and headed to Sydney with no safety net — chasing something undefined but completely necessary.

Me at 21 in my first office in Kings Cross, Sydney

Building a Company

From that foundation, I launched my own company. Within two years, I had 40 Microsoft engineers working under me and a goal: to make every building on Sydney’s skyline my customer. We came close. I took on complex, high-risk jobs others wouldn’t touch — and delivered. I recovered data from a crashed financial system for a regional bank. I rebuilt databases for a direct mail operation in North Sydney that was days from collapse. I designed bespoke network security for legal firms, architectural agencies, and education providers. I once restructured a national courier company’s route-optimisation system overnight, just to stop them bleeding revenue. We were fast, agile, and brutally effective — and for a while, I thought I’d made it

While my team back in Sydney kept our local networks running smoothly, I began expanding internationally. Over time, I found myself building infrastructure and securing networks in 27 countries around the world — from finance hubs to fragile government systems. It wasn’t luck. It was the culmination of everything I’d worked toward. I was finally in the position I had always known I could reach. Fluent in both code and communication, I moved seamlessly through boardrooms, data centres, and high-risk environments where failure wasn’t an option. For the first time, I wasn’t just chasing opportunity — I was creating it.

However, by 2005, everything I’d built came undone. A string of personal and professional events hit all at once — the kind that leave a permanent mark. I went through a painful breakup, experienced a family loss that still sits with me, and found myself in the middle of a legal dispute involving work I believed had been taken without permission. It was a dark time. My name, my stability, and everything I’d worked for were suddenly gone. So was a big part of who I thought I was. 

I left Sydney behind — including my three-bedroom apartment in Vaucluse — and headed to Byron Bay. The plan was to take six months off, get some perspective, and reset. I thought I’d lie low, let the dust settle, and come back stronger. But six months turned into four years. Byron gave me the space I didn’t know I needed — time to think, time to grieve, and time to reconnect with the parts of myself that weren’t tied to success or survival. I kept a low profile, took odd jobs, helped people fix things quietly, and stayed off the radar. In many ways, it was the first time I allowed myself to just be.

After Byron, I took on a contract role running server support for the Department of the Premier and Cabinet in Queensland — a return to high-stakes IT, but on my own terms. Once that wrapped, I left Australia again. I spent time in Singapore, travelled through Asia, and absorbed what I could from different cultures, systems, and ways of thinking. Eventually, I disappeared altogether — living on a remote mountain for nearly a year, without human contact. No phones. No networks. Just space. That time away wasn’t an escape. It was a reset. I’d spent my life solving external problems — now I was learning to sit with internal ones.

Me in Sydney – 2012

Eventually, I found myself in a small town in regional New South Wales, working at a modest college with limited resources. That’s where everything changed. I discovered a new purpose — not in chasing contracts or scaling networks, but in teaching, creating, and giving students the tools to expand their minds and imaginations, even on the tightest of budgets. I learned to stretch a dollar and still deliver excellence. More importantly, I found something I hadn’t had in years: balance. For the first time, the technical and the spiritual sides of me weren’t at odds. They worked together. And from that point on, I stopped chasing success and started defining it for myself.

With this new sense of balance, I founded Mulwaree Life Skills — a not-for-profit dedicated to helping people with disabilities gain real-world digital skills. We started small, teaching web design, SEO, and basic office tech. But it quickly became clear that the people we were training weren’t just capable — they were exceptional. Given the right tools, they thrived. We built communication systems for children with cerebral palsy, offered meaningful work to those shut out of traditional employment, and proved that intelligence and potential don’t come in one shape.

From there, I launched Mulwaree Online, a digital agency built around inclusion and accessibility. It gave our team paid projects, gave small businesses real results, and gave me a model for ethical entrepreneurship that actually worked. That momentum led to my next step: founding Digital Education Systems, a company focused on rebuilding trust in technology — with solutions that are open, sustainable, and built to empower rather than exploit.

The only way to make sense of where your life goes is to look back. In the moment, none of it seems to add up — the wins, the losses, the detours that feel like dead ends. But with time, you start to see the pattern. Every setback was a redirection. Every quiet moment held a lesson. Every person who left made space for someone who mattered more. Looking back now, it all makes sense. The systems I build, the people I help, the students I teach — they’re all connected. I no longer need the spotlight, the title, or the big city skyline.

I have purpose. And that, finally, is enough.