Our team

Daniel Watts

Managing Director, Founder

Daniel leads the Aluminati team and has overall responsibility for defining the company’s technical and business strategies. With his deep sector knowledge, he continues to lead on product R&D, creating high-end community engagement software for the top organisations in the world.

Daniel has an international background having grown up in Malaysia and with an education spanning American international schools to traditional British boarding schools. Graduating from Oxford in 2002 he founded his company at the age of 21.

A recognised expert in online engagement, Daniel is regularly invited to speak at industry events, chairs the UK’s Mentoring Professionals Conference and hosts exclusive round-tables, bringing together expert community professionals.

In his spare time Daniel enjoys the physical and mental challenges of basketball, coaching the Darwin College women’s’ team to Cambridge University championship titles for 4 consecutive years.

Derek Watts

Director, Corporate Strategy

Derek has been involved with Aluminati throughout its existence and remains one of the major shareholders in the business. With over 30 years’ experience in founding and growing successful international enterprises, Derek’s knowledge and guidance has been essential to the success of the company. As the owner and Managing Director of Nitritex, a phenomenally successful global cleanroom and medical consumables supplier, he contributes invaluable high-level leadership to Aluminati.

Roger Garner

Technical Director

Roger joined the company in 2005 as a Systems Developer and is our longest serving member of staff. With his comprehensive knowledge of the company’s technical systems, Roger leads the software development team, keeping abreast of latest technologies and ensuring our internal processes run efficiently so we can continue innovating across the range of Aluminati products.

Rebecca Whitton

Client Projects and Service Manager

Rebecca joined our team in 2018 as the senior point of contact heading up the Client Service Team and ensures the client deployments and projects run smoothly. She previously managed teams working with complex medical devices, but originally started out by breeding seahorses at a London aquarium!

Born and bred in Texas, she has a passion for books, games and enjoys eating kiwi with the skin on.

Fabio Camilli

UI/UX Designer / Front-end Developer

Fabio is our talented Italian Designer, creating new engaging and attractive interfaces for our products, sites and marketing materials. Using the modern wonders of technology, always seen with his trademark cap he only removes it to wear a helmet to ride his classic white Vespa.

James Martin

Web Developer

With an Internet Technology degree from Portsmouth and several years of experience working agency-side, developing websites and web apps, James joined the Aluminati family in 2015. James is a master of dog agility, with his trusty sidekicks, Toby, Pepe and Cooper.

Ben Yeomans

Systems Developer

Ben is the latest addition to the development team joining in April 2017, and is responsible for maintaining and developing new features for the Aluminate platform. Ben is an alumnus of the University of Nottingham, with a degree in Computer Science. Ben’s claim to fame is having nearly 74,000 views on a video of his goalkeeper ‘skills’, which was featured on Soccer AM!

Andi Sherratt

Systems Administrator

With 20 years’ experience in the industry, Andi fulfills the critical Systems Administrator role and ensures that our server infrastructure remains available despite constant growth. A truly dedicated hero, Andi responds at any time of night or day to ensure that any problems are resolved immediately. His previous experience working at a company protecting militarily sensitive data enables him to also take a crucial lead on securing our systems and data. Andi is a keen and accomplished homebrewer, often bringing in small samples to share.

Emily Grant

Quality Control Supervisor and Illustrator

Emily joined Aluminati in our support team and has risen up  the ranks through support supervisor to her current position as Quality Control Supervisor. Emily now works closely with the development team to ensure that new features and bug fixes are up to muster. Nothing goes live without her approval and the development team strives to win it! The multi-talented Emily is our first aider and, having a degree in Illustration also contributes her creative talents.

Anthony Vine

Customer Support Officer

Anthony is part of our friendly, efficient technical support helpdesk team assisting end users across the world with any technical issues and queries, and works hard to ensure their happiness. He’s a mean drummer and a Captain Barbossa lookalike at the weekends.

Shaun White

Customer Support Officer

Shaun is the latest, chirpy addition to the technical support team. Shaun previously worked in customer services for Spotify, used to be a snowboard instructor and enjoys keeping trim and fit in the gym.

Michael Cariaga

Quality Control Technician

Michael is an electronic engineering professional with experience working in South East Asia. He works with Emily to ensure quality is maintained by performing thorough feature testing and system testing. He also carries out SEO analysis of our sites.

Jessica Ellerton

Office Manager

Having previously worked at Hastings Direct as their Office Coordinator for 7 years, Jessica now manages the Aluminati office helping to keep it running like clockwork on a day-to-day basis, and provides direct administrative support for the Managing Director. In her spare time she enjoys travelling as much as she can, and loves to cook and try out new recipes!

Jason Wright

Operations Manager

Having graduated with a first class honours degree in Accounting and Business, Jason joined Aluminati to help manage the day-to-day accounting for the company, working with Mike Dube to fulfill our financial obligations. Jason also manages our global sourcing and supply services and liaises directly with our international trade customers, Shanghai office and suppliers to develop new quality products, ensuring they are delivered to specification and on time.

Maria Gutierrez

Strategic and Mentoring Consultant

Our lead mentoring consultant, Maria has worked in Higher Education since 2009. She started as a Project Manager in the Boston University Community Service Centre, where she partnered with Harvard’s community service initiatives. She then went on to pursue a Master’s in International Business from Hult International Business School, which further developed her expertise in project management, volunteer management and stakeholder engagement. Once in Europe, Maria became Alumni Volunteer Coordinator at King’s College London and led the tender process and deployment of Aluminate as King’s’ mentoring platform. She soon progressed to Alumni Volunteer Manager, leading up a team of four staff members and managing nearly 50000 alumni volunteers worldwide. Maria is a certified Behavioural Coach and is also a Trainer for Mentoring Trainers, Mentors and Mentees.

Johana Canda-Fiserova

Strategic Engagement Consultant

Johana has extensive advancement experience as has worked in the higher education sector both in the USA and the UK for the last 14 years managing AR teams, launching community networks, advising universities in engagement and fundraising.

Johana is also an active CASE member, having presented at several CASE conferences and is a regular speaker at Advancement conferences across continental Europe.  Johana is passionate about innovation in advancement and in her spare time focuses on photography and creating a children’s education app about managing finances.

Poppy Scale

Client Engagement Manager

Poppy joined the Aluminati team in March 2020 as a Client Engagement Manager. She has worked in the Education Technology sector since 2013, predominantly with Higher Education Institutions throughout this time.

Her role at Aluminati entails working closely with both Education Institutions and Corporate Organisations to showcase Aluminate Community Builder and help bring our clients community visions to life through the platform. In her spare time, she is a keen skier and can often be found cycling around the Cambridgeshire countryside on her much loved road bike (weather permitting)!

Bozena Horvathova

Client Engagement Manager

Bozena joined the Aluminati team in April 2020 as a Client Engagement Manager. She has worked for award-winning digital training provider helping mainly Education and Facilities Management sectors to deliver training via an innovative digital learning platform powered by machine learning since 2017.

Her role at Aluminati entails working closely with both Education sector and Corporate Organisations to showcase Aluminate Community Builder and help bring our clients community visions to life through our Aluminate Engagement Platform which is helping to engage and grow communities more effectively.
In her spare time, she is a keen skier, enjoys cooking, travelling and spending time with her family and friends.