AI is not a goal, it is a means.

Five years on the shop floor, part of it as team leader. Rosters, stock and running a team at the moment it gets busy and something goes wrong. I also got to update the training policy for the various roles there, and that is the only thing I ever built for other people. It faded out. With the shelf stackers it was picked up to some degree, with the more specialised roles it fell away, and it varied enormously per department. What was missing was any recurring commitment to keeping it current and actually using it. Since then everything I build carries an owner and a fixed moment where it gets discussed.

Graduation internship in e-commerce alongside the bachelor Small Business & Retail Management. A study of the customer journey based on the NPS scores, working out where customers dropped off and why. The rest of my career came out of that.

In four years from product content to AI strategy, by way of online marketing, email, conversion optimisation and a year of building AI. The system knowledge comes from the first role, the coding base from the conversion role, and in the AI role they come together. I know the webshop from the inside, so an automation starts with a process I have run myself.

1. Content and Website Optimization Officer

   Aug 2022 - Apr 2023

   Started with the basics: product copy, image selection, review assessment and menu optimisation. My first project was optimising a product category. The system was set up more primitively than what I was used to, and that is how I learned quickly how it worked. That knowledge of the department gave me a head start three roles later when I came back to it with AI. I was 21 in a team that was on average almost twenty years older, and early on I stood up for myself too little.

2. Online Marketer

   Apr - Oct 2023

   Assistant to four specialisms: SEO, SEA, conversion optimisation and email. Half my week went to CRO, where the link with product and menu optimisation sat, and there I managed filtering and specification optimisation in Tweakwise. Because I took over the basic tasks, the specialists had more time for their own roles. I cannot talk about all of it at detail level, but I do know what the specialist is talking about. I also took a three-month higher education module in online marketing here that turned out to repeat what I already had.

3. Email Marketer

   Oct - Dec 2023

   My predecessor had announced a new environment in Deployteq, on customer data from Squeezely. At the handover it turned out nothing had been built yet, and I was the only one who knew the channel. Black Friday was on the calendar. I set that environment up with an external partner, aiming to build the best performing flow and campaign that had run up to then. That worked. I did not yet have the tooling I build with now, so I had to understand how a flow fits together instead of being able to drag it. I also activated one campaign twice by accident, so loyal customers received emails about promotions that had already expired. I reported that myself straight away.

4. Conversion Specialist

   Jan 2024 - Sep 2025

   Conversion optimisation across the whole webshop: analysis, hypotheses, testing and rolling out. The role started with running A/B tests, gained personalisation and segmentation, and then automation. I grew it beyond what had been scoped for it. The biggest gain came from learning HTML and CSS myself, so I could test front-end changes without waiting on development capacity. After that I automated the intake of A/B tests, with a priority score in Airtable that predicted from historical data which test would make the most impact. The number of tests per year went from 19 to 163. That score was too coarse at first, so we looked at it subjectively and went on gut feeling anyway. IT was firmly against automatically creating tickets at first: what if a model empties the whole backlog? That was solved by explaining precisely what we would and would not do.

5. AI Specialist

   Sep 2025 - Sep 2026

   Translating AI possibilities into concrete strategy and process automation. The role was scoped together with the organisation, with me as sparring partner, and we are still working out where it makes the most impact. There is now an internal AI culture taking shape and documentation lifted a level. Collaboration with development runs better through prototypes and more sharply written issues, and colleagues have got to know n8n and started looking critically at their own work. There was no wow moment, it is an accumulation. What did not work: I built an automated newsletter about AI that almost nobody read. I built a feedback module alongside it to learn what would be relevant, and nobody used that either. Then I stopped the newsletter.

6. Product Owner AI & Automations

   Sep 2026 - present

   Owner of the AI strategy and of training colleagues. Because a second person joined to build AI and automation, I got room for this step. My work is shifting from operational building to strategic involvement. I do the process research and a new junior colleague then picks up the build, though I still build along myself. The next big projects are shared workspaces and newly designed internal AI courses.

Coaching. Standing in front of a group is the best practice there is in explaining and demonstrating. You see straight away whether feedback landed. The same movement correction has several cues. Which one gets through differs per person. If one cue is unclear, I bring in another. Process improvement works the same way: you look for the approach that works and sticks.

1. Level 1 Trainer

   Nov 2022 - Mar 2024

   Certification and the first years in front of the group.

2. Level 2 Trainer

   Mar 2024 - present

   Going deeper on coaching and programming, and automating the weekly planning.

Co-owner of a drinks brand. I run the side that is not about the product. Process management and automation, financial management and bookkeeping, and maintaining the webshop. Not everything worked. A lead finder workflow cost more time and maintenance than expected, and the response from B2B never came.