The Team
Dr. Mark Elliott
Managing Director & Founder
As founder of Collabforge, Dr. Mark Elliott has successfully designed and managed hundreds of high profile projects, working closely with clients in a highly versatile and collaborative capacity.
Between 2007 and 2008, Mark led Collabforge’s reengineering of the City of Melbourne’s strategic city planning process for wide-scale collaboration. The result was Future Melbourne, an award-winning, world first ‘city plan that anyone could edit’, including the city’s diverse selection of stakeholders and the general public.
Prior to founding Collabforge, Mark completed a PhD investigating the underlying dynamics and mechanisms that drive and enable online mass collaboration. The objective of this work was to provide understandings that could be directly applied to the purposeful engineering of mass collaborative projects and the communities that support them. Mark’s PhD was examined by Internet luminary and inventor of the term “virtual communities”, Howard Rheingold, as well as Francis Heylighen, a leading thinker in the areas of cybernetics and complex adaptive systems.
Mark has published and delivered keynote presentations on his work to the United Nations, federal governments, universities, international think-tanks, and academic and professional conferences around the world.
Here is a list of his recent presentations and speaking engagements. Watch Mark during his interview with Howard Rheingold on citizen participation and online collaborative environments.
Mark is also a performing musician and composer, having worked collaboratively as an artist his whole life. He has played in countless bands, written works for orchestras and ensembles, and performed in experimental improv groups. For more about his music, see mark-elliott.net
Hailey Cooperrider
Collaboration and Strategy Lead
Since joining Collabforge in 2009, Hailey has been an integral part of over 250 projects, with diverse responsibilities ranging from developing strategic frameworks, to facilitating collaborative workshops, to developing online collaboration platforms. As Collabforge has grown, she has increasingly focused on designing and facilitating collaborative processes, and on strategy development.
Hailey gets the biggest kick when a collaborative process that she helped initiate starts moving under its own momentum, with participants working together more effectively and delivering unprecedented results. That’s why she is currently researching how gameplay can be used to help spread collaboration capability more broadly, reducing the need for support from outside experts.
Prior to becoming part of the team, Hailey participated and led a number of initiatives in New York City related to open and participatory democracy. These included the Beta NYC meetup group and the 2009 Participation Camp ‘unconference’ on citizen participation in government.
Despite her penchant for collaboration, Hailey can get pretty competitive too, excelling at obscure sports like disc golf, wiffleball, ultimate frisbee, table tennis and foosball.
Rebecca Dahl
Operations and Marketing Lead
Bec takes the complex, breaks it down, and puts it back together better. Her skills include project management, business analysis, measurement and evaluation, databases and automation, visual reporting tools, product management, social marketing and behaviour change, and web design and development.
Bec is helping to take Collabforge innovation and customer experience to the next level by streamlining our operational systems and leading the packaging and marketing of Collabforge products and services. Previously, she worked with corporate leadership in companies such as Newcrest Mining, Realestateview and APN Property Group to develop and implement targeted solutions to pressing operational and strategic challenges. She has completed a master’s thesis focused on the strategic design and delivery of social marketing campaigns to affect behaviour.
John Hibble
Collaboration Workshop Specialist
John recently left ANZ after 12 years working in IT, Corporate Banking and Finance. Most recently he was a session designer and facilitator in the Bank’s internal ‘MG Taylor’ practice, which locally is also practiced by PWC, KPMG and Cap Gemini. The MG Taylor approach specialises in helping large, diverse groups solve complex problems in an accelerated timeframe (weeks or months of work achieved in 1-3 days). In this role he designed and facilitated nearly 30 events for large groups (up to 50) to collaborate in solving business problems, mainly for some of the Bank’s large transformation projects. He also gained experience in designing and building out collaborative work environments in this role. Outside of work John has experience in building his own ‘meet-up’ community both online and offline.
Alvaro Villafane-Molina
Web Developer & Devops
Alvaro is a web developer passionate about the web and all related technologies. He has 3 years experience developing sites in Java. He also implements and customises Drupal, WordPress and other websites using HTML5, CSS3, responsive design, various web scripting technologies (Javascript, Jquery) and web standards.
Alvaro arrived in Australia in 2013. In his free time, Alvaro enjoys playing with son, playing guitar and reading about IT.
Trish Cave
Collaboration, Design and Innovation Specialist
Trish is a collaboration and design consultant who brings deep expertise in user centred and participatory design, with strategic insight into how technologies can be used to support innovation and collaboration. Having a background in a post-production and interactive design, Trish brings a human centred approach to projects, enjoying working with teams on complex problems with multi-stakeholder across a myriad of sectors. As a systems thinker, with a project managers’ collaborative toolkit, she works to explore innovative opportunities and translate them into tangible solutions.
Keri Christensen
Executive Director & Finances Lead
Having been a key partner in the business since its establishment, Keri has contributed significantly to the long term success and financial stability of Collabforge. She has managed the business’s accounts and corporate and tax responsibilities throughout its history, as well as helping manage human resources, client relations and business strategy.
With a long-held passion for science, Keri holds multiple degrees and is published in academic journals. She has accumulated a diverse skill set including research, data analysis, computer programming, business process re-engineering, customer engagement and marketing. Keri lives in inner city Melbourne with her partner and four wonderfully high energy sons.
Who we work with
Julian Waters-Lynch
Senior Partner, The Holos Group
Julian is a futurist, organisational strategist, designer and facilitator of experiences that catalyze learning and development. Julian’s PhD research on the future of work explores the disruptive rifts in technology and social trends that are shaping the new economy. His thesis focusses on the new skills and environments individuals and organisations require to support sustained collaboration and innovation in rapidly changing marketplace.
Julian’s international work history across Latin America and Asia and with the key drivers and worldviews of millennial leaders has afforded tangible insights into how younger generations and emerging regions will shape the 21st century.
An accomplished jazz pianist, he draws on his experience with the discipline of improvisation to assist individuals and organisations in developing capabilities for creativity, entrepreneurship and innovation.
David Hood
Founder, Doing Something Good
David has been working with not-for-profits and community organisations for close to 15 years – including almost four years at Greenpeace Australia Pacific where he worked in Communications and Public Engagement and was the Campaign Project Leader on the successful viral campaign against Nestle for deforestation.
In the last five years, David has experienced the growing effectiveness of the web and social media to connect and enable communities to come together, collaborate, and take action on issues ranging from climate change to mental health and poverty to marriage equality.
The use of digital media and online platforms has been deeply integrated into his current projects as founder of Doing Something Good, host of The Collaboratory Melbourne and producer of the Gathering Unconference. His mission is to help people and organisations doing something good to realise the potential of the strategic use of the social web, emerging models for business and collaborative networked communities to build better futures for all, together.
A graduate of the School for Social Entrepreneurs program in 2011, David was named Melbourne Social Entrepreneur of the Year in 2012 and one of The Age’s Melbourne Magazine Top 100 most “passionate, powerful and provocative personalities of 2012”.
Matt Withoos
Director, Fair Digital
Matt Withoos was previously Collabforge’s Technology Lead, ensuring that the IT ecosystems for clients run smoothly as well as helping develop new technology solutions. His expertise lies in web, app and software development, and he is knowledgeable with web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, Javascript, PHP, Ruby, Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, Laravel, Symfony, Ionic, Phonegap, React Native, Unix/Servers, Git and more.
Matt is the Director of Fair Digital, a small technology agency helping to deliver innovative technology solutions for progressive and for-purpose organisations, including not-for-profits, charities, Government and social start-ups. He is also a board member for the Rationalist Society of Australia, a think-tank focused on promoting evidence-based policy in political discourse.
Rik de Boer
Drupal expert
Rik graduated from Twente University, The Netherlands with an MSc. in Electrical Engineering biased towards Computer Science. Having worked in London, Tokyo and the birthplace of Albert Einstein (Ulm, on the Danube), he has put his roots down firmly in Melbourne, at least for now. After years of team-lead and managerial roles in C++ and Java projects, Rik discovered the website development framework Drupal, founded his own company Flink and hasn’t looked back.
On hot Sundays and summer nights, he enjoys perfecting his handcrafted ginger mojito with fruit and herbs from the balcony garden.
Alexar Pendashteh
Drupal Developer
Alexar is a Drupal Developer at Collabforge, and has 8 years’ experience in web and PHP development. He graduated from Tehran Polytechnic as an Electrical Engineer, but switched fields to IT. Since then, Alexar has been involved in a variety of projects of different scales, as a developer or team leader. He was also a trainer at the Iranian Academic Center for Education and Research.
On weekends, he helps a team of friends and former pupils in Iran work on projects. His hobbies include enjoying nature, drawing art and calligraphy.
Laura Summers
Front End Developer
Laura Summers has worked with Collabforge as a front-end developer, working with CSS3, HTML5 and javascript to create intuitive and functional user-interfaces with modern design conventions, and strong performance across multiple devices. Her other skill sets include digital and interaction design, art direction and motion graphics. Laura has a Bachelor’s Degree from Cornell University and Masters of Multimedia from Monash… as well as a diploma in “Googling ‘til you work it out.”
Laura is American-born and educated, and made the move to Melbourne in 2002. She’s also a keen dancer and spends much of her free time involved in the contemporary dance scene in Melbourne (check out her dance essays here). Other interests include her ridiculously adorable cat, Oscar, film & anime, and getting out to see live gigs.
Kylie Long
Workshop and co-design specialist
Kylie draws on her ability to engage and empower diverse audiences through her collaborative leadership roles in startups, Government and not-for-profit sectors. She is an acutely deep listener whose strength is in facilitating high stake, sensitive environments with Executive, middle management and front end staff.
As Founder of Peer Academy, she helps the public purpose sector shift from managing risk to consciously co-designing better futures with citizens in ‘wicked’ areas including; family violence, education, youth, homelessness, indigenous rights and place making.
Kylie co-led the development of the Victorian State Government’s innovation agenda ‘Putting Innovation in Motion 2017’ and her work continues to receive recognition from Nesta, the Herald Sun, Startup Daily, Apolitical, and Beth Noveck in Smart Citizens, Smarter Cities: “The Technologies of Expertise and the Future of Governing.”
During her 8 years in Government, Kylie led complex, multidisciplinary urban renewal initiatives and worked with hundreds of people and groups with the purpose of facilitating innovative solutions to seemingly stuck and entrenched issues and divides.
Kylie has 15 years experience in growing capacity in facilitation, co-design, action research, lean startup methodology and collaborative leadership and her domain experience in these areas underpins the design of Peer Academy’s branded learning experiences.
Kylie’s a fully qualified facilitator, mediator, strategic planner, social innovator and Angelcube Accelerator graduate. She is a finalist for Techcrunch Disrupt’s Social Innovation Award 2015 and continues to complete her studies in process oriented psychology.