Welcome Steven, Carel and Niels!
Pargo continues to grow as the leaders in Click and Collect and so does the team. As a result, three new accomplished professionals join Pargo’s sales, IT and finance department.
From left to right, welcome Pargo’s three new additions to the Pargo pack: Steven Jowell, Carel van den Heever and Niels Aulman!
The smart logistics company sat down with the tenacious trio and here’s what Pargo’s gathered:
Steven Jowell: Sales Director
1. Please tell us about some of your career highlights
Working as GM for Coca-Cola Amitil (Coke bottler) for their South Pacific region based out of Fiji was definitely a highlight and a very fun job. Despite the white beaches and island getaways, being a big business in a small economy meant I was exposed to a lot. We were able to embark on ambitious projects that supported the community. More recently, working at Yoco provided an incredible learning scope as to how tech startups operate and grow.
2. What are you looking forward to in your new role at Pargo?
Like Yoco, Pargo has an equally compelling vision of creating access for all. To me, this not only about customers being able to collect their parcels, but also about businesses being able to serve a larger customer base. I am excited about being part of building towards this vision and bringing in lessons from over my career to help make that happen.
3. Choose either a fun fact, hidden talent, or wholesome hobby to tell us about…
I am a closet tech engineer. My most recent project has been to wire up and automate my home using smart home components, as well as use devices like Arduino’s to automate everything and access it over the internet: lights, alarms, gates. I love the research as well as learning how to do these things more than the actual implementation.
4. Who inspires you and why?
These days I am mostly inspired by my 11-year-old boy Max. He is a hard-working compassionate boy who sees the world in such a beautiful and uncomplicated way. The way that a child of his age engages the world with curiosity, unhindered by preconceptions with simple objectives, living always in the moment is truly inspiring to me.
Carel van den Heever: Financial Manager
1. Please tell us about some of your career highlights
The opportunity to do my CA articles was one of the experiences that really fortified my love for finance and business (even being paid next to nothing). Apart from the wide variety of industries you get exposed to, you learn to be comfortable being thrown into the deep end – handling the pressure of crazy deadlines and learning to lead teams very early on in your career.
2. What are you looking forward to in your new role at Pargo?
I’m looking forward to the opportunity of being involved in the exciting and uncharted landscape in which Pargo operates. Hopefully assisting Pargo in making sound financial decisions and adding value to their strategic objectives.
3. Choose either a fun fact, hidden talent, or wholesome hobby to tell us about…
I can hold a tune and strum some strings. Music is definitely a key element in my life.
4. Who inspires you and why?
American athlete David Goggins is one of the people that inspires me to be mentally tough and to achieve anything I put my mind to. Generally, the people that inspire me are normally those that are successful in both their personal lives and their respective careers. they have beaten the odds or are creating something substantial for society.
Niels Aulman: Developer
1. Please tell us about some of your career highlights
About two years ago, I worked at a startup called Synple. We developed a transportation platform to reduce the number of empty trucks on the road. We made a custom connector for every trucking company that participated on the platform. Due to low capacity on the developing side, new companies that wanted to join needed to wait.
We took a break from developing and started to brainstorm for a way to get the companies started at the very least. We ended up developing a simple upload tool for them to put their orders into our platform. Eventually, it became the most used feature of the whole product.
My lesson learnt from this was that it is worth it to sometimes halt what you are doing and take a step back to take your product even further.
2. What are you looking forward to in your new role at Pargo?
As a developer, I want to bring Pargo to the next level regarding software engineering. During the last 4+ years, Pargo has developed a lot of beautiful tooling for parcel management. My goal is to integrate these tools, too enable our customers even more, and build a software landscape that can be built upon the next coming years.
3. Choose either a fun fact, hidden talent, or wholesome hobby to tell us about…
I am fascinated by the Japanese culture. It started when I first watched Dragonball Z on TV as a kid. Wanting to know if there was more of this ‘stuff’, I began to dig around and discovered the Japanese culture. From there on, it further developed into cooking Japanese cuisine (and no Japanese cuisine is not only sushi), going on holiday there, etc.
4. Who inspires you and why?
As a developer: Dan Abramov, he put together some code that is used widely throughout the Javascript community.
As a person: Elon Musk, he just does whatever he likes, wants to achieve, and makes it work.
Pargo’s got a few surprises in store next year, and with the team as powerful as it is currently, The journey is going to be a great one to witness!
If you’re looking to join the Pargo team, have a look at the positions we have available here!
