Lisa Retief

Founder, Chairperson of the Board

Fascinated by computers from a young age, Lisa Retief had her first paid programming job at 14. Now, with nearly 20 years experience in professional software development, and a diverse range of successful projects to her credit, Lisa's core focus in the last few years has been on Java and related technologies. Having worked as a senior developer, team leader and development manager for a number of large technology companies including ExiNet and iTouch, she decided to establish her own software development company in 2001.

Sadalbari Open Software was born of Lisa's passion for development and open source. With uncompromising standards of software quality and a finger on the pulse of the African technology sector, Sadalbari Open Software is filling a gap in providing open source based solutions to a number of major clients.

Justin Walsh

Chief Technical Officer

Justin is a J2EE expert with extensive technical architecting and development experience. With years of experience in the medical aid and telecoms industry, Justin has been involved with the engineering of large scale enterprise systems using the enterprise Java suite and CORBA. He has a BvSc from Onderstepoort and an MSc in Computer Science from UCT.

Caron van Schalkwyk

Chief Operations Officer

Caron completed a National Diploma in Information Technology at Cape Technikon and graduated at the top of her class. She has been developing web-based Enterprise Java applications for over seven years, first at a large healthcare industry player using IBM WebSphere, and more recently applying cutting-edge Open Source technologies such as JBoss, Hibernate and PostgreSQL. Her experience spans all areas of enterprise development, including SQL, EJB, JSP, Struts and HTML. In her free time, she is an avid dog-lover and reader.

Richard Hoberman

Lead Engineer

Richard has been developing software since he was 10 years old and is something of a Jack-of-all-trades, with a particular bent for prototyping. He has worked with Java since 1997 and has a wide area of expertise including Swing, Web-development and XML-related technologies.

Richard has a BSc in Computer Science and Psychology, a Bsc (Hons.) in Psychology from the University of Cape Town and a Diploma in Law from the College of Law in London.

Andrew Hemp

Software Engineer

Andrew has been passionate about technology for as long as he can remember. He has been developing software for internet service providers and the online retail sector since 1999. He has a broad base of skills ranging from performance tuning to service orientated J2EE development using a variety of frameworks and libraries.

He has a BSc from the University of the Witwatersrand and a BSc (Hons.) in Zoology.

Michael Joseph

Software Engineer

Michael was fortunate to reap the benefits of a computer enthusiast father: a succession of hobbyist hardware (ZX Spectrum 81, Commodore 64, 8086, 80286, 80386, 80486, Pentium, et al.) to play with and program on.

Torn between a degree in English or Computer Science, he decided to write in his spare time and completed a B.Sc (Hons) in Computer Science from the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

Michael has 10 years of significant production experience in a number of languages, notably Java, Python, PHP and C#. Of late his interests have turned to robust API design, integrating heterogenous systems and performance testing enterprise applications.