Introducing new TYPO3 GmbH employees
Meet our new employees!
In this blog post, we are presenting new faces who joined TYPO3 GmbH in 2021. Even though they started last year, we think now is a perfect time to introduce them. We filled a whole lot of areas and expanded with our media production department.
Design
Markus Schwarz, Art Director
(Still) 46 years old, born and raised in Krefeld, Germany. Studied Communication Design in Düsseldorf and worked for years as an Art Director in Agencies and companies in Düsseldorf, Cologne, and Leverkusen. First introduced to TYPO3 CMS in 2004. For the last 7 years, he has been living in Hennef near Cologne with his wife, two children, and Rosi the family dog. Passionate guitar-playing Star Wars/Masters of the Universe-collecting metalhead who likes to draw and illustrate in his spare time. Core competence: Maker of Memes!
Marketing & Events
Carsten Siewert, Marketing & Events
For more than 27 years Carsten Siewert has been actively involved in Event organization and acquisition in the areas of music and culture, conception, sales, the management of interdisciplinary teams, and the management of national and international projects. He founded an agency called “Coming Sooon” and was involved in a number of well-known projects in recent years, such as the ELECTRI_CITY Conference and the Art Event “Nachtbrötchen”. For a year now he and his girlfriend have been hosting “Marktschwärmerei Düsseldorf” a regional network of (farmers etc.) and consumers. Loves music, concerts, traveling and takes care of his 2 lovely cats.
Marketing
Petra Tosic, Social Media Marketing
Proud Croatian with Japanese roots moved from Croatia to Germany 8 years ago. Currently living in Meerbusch with her lovely daughter. Professionally, she has been working in old school marketing at the beginning of her career, continued with freelancing for local Newspaper and Creative Agencies while having a full-time administrative job. Since the beginning of her career, she was combining the creative part of her professional life with, let's call it boring one, and compensating the boring part with hobbies. Mountain climbing, speleology, rock climbing, sailing, traveling are some of her passions, including her love for languages, from which she actively uses Croatian, English, and German, and occasionally Italian. Not to forget her passion for Music, and Sushi.
Marketing
Joeline Bersch, Social Media Marketing
At 21, Joeline is the youngest employee at TYPO3 GmbH. She graduated from high school in 2019 and then started an apprenticeship as a commercial assistant with a focus on English and Spanish. In marketing courses, she realized that she really enjoyed it and decided to take a dual study program “Marketing and Digital Media” at the FOM University in Düsseldorf. In August 2021, Joeline started in the marketing department of TYPO3 GmbH and began her studies shortly after. In her free time, she likes to play soccer, go to the gym, cook, and spend a lot of time with her two dogs.
Development
Tomas Norre Mikkelsen, DevOps
European with a Danish passport, has been living in Germany for the past 8.5 years but decided it is time to return to his homeland in February 2022. PHP specialist since 1998 and TYPO3 since 2004, interested in Unix and server setup since the late 1990s. In his free time he plays golf, goes for a run, drives his bicycle, and of course, maintains the TYPO3 Crawler. Fun fact: Listens to classical music when working, to keep distractions away.
Development
Shehfinaz Valluvan Kadavil, Developer
Shehfinaz, the owner of a long perilous name (feared by the ones who need to pronounce it) comes from the beautiful lush green state of Kerala, India. Born and raised in Dubai, Shehfinaz graduated as a computer science engineer from the University of Calicut, India. She has been living in Germany for the past 8 years with her husband and son. She worked as an IT developer in India and her passion for programming led her back to work after long maternity leave. A Star Trek fan, Voyager especially, she can watch every episode any number of times. When her life is not fully conquered by a handsome 4-year-old, Shehfinaz enjoys traveling, gardening, blogging and spending time with friends and family. Fun fact: Can speak 6 languages plus German which is a work in progress.
Development
Larry Garfield, Developer
Larry is an aspiring bladesmith who has been moonlighting as a PHP developer since PHP 3 was cool. Hailing from the Midwestern United States, Larry has been a freelancer and agency consultant, developer relations specialist, public speaker, teacher, and all-around busybody for over 20 years. Larry helped to create the modern PHP-FIG, led the massive Drupal 8 overhaul, and is currently working to drag PHP kicking and screaming into the functional era. At TYPO3, his job is mainly to pay down or refinance core code debt. Outside of work, Larry is a die-hard Star Trek fan (Jean-Luc Picard is the best captain, don’t at me), Muppet fan (Kermit is my spirit animal), and democracy activist (aren’t you?). He also hand-forges his own knives, because they’re shiny and pointy.
Media
Oliver Knabben, Media Production
47-year-old Oliver lives with his beloved fiance and three wonderful kids in Düsseldorf. Electrician and stage technician, now the media producer for all TYPO3 GmbH Video and Audio projects. In his free time performs as a DJ and Producer, having a little studio in the city center of Düsseldorf. Loves his Vespa, his two rabbits Ernie & Blume, and of course the famous “Strandpiraten”
Documentation Team
Tom Warwick, Technical Writer
Tom lives in South Wales in the United Kingdom. He started using TYPO3 back in 2008 and has worked on projects as both an integrator and developer for various organizations in the public and private sectors. Tom´s current role sees him working alongside other members of the TYPO3 documentation team, helping to maintain and write new content for docs.typo3.org His proudest achievement of 2021 was the rewrite of the Getting Started & Upgrade Guide. One of Tom's goals for 2022 is to continue to promote and champion TYPO3 in the UK, having recently finished a six-week workshop with design students from the University of South Wales. When he´s not working on the docs or creating screencasts you´ll likely find Tom either playing Golf or poolside where he volunteers as a coach for his local triathlon club.
2021 was eventful, we hired incredible people with great skill sets and amazing personalities. Looking forward to 2022 and onwards, to all the new ideas and perspectives brought to the table to expand the capabilities and success of the entire Team. 2022 is going to be awesome!
