I was born in the mountains of British Columbia to Dutch immigrants Roelof and Ineke. I grew up skiing, reading science fiction, camping, and studying hard. I liked languages and physics and computers, and wound up with two Master’s degrees, one from Grenoble, France for Computer Science, and one in AI research at the University of British Columbia. I did industrial AI work at Bell-Northern Research in Ottawa for three years, then returned to BC to work at MacDonald, Dettwiler & Associates (MDA), in systems engineering around the world. After 27 years based in Vancouver, I moved to Milwaukee, where my partner is a professor at the University of Wisconsin.

Retired from corporate life, my hobbies include coding a personal AI, traveling the world, and trying to keep up in power yoga, Tai Chi, piano and guitar. I worked for 40 years at large companies managing global business transformations. I am delighted now to be writing for the public as a second career.