Member Article

Pete Walker joins OurPeople as Chief Technical Officer

OurPeople has announced the appointment of Pete Walker to the role of Chief Technical Officer (CTO). Walker is reunited with former partner, Ross McCaw, who is CEO at OurPeople. The pair shared an amazing journey as co-founders of Cap2 Solutions, which launched SaaS course management solution, CoursePro, in 2009.

Walker says: “It will be amazing to work with Ross again. We built something incredible together, developing CoursePro, which launched both our careers. I am excited to bring my expertise to another enterprise involving Ross. OurPeople is a great platform and I am looking forward to playing a role in its next phase of development and growth.”

Walker joins OurPeople from Landmrk, where he was CTO. Previously, he was Head of Development for Gladstone Software, another key player in leisure management software. In this role, managed a 35+ team of developers, QA analysts and product owners.

Walker honed his skill in high-level product design and development at Jonas Software, which bought Cap2 Solutions in 2011, keeping McCaw and Walker at its helm. McCaw left in 2014 to develop OurPeople, while Walker stayed on to push the business forward.

After leaving Cap2 in 2017, Walker remained within the Jonas family, working across many of its businesses. At one time, he managed Jonas UK’s biggest development team.

Walker was one of nine Jonas employees to be enrolled in the inaugural Jonas Leadership Programme. This was a training programme designed to accelerate the development of leaders within the organisation to run future acquisitions.

McCaw says: “Pete is absolutely the right person to drive the technology of the OurPeople platform. In the decade since we launched Cap2, he has continued to pursue his passion for creating fantastic software, as well as building and leading extraordinary development teams. We want OurPeople to continue to support leisure management businesses and organisations across the UK and globally. Pete has the skills and vision that we need.”

Early days as entrepreneurial problem solvers

Walker and McCaw went to school together and have known each other since about the age of 11. They ran a Harry Potter fansite and, as teens, a website business. Walker spent his last year as a student at Bath University planning and designing a rebuild of the student union’s website, including training all staff on how to use it.

In 2009, McCaw was working as a lifeguard at his local leisure centre in Taunton and noticed staff organisation was carried out in a haphazard way, with timetables and cover being organised by phone and email. Walker, fresh from achieving a first-class degree in Computer Science, teamed up with him to see if they could find a solution for simplifying swimming lesson administration and management.

Sitting in the leisure centre reception, they had a eureka moment! There followed months of development until they delivered a unique piece of software for the centre. It instantly solved staff organisation issues and improved the experience of swimming lesson attendees. Realising the potential to roll-out their course management system to other swimming schools, McCaw and Walker formed Cap2 Solutions, with CoursePro as its flagship product.

CoursePro was a runaway success and has been adopted by thousands of fitness locations globally, with millions of enrolled users.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Catherine Goddard .