Meet the Crafty Penguins Team Members

Here is a list of team bios for your enjoyment. For more information about the company, see our new About Us page.

Wim is our CEO and Founder. He leads the growing Crafty Penguins team that provides advanced Linux and DevOps consulting services to tech companies, Windows Managed Services to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in the Fraser Valley area and beyond,and finally a work visualization system called TopLeft to other IT service providers around the world that are using ConnectWise or AutoTask.

His career roadmap winds through full-time Windows/VB6/MSSQL development, Linux/Perl development, ISP NOC support, and building a professional managed services team as founder and CEO of the company.

Wim’s passion for excellence, his grit to solve difficult problems and his personal and business core values are amazingly embodied by his team. His clients enjoy sharing their business challenges and opportunities with him and know he is committed to their success. When Wim is not at work he enjoys reading, playing the piano, studying theology, working out, and spending time with his wife Rudi and 6 young children. [LinkedIn]

As President, Steve is responsible for the implementation of company strategy, integration of the company’s various divisions, service delivery, and talent recruitment and development.

A Texan by birth, Steve has lived in a variety of locations in Canada, Africa, Europe and the United States. He has been researching, teaching, and practicing in the fields of human behavior, organizational communication, and leadership development since the mid-1990’s.

His passion is to make it easier for people to do meaningful work, to equip people to succeed in business and in life, and to help businesses build systems to achieve scalable growth.

He loves good coffee and Cinnamon Buns (yes, that deserves to be capitalized). His hobbies are reading (business and science fiction), drawing, and playing the drums. Steve is married to Lisa, and they have 2 adult sons. They love traveling together as a family and exploring new places and cultures. Reach out to Steve at [LinkedIn].

Joshua Smith is our VP Operations and is responsible for business processes and practices, driving excellence across the team and ensuring that all the individuals across the company work well together. He also uses his background as a Windows tech to support the MSP team and provide guidance and assistance if required. A not so recent arrival from New Zealand, having previously spent a year living and working in Vancouver, Joshua has quickly settled into the Canadian lifestyle.

Joshua grew up in Christchurch, New Zealand and spent a lot of time in his High School years working with computers, both productively and sometimes not so productively. He attended university there as well, getting a BSc. with a double major in Computer Science and Psychology. His career since then has revolved around providing services and support to small to medium enterprise, specifically support retail, hospitality and wholesaling operations.

Joshua enjoys spending time in the outdoors, fishing and taking photographs, and loves to travel. He has spent time on every continent except Antarctica, and is hoping to get there one day too.

Richard Clark, Team Lead and VP Engineering is responsible for pragmatic architecting of systems for clients and internally, and to support the team as needed with assitance and guidance. Outside of those needs his focus is on client software engineering work specializing in Devops and SaaS full stack development.

He has been involved with Linux since early 1994, and enjoys bringing the Linux/GNU based OS to as many companies and individuals as he can, including recent work to help setup Linux based computer labs for Students and Hospitals in Guinea, Africa.

Through the 90’s Richard was focused on IT management. Through the early 2000’s he worked as Sr. Software Engineer on various embedded software projects. In 2011 Richard joined the company as a Systems Architect specializing in Linux systems. He labels himself as Jack of all trades and Master of whatever he has been working on for the last month.

Combining his passion for both technology and people, Ralph Hardy works as Project Manager with the Crafty Penguins team.

Ralph fell in love with technology while studying Comp Science at SFU back in the dark ages. One of his first jobs was designing software at Microtel Pacific Research for the first digital switch made by GTE (back in the dark ages). During his software career he has been involved in designing, building and implementing business systems. In the early 90’s he moved to the USA from the lower BC mainland to become a project manager with Applied Science Associates, managing large implementation projects with clients such as Shell Natural Gas, Enron and Amoco.

Ralph completed his M.Div at Trinity Western University and has served as a pastor in the area. More recently he has casually become involved in Life and Business coaching. Now,

As Client Solutions Manager, Jonathan Jones is responsible for high-level business and account management, needs delivery for both Kerkhoff Technologies and Crafty Penguins. As the Client Solutions Manager he is enthusiastic about building strong relationships that connect clients with the right people on the technical team.

He has a degree in Business Administration. His entire professional career revolved around sales, administration and client care roles. He practices graphic design as a hobby and enjoys the sales/marketing side of business since that allows him to interact closely with people, which is his greatest passion.

Jonathan loves coffee. He gets excited about driving for hours to visit top-rated restaurants for kicks. When not working, Jonathan can be found hiking, spending time with family, and studying hockey stats and methodology.

Rob Hartzenberg, Senior Engineer started playing with Linux in ’95 by installing Redhat Linux 1.0 on a 386 via 5’1/4 floppy using the Rhode University LAN and FTP server. Cutting edge technology has always been a draw card for Rob, and as such the move from South Africa to Canada was an easy choice. His background is also software development, ISP support, and mobile network engineering. Rob joined the company in September 2014 as a penguin (Linux) and packet (Networks) wrangler.

Nicole MacFarlane, Linux Engineer, is a Computer Information Systems graduate of the University of the Fraser Valley. On a regular work day, Nicole is busy monitoring, doing ‘stuff’ with email systems, devops and a bunch of custom implementations for clients, and also a lot of automation.

Nicole’s grandfather introduced her to Warcraft 2 and DOS as a young child. From there, she began compiling and running her own Quake servers at age 10. Her time was largely spent moving from game platform-to-platform, developing all kinds of add-on’s, anti-cheat programs, game modes, forums, and chat programs.

As a hobby she enjoys playing video games, board games, and general exercise.

Curtis Hildebrand, Linux Engineer, grew up playing and coding on his families Commodore 64. When his dad bought an IBM XT, he was fascinated by the CGA graphic games and determined to learn more. His first Linux installation was RedHat 5.2. Red Hat 6.0 failed to install so he moved to MandrakeLinux. As things continued to break, he learned how to fix them gaining skills with GNU/Linux. He has a degree in Computer Information Systems from UFV with a major in his biggest interest, Computer Security.

Curtis and his wife have three kids who keep them very busy. They are also very active with outdoor mountain based activities (mostly hiking, trail running and mountain biking). In his spare time, Curtis can be found with either his family, working on a security CTF or somewhere on the mountains on his bike.

Chris Pickett, Linux Systems Engineer – When asked to summarize his role in one sentence he says “marrying the best in class DevOps solutions to the custom needs of individual clients“. He can do custom development work in a variety of programming languages. In 2011, he started working in the oil and gas industry as a technician for measurement while drilling tools.

Chris has been working with Linux systems for 26 years and has contributed to many open source development projects, specializing in microservice containerization. Working in oil fields all over Western Canada and Southern United States, he has also developed many tools which have been adopted by that industry. Chris worked briefly for Crafty Penguins during the oil slowdown of 2015/16 and rejoined the team this year.

Chris is either truly Canadian or a pure nomadic. He was born in Toronto, Canada, grew up in St. John’s Newfoundland, moved to BC at 19 and has since 2017 lived in Saskatchewan, Newfoundland, and currently resides in Lethbridge, Alberta. He lives very happily with his life partner Lorainne and very much enjoys the big sky and sunshine offered by the Alberta landscape. He has 2 older children and 5 “youngers” he cares for with passion. He cheers for the St. Louis Blues (precup ) and enjoys travelling and spending time with family.