Despite a challenging year and navigating a second national lockdown, Viva is happy to share some good news as we further expand our UK team.

Over the past few months’ we have welcomed 5 new team members and offered permanent positions to two other members of our workshop and manufacturing teams. Exciting times for Viva as we look ahead to a positive 2021.

Firstly, we would like to welcome Alex Yeomans as our Technical Customer Success Manager. With a Degree in Mechanical Engineering, Alex lived in Sydney, Australia for a year after completing university and held a variety of sales management roles before moving to the back to UK. Alex will join the Customer Success & Delivery team focussed on coordinating between the client and our teams, solving problems, providing technical support and ensuring the best possible outcome is delivered for the client every time. You may be interested to hear that Alex holds a wine qualification! He enjoys being active, travelling, playing and watching sport (rugby is a favourite), cooking and long walks on the beach.

Michelle Hine joins us as an Electronics and Embedded Systems Engineer. Michelle holds a 1st Degree in Electronic & Electrical Engineering, and has over 20 years’ experience in electronics design & development, in various market sectors and companies, including 8 years with Sony and 4 years with NVIDIA. She also recently returned to University at postgraduate level to develop her Embedded Software programming skills. She joins the company as part of the Sensor Platform team to design the next generation of Viva Sensor hardware, but also to add to the company’s Embedded Software resource over time. She enjoys listening to music (especially live), watching movies, and playing pool, but also loves to get outdoors, walking/cycling/running when the weather is good – she even ran the Bristol 10K a few years ago, her first 10km event, finishing in just over 1 hour!

Ross Benzie joins us as a Software Developer and has a degree in AI and Computer Science. He wrote his first lines of code way back in the 80s and since then – as well as software roles – has had a varied career including factory production management and a period as an event organiser. To relax he enjoys yoga and meditation.

Kingsley Chiffers joins us as a Software Developer in the Sensor Platform team. He previously worked for a blockchain company, as a backend Golang developer. His role within the team includes working on improving current data pipelines, as well as planning and implementing new features for the core product and custom client needs. In his spare time, he works on personal projects, loves fixing broken tech, and plays video games.

Lastly but my no means least we welcome our Senior Marketing Manager Clare Burke to the Viva team. Clare has over 20 years B2B marketing experience, more recently with over 5 years in the transport technology space. Building on a BSc degree in Business and Management, she has worked within manufacturing, merchanting and logistics also, along with a period running her own consultancy. Clare enjoys spending spare time being active and travelling, with a 2014 career break exploring Europe in a classic camper van. She loves all things Spain especially, learning the language, studying the culture and appreciating the food and wine! Clare will be heading up the Viva marketing function, developing the strategy and delivering the day-to-day marketing activity.

In addition to our new starters, we also congratulate both Jacqueline Regan and Graeme MacKenzie as they accept permanent roles within the business.

Graeme Mackenzie joins the Manufacturing Support Team as a Technician having spent the last 8 years working in the motorsport/aerospace sector with Aero Tec Laboratories Ltd, which make fuel cells mainly for racing cars, but more recently for aviation, marine and defence also. He started there as a technician building cells, moving into the quality department after 4 years, so has solid experience in both manufacturing and quality control. His role at Viva is to support all elements of the manufacturing process using his experience, as well as learning new skills such as purchasing. Dogs are his main passion in life, closely followed by cars!

Jacqueline Regan works in the workshop where she assists in building sub-assemblies and sensors, as well as initialising and testing sensors to ensure each one has the correct software uploaded – a key role and valuable member of the team indeed!

Welcome to you all and we look forward to working together in 2021 and beyond!