mul·ti·plic·i·ty

Empowering people with appropriate tech and sustainable process

Category Archives: Refunite

This week I resigned my job at Refugees United

After just over 2 years and some great successes, matched by some great frustrations, I finally decided to quit my job as CTO of Refugees United. I’m currently on paternity leave, until January 1st, which neatly coincides with the end of my contract there. As to the reasons for leaving, well, we can chalk it down to frustrations over a lack of defined strategy, and some deep-felt disagreement about how to get the maximum impact from the available funding. I’m a passionate guy, and when it comes to passion and beliefs, probably not as compromising as I could be, and the founders have a very clear vision for what they want. Those 2 things collided.

I’m not going to go into a lot more detail in a public forum, for what should be obvious reasons, but I will say that it’s been a frustrating summer, and that I’m not the only one who’s left Refugees United in the past few months.

Refugees United is currently recruiting a new CEO, and I wish whomever that may be, the best of luck in the future. And I do, sincerely, hope that the vision (of providing a tool that empowers refugees to get involved in their own search for family) ultimately succeeds.

As for what the future holds, a person I trust recently invited me to have a “speculative wander through future opportunities”, and I like that phrase so much that I think that’s just what I’ll spend the next few months on.

Refugees United – My new stomping grounds

I’m now a few weeks into my new full-time job with Refugees United, and after the epic fail of my 4 months in the bossom of the danish state, it’s not only a relief, but so far it’s been an amazing journey.

It reminds me of the famous “Like drinking from a firehose” quote. There’s so much new stuff to learn, the entire world of Refugee issues is new to me, but at the same time the nitty-gritty of the job is so much down my alley, that i really feel like i have something to contribute.

Refugees United (http://refunite.org/) is essentially an independent .org with a web-based platform where refugees and the internally displaced can register and search for lost family members. It’s a huge problem , with a huge target group, which is begging to be brought into the 21st century, and we’re trying to tackle it as best we can. We’re working with partners to upgrade the current service to a kick-ass system, with state-of-the-art tech. Including mobile support, better collaboration features, better translation issues and better architecture for security.

We’re a small team, with 5 people in the copenhagen office, and some outreach efforts around the world, and it’s a massively complex issue, but I’m ludicrously excited to be working with such passionate and smart people again, and i’m sure we’ll do something well worthwhile while always having fun.

In a best-case scenario i’ll update my blog once in a while with news of our ventures, and at some point i’ll be asking for input and help as well (but perhaps that’s better done on twitter?)