Childhood ( - '03 )
Simon grew up on a dairy farm near Tokoroa, New Zealand. He spent his youth roving over the farm, water skiing, fishing and milking cows. When he was 16 he did an exchange to Dresden, Germany, where he learned to drink beer and speak German.
Uni - Part 1 ( '04 - '07 )
After high school, Simon moved to Dunedin to study Design. He bought a motorbike, worked in hospitality, lived round the corner from a brewery and learned silversmithing from some of the best in New Zealand. It wasn't all as rockstar as it sounds. He graduated with 1st Class Honours, and a desire to never go back to university.
Uni - Part 2 ( '08 - '12 )
Hot off the desire never to go back to Uni, Simon accepted a scholarship for a PhD at QUT in Brisbane. Sensible. He moved to Brisbane, and began 4 years of research and writing. During this time he taught a lot, wrote a lot, and learnt that academia wasn't for him. He also started doing personal growth, and drove a very old and obscure Swedish car.
Freelance ( '12 - '13 )
After Simon earned the big Dr. he was offered a job by Microsoft to move to Seattle and work on the Windows team. The visa system decided to make things difficult, so he spent the next 18 months working with some cool people doing human centred design in architecture, libraries, museums, hospitality and software.
Melbourne ( '13 - present )
Simon visited Huddle a couple of times in the first half of 2013, after finally getting a visa for the US. After the second visit, they offered him a job, and he had to make the tough call between Melbourne and Seattle, Huddle or Microsoft. The decision was Huddle, and the rest is history. Now, I'm working with some of Australia's largest organisations, and getting to do other cool stuff, like facilitating workshops, and talk at universities and conferences!
Now
Simon has agency, startup, corporate and freelance experience under his belt, doing everything from complete Business Design to single service design, with a bunch of talks and workshop facilitation thrown in along the way. Finishing up his current freelance contract, he is going to take some time off, and relax a little before the next big thing...