As a teenager, I was into everything that had something to do with computers. The ability to write a piece of code and see something appear on the screen was just something that blew my mind back then. I was around 14 years old when I developed my first website. It was that time when you designed a website in Photoshop, "sliced" it, and imported the assets into Dreamweaver. We still used table tags to build the layout of your web pages. No flexbox, no grid, just tables. I loved it though and quite fast I started landing some projects for actual “clients”, mostly due to mouth-to-mouth publicity from friends & family.

During puberty, my love and passion for sports, fitness, and the human body was sparked. Like every 16-year-old teenager you want to look good and gaining some muscle was definitely part of that. I started going to the gym regularly but soon realized that I also wanted to understand the science behind proper training and the anatomy of the human body.

When graduating from high school I had to decide what I wanted to do next. In my head, there was a concrete choice to make: becoming a software engineer or a physiotherapist.

I decided to chase my oldest passion first and started my Bachelor's as a software engineer in 2011. It was everything I expected and more. I learned how to design, implement, test, and ship software and had the opportunity to work on some cool projects, and had an amazing internship at a web development agency (shout out to Multimedium).

However, not long after graduating, I was thinking about that other passion of mine. It was always there in the back of my mind and never really went away. And although I was excited to start working as a software engineer, I also had the feeling I was potentially missing out on things. Over the summer I, therefore, made the decision to chase the dream of becoming a Physiotherapist. That journey started in 2014 and five years later I officially graduated with an MSc in Rehabilitation Sciences & Physiotherapy.

It still leaves the question unanswered, "How did I get into Product?". That's a story with some luck and coincidence. But on the other hand, I always say you can force your own luck by taking opportunities that come your way and by working hard. The story starts in 2017 during my 1st master's year. I needed to write a thesis under the supervision of a promotor.

My promoter had this project in mind around Electronic Patient-Reported Outcome Measurements (EPROMs) and wanted to build a custom electronic survey app to do research on the benefits of EPROMs vs. the traditional paper-pen-based manner of collecting data. They actively screened students to find a profile that would fit into the scope of this project and guess who was a software engineer and eventually ended up working on that project? Yes, me! I was genuinely super excited: a project where I could combine both of my passions. It was a match made in heaven.

One of the first things we did was to go to a "Healthcare Hackathon". For those of you that are not familiar, a hackathon is an event where you bring together bright minds to collaborate intensively to solve problems with software and/or hardware. One of the topics of that Hackathon was EPROMs so it was a great place for us to get started. That is where I got in touch with Thomas & Yann from Awell Health as they were part of our team during that Hackathon. We collaborated intensively during the Hackathon and eventually were able to create a fully working prototype of the project with Awell’s software.

Awell Health was just founded at that time and only Thomas & Yann were involved. However, at the end of the Hackathon, they asked me if I wanted to join the company as a working student and do some work for them on a regular basis. I said yes and effectively during the last 2 years of my master I was actually already working for Awell. When I graduated in the summer of 2019 they offered me a full-time position and I immediately said yes.

At a start-up you wear multiple hats so I was doing a lot of stuff: writing code, creating designs, customer success, managing integrations, and much more. My main responsibility in the first year was on the operational side. I was responsible for building clinical care pathways with and for clients. Nonetheless, because you are wearing multiple hats, I also had the chance to prove my skills with regard to building product. That skillset was acknowledged and valued by the rest of the team and that is why we decided in the spring of 2021 that I would “officially” take up the role as our Head of Product.

And that's how I got into Product.