About
I'm Kirsty.
I make work simpler. AI is just the newest tool for it.
Before I built a single website I spent eleven years in London designing the processes that large organisations run on. That turns out to be the exact skill a business needs now, because the hard part of AI was never the software.
Timeline
How I got here
- 1998
The London years
I ran IT at Lazard Asset Management in London for five years, from 1998. After that I went where the process problems were: service support for a telecoms division, a service desk review for a county council, Six Sigma process design at National Air Traffic Services, and two years at PepsiCo as process owner for change, configuration and release management. The change management process I designed there for Europe, the Middle East and Africa was adopted across Asia and the Americas afterwards. ITIL, Six Sigma, project office audits, the lot.
None of that is glamorous. All of it is the same job: find out how the work really happens, take out the steps that add nothing, and make the new way stick after the consultant has gone home.
- 2010
Playing Mummy
Then a few years at the toughest job on the list, which LinkedIn calls Playing Mummy.
- 2014
The Caper
In 2014 I started The Caper in Orewa and have since built and looked after websites for more than a hundred New Zealand businesses, from tradies to artists to accountants. Twelve years of sitting with owners and their spreadsheets teaches you one thing fast: nobody needs another tool. They need the work simplified and someone who will explain it without making them feel stupid.
- 2024
Then AI turned up
In 2024 I started building Doris, an AI receptionist for small businesses, and putting it in front of real phones. That is where I learned what actually goes wrong with AI in a business, which is almost never the AI. It is the process around it, and the person who was meant to own it.
- Now
Same method
So now I do for AI what I did for change management at PepsiCo: look at the work, design the process, train the people, leave someone in charge. For a sole trader that is an afternoon and a plan. For a team of fifty it is a programme. Same method.
Principles
Three things you can count on
- 01
No jargon.
No tech bro speak. If I cannot explain it so your least technical person gets it, it is not ready.
- 02
Honest answers.
I will tell you when the fix is something I do not sell, or when you do not need one.
- 03
I stay until it sticks.
Training is where it starts, not where it ends. I do not leave until someone in your business can run it without me.
A plan nobody uses is a nicely formatted waste of money.