From Software Engineer to Tech Business Builder.

Everything starts in Curaçao. The island where I am born and raised in a family where conversations are always going somewhere. Some about people. Some about ideas. Some about what is happening in the bigger world far beyond the Caribbean.

Growing up technology is literally on the dinner table. My mother is working at IBM and bringing home stories about computers and code while everything is just starting to happen in the world. My father is a social worker which means we are also speaking about people and society and the realities outside of technology. Both worlds at the same table. The mix is shaping me before anyone can explain what shaping even means.

At eleven the programming starts. Building digital things becomes as natural as breathing. From building things with LEGO to building online architectures and tech businesses. LEGO is always my favourite way to spend free time. Still is by the way. There is something about putting pieces together until the whole thing works which stays with me through every system ever built.

Rotterdam is already part of the family story long before me. The roots move to the city in the late 70s. From the mid 80s into the mid 90s most of the family is living there including my grandmother. Visits to Rotterdam are a normal part of growing up. The city is familiar before it ever becomes home.

Years later the journey takes me from the warm Caribbean back to Rotterdam where the Computer Science studies happen with a specialization in Business Software Engineering.

Studying business software engineering means learning how to build software for real businesses. Banks. Insurance companies. Pension funds. The kind of systems where mistakes cost millions and reliability is everything.

The combination clicks from day one. An engineering mind paired with a business mind both working in the same direction.

And alongside both runs the third layer picked up from my father the social worker. Empowering people. Seeing what someone actually needs to grow even when they cannot put it into words themselves. Reading the room and picking up on the things no one is saying out loud. Knowing when to push and knowing when to listen. Bringing the right people into the right seats and watching what happens when a team finally clicks. The technical work alone is half the job. The other half is the people doing the work.

Cloud engineering is the hands-on work. Building the actual systems running on the cloud. Writing the code. Configuring the servers. Making sure everything talks to everything else and stays up at three in the morning when the world is asleep but the bank still needs to process payments.

Cloud architecture is the bigger picture. Walking into a room with stakeholders engineers and decision makers and designing how everything fits together at scale before a single line of code gets written. Choosing which services connect to which. Where the data lives. How security flows through the entire system. How everything keeps running even when one piece fails.

Both worlds matter. The architect who has never built does not know which decisions break later. The engineer who has never architected does not see the bigger picture. Doing both for over a decade is where real systems thinking comes from.

Underneath the cloud sits the deeper craft. Backend engineering. The actual code making everything work.

C# and .NET since the early days of the platform. ASP.NET Core. Entity Framework. REST APIs. Microservices. Kubernetes. Docker. The full Microsoft stack from end to end. The kind of code running inside banks and insurance companies and pension funds where one bad line costs real money.

Most architects have stopped writing code years ago and lost touch with what is actually possible. The ones still building keep the architecture honest. The current work involves designing the next generation of an autonomous detection system holding a fault margin of less than 0.0001 percent. Live infrastructure. Ultra-low latency. Real consequences for every decision.

Backend systems are where the real weight sits. The frontend is what people see. The backend is what makes the business work.

The track record reads like a tour of the Dutch financial and government landscape. Rabobank where digital banking is reinvented every year. ASR which is one of the largest insurance companies in the Netherlands. PGGM the Netherlands’ second largest pension fund where millions of people trust their retirement to the systems running underneath. CZ the major Dutch healthcare insurer. Vesting Finance. Nike European HQ in the early days. Siemens. Schiphol Airport where infrastructure has to work because aviation does not forgive downtime. The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Kingdom Relations where government services depend on architectures running behind the scenes.

These are big systems with real responsibility and architectures still running today.

Giving back to the island is where the next chapter begins. There is a tech community waiting to be built and the timing feels right.

In 2018 the Curaçao Tech Meetups started with one speaker which was me and 220 registrations. The idea was simple. Bring real technology conversations to the island and show what becomes possible when the Caribbean takes its place at the global tech table. The year after grew into 35 speakers and 1311 registrations with ten sponsors backing the movement. By now it is the Caribbean’s leading technology conference and a platform helping the island adopt technology in ways which change daily life. Built from the same dinner table conversations of a kid who kept asking what is possible.

February 2021. WALTERIONS opens its doors. The technology consultancy where years of architecture experience meet the founder’s mindset. WALTERIONS is the firm delivering the heavy work for clients who need a partner understanding both the engineering and the business behind every decision.

It all started with DIZIZID Ticketing. From there we branched out with TICKETS.CW for Curaçao and EVENTFLAIRS Ticketing for the Middle East. Then came the rest. KADUSHI BOT the AI bot platform. MAGISTA.ai the brand studio born from a vision in the Colombian valley. AW Ventures the strategic advisory and investment firm holding the bigger picture together. Each one a deliberate build solving something real.

Seven ventures running and building the Curaçao Tech and AI Ecosystem since 2018.

A simple belief. Technology changes lives.

My grandfather grows up poor in Charo which is one of the rougher neighborhoods in Curaçao. He fights his way through. Starts working as a lawyer. Goes back to the Netherlands to study further. Comes back to the island and becomes one of the first three judges born on Curaçao which back in the sixties is unheard of. After retirement he becomes director of the Curaçao Port Authorities where he envisions and pushes for the Curaçao Mega Pier. The same Mega Pier today welcoming the cruise ships bringing the world to the island. Later a kade gets named after him in recognition of all the work. Honoured by everyone. A very well respected man across the entire island.

Sitting still is never the plan. He simply cannot stand the idea of stopping. The same blood runs through me.

Curaçao has everything. The creativity the talent the resilience the sun. The island produces world-class Carnival every year in eight weeks like clockwork. The same energy applied to technology can transform the place. What it needs is technology working in its favor and the mission lives underneath everything getting built.

Born and raised on the paradise island of Curaçao and now living between two worlds which are the island and Rotterdam. The two-world life is part of the work. Being close to the Dutch enterprise scene while staying connected to the Caribbean reality means bridges get built nobody else is positioned to build.

Multilingual by birth in Papiamentu, Dutch, English and Spanish. Four languages before breakfast as the saying goes on the island.

Published author of UpTurn 2. The book came together with seven other authors and tells the story of how personal failures actually shape personal success. Two more books are already in the making.

International public speaker with talks in Curaçao, the Netherlands, Berlin, Kiev, Moscow and Reykjavik. Every talk opens with the same line. “I am from Curaçao.” Telling the world about the island is part of the mission. Giving people a reason to come visit is the easy part because the place sells itself.

Aviation enthusiast which means flight and the discipline of aviation thinking shape how systems get designed. Algorithmic trader on the side because building systems trading themselves is its own kind of fun. Reader of everything sharpening the mind. Builder by default.

A nerd with a social heart. The hybrid coming naturally when you grow up with IBM and social work at the same dinner table.