GWSK & Advisory. Small studio, mentoring, and player-coach range.
GWSK Product Studio is the umbrella for client and venture work outside employer engagements. Founder-led product and experience studio across AI, infrastructure, HR technology, education, and early-stage ventures. Drumlin is the active venture, building Package-Master, with Altitude Accelerator selection and Globe and Mail coverage as institutional signal. The earlier startups are included for range.
A founder-led product studio and its active venture, Drumlin, turning unclear ideas into credible, shippable product. Altitude Accelerator selection and Globe and Mail coverage.
Leadership through artifacts and cadence.
GWSK Product Studio is a founder-led product and experience studio across AI, defence technology, HR technology, education, and early-stage ventures. The model is leadership through artifacts and cadence, not org charts. The same model I run inside employer engagements, kept narrow on purpose.
The same double diamond process runs across studio work: understand the real problem first, then narrow to the solution that fits. Worked with founders from problem framing through MVP, UX strategy, design systems, and stakeholder-ready demos for funding and procurement conversations. Helped founders clarify scope, prioritize product work, and create stakeholder-ready artifacts for demos, funding conversations, and delivery planning.
Hired and managed 5 designers since 2021: recruiting, contracts, scoping, delivery, and mentorship. Two on the Say Yeah client engagement, three on GWSK research and branding. No formal in-house design management claimed. Selected for the Altitude Accelerator Market Readiness Program.
- Founder and operator experience. A studio that carries client and venture work alongside employer engagements.
- Design management at a stated scope: 5 designers hired and managed since 2021, with no formal in-house design management claimed.
- Founders moved from problem framing through MVP, UX strategy, design systems, and stakeholder-ready demos.
- Institutional signal: selection into the Altitude Accelerator Market Readiness Program.
Package-Master. A software supply chain you can prove.
Drumlin is a GWSK venture co-founded with Mykyta Bozhenko, founded on the day of Canada's first Defence Tech Hackathon at DMZ in 2025. Its product, Package-Master, solves a hard problem for any team running a large fleet of Linux servers: proving their software is genuine, safe, and untampered. Today that proof gets rebuilt by hand for every security review and audit. Package-Master makes it one trusted path, from an approved piece of software to every server running it, and produces signed, portable proof automatically. Under the hood it is APT-native infrastructure for Debian and Ubuntu, the Linux systems most companies run.
Package-Master gives teams running large fleets of Linux servers one trusted path from approved software to every server, with signed, portable proof for security reviews produced automatically. Under the hood, it is built on APT for Debian and Ubuntu.
Founded in 2025 on the day of Canada's first Defence Tech Hackathon at DMZ. Pitched to CEOs, investors, and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry at the hackathon.
Selected for the Altitude Accelerator Market Readiness Program, Winter 2026 cohort. Covered by The Globe and Mail (Pippa Norman, September 2025). Read the article.
One governed path from an approved software package to every server running it, with signed, portable proof produced along the way.
How it works
Managed repository hosting, verified mirrors under a curation policy, locked (immutable) snapshots that can be promoted forward, managed signing keys, continuous SBOMs (a live inventory of every software component in use), CVE-to-package mapping (linking each known vulnerability to the exact software affected), and an audit log that can only be added to, never edited.
Every security questionnaire, audit, and regulator request gets rebuilt by hand from screenshots and package history. Package-Master makes portable, signed evidence a byproduct of running the fleet, so teams reuse proof instead of reconstructing it per request.
Verify practical skill, not completion.
A multi-sided corporate learning platform for trainers, participants, and program admins. Designed to verify whether participants could apply what they learned, instead of rewarding course completion. I led product design on a single role-aware dashboard and a warm-meter feedback model.
Product design lead. Held architecture and end-to-end experience. Recruited, interviewed, and hired two GWSK interns to handle fine-touch execution while I led direction and the final polish pass. Partnered with PM and engineering on data model, role behavior, and progression logic.
October 2025 to January 2026.
- Architected a multi-sided ecosystem for trainers, participants, and program admins.
- Designed a single role-aware dashboard instead of separate apps per role.
- Designed iteration progress as a horizontal state ladder: Onboarding, Week 1, Week 2, In Progress, Upcoming.
- Used a warm-meter feedback model instead of grades to reduce test anxiety and support skill validation.
| Mechanic | Operational why | Tradeoff |
|---|---|---|
| Single role-aware dashboard | Three apps for three roles fragments product investment. Role-awareness inside one surface keeps shared components shared. | More upfront permissioning logic. Repaid every time the platform adds a role. |
| Warm-meter feedback instead of grades | Corporate skill validation does not benefit from grade anxiety. Warm-meter feedback maps to "are you ready" instead of "what score did you get." | Trainers needed a new mental model for assessment. Pays back as a system that measures applied skill. |
Earlier startups, shown for range.
Earlier startups show range without competing with the four primary cases. First-designer work on a student hiring marketplace with public press, and founding design team work on an enterprise research automation platform.
- 2016 to 2018 UnivJobs. Student-hiring marketplace founded in 2016 by a team of Sheridan students. First designer on the founding team. Designed the early marketplace product experience, supported early traction, and pitched at Y Combinator Startup School. Press: blogTO (Lisa Power, April 2018) and Oakville News (Patrick Icasas, January 2018).
- 2019 to 2021 Delvinia / Methodify. Enterprise research automation platform. Founding design team. Collaborated with CEO and CIO on workflows, prototypes, and data-informed UX. Described qualitatively rather than with metrics.
Recruiters and employers benefit, too, from being hooked up to over 35 to 40 Canadian colleges and universities, and are able to pool from candidates they deem suited for the role.
