In 2010, there was a noticeable shift at CampBrain. We had four amazing new Brainers join our team – Michael, Tyler, Amanda-Sue & Alex – and each have made long-lasting impressions. CampBrain simply would not be the same without these wonderful people.

As with our 5-year anniversaries, over the last few months, we honored each in our company “huddles” with backstories, accomplishments, fun tidbits, and insights into what makes them tick. Here are some of the notes from those huddles on each of these valued Brainers and a few of their contributions to CampBrain:

Michael Aird

Michael joined us 10 years ago, when CampBrain was at a critical juncture. Our original software, CampBrain Desktop, was at its peak. However, new software platforms were on the rise and we knew that to keep pace we would need to make a shift to what we called CampBrain Web at the time.

Enter, Michael as our architect and lead developer. He joined when our coding team consisted of only a few folks without many development tools or processes. He made an immediate impact by thrusting us into a new modern age, providing our team with structure and processes that were critical to a successful team. With Michael’s guidance, our small coding team has blossomed into the modern multi-disciplinary development team that it is today. As time progressed, Michael took on new challenges and became our CTO.

Joining and building a new team from the ground up is a challenging task, and we are so thankful for Michael’s tireless efforts. He not only contributed to a team with sophisticated structure and processes, he contributed to building an amazing work culture, where learning is encouraged, and you are emboldened to try new things, and think outside of the box.

We are thankful for Michael’s past 10 years!

Tyler MacDonald

Tyler joined our team shortly after Michael, on August 5^th, 2010. He initially joined to work on our new online registration system (OLR), setting up camps’ online configurations. On his first day, he spent hours researching our OLR system, as well as Javascript, which set a real tone for his time at CampBrain to this day.

Tyler is hardworking and has an incredible attention to detail. He strives to make every minute of the day worthwhile. That was clear from his time in OLR, where he did over 1,415(!) OLR setups that ranged in time from one to eight hours to complete. Tyler’s dedication and work ethic are unmatched.

After OLR, Tyler moved officially to our development team where he became an integral part of our quality assurance (QA) team, leading the way with our automated testing efforts. This role is the ensure that the system just works, and Tyler has done a fantastic job ensuring exactly that. In QA, Tyler has created progressive testing systems, robust bug reporting systems, implemented critical regression testing, and leads our affectionately named “bug bashes”. Tyler’s keen attention to detail is displayed everyday in QA, ensuring that CampBrain is a bug free and friendly experience for every user.

Tyler is not just an incredible colleague, but he adds a wonderful cheer to the office. Tyler is always a formidable contender during our Halloween costume contest, he is always willing to sit down and chat, and is a remarkably positive person. He is simply a joy to be around, and we are lucky to have him as a part of our team.

Amanda-Sue Pearson

Amanda-Sue emigrated from the UK to Canada with her 3 kids. After settling in, she started with CB in a part-year role so that she could balance home and work. She was our only administrative team member for some time and she covered the full gamut of responsibilities from billing to office management to sending out packages (do you remember that time when people mailed things out :)). As time passed, Amanda-Sue’s responsibilities grew and she became full-time.

She has been the center of our office functioning for the first 5 years and then she started to focus more on the accounting side of things. She manages all of our billing, related client communication and most of our bookkeeping. You have likely spoken with Amanda-Sue at some point – you would recognize the British accent and lingo!

Since Amanda-Sue joined us, she has proven to be an incredibly reliable & hardworking colleague. There is seemingly nothing that she can’t do! She does not shy away from hard, unfamiliar work. She has an approach that just gets stuff done and holds herself to a very high standard for all her work.

Amanda-Sue is a courageous, independent, and resilient person. If you get her talking a little, you will learn that she renovated her kitchen on her own…by herself…that she decided to take up Spanish at one point, learned the language and dove into all aspects of the culture. She is the type of person that you want on your team. We are looking forward to what challenges she takes on in the next 10 years!

Alex Akselrod

Alex Akselrod also reached his 10-year anniversary with CampBrain. Although Alex departed our team in mid 2020, he made a lasting impression on our company. You can find out more about his contributions in our Farewell, Alex Akselrod post. 

Join our team as we wish Michael, Tyler, Amanda & Alex a happy 10 years at CampBrain!