Our People
Garth Johnson (he/him)
Al Bhanji (he/him)
Danielle Rutkowski (she/her)
Miko Legaspi (she/her)
Tim Murray (he/him)
Teresa Van Loon (She/Her)
Garth Johnson (he/him)
An experienced veteran of the web’s startup world, Garth Johnson has an infectious and memorable style that can be attributed to his breadth of experience. In the early days, Johnson developed his unique approach through television writing and production, copy editing, and market research. Garth is bringing us his experience as an executive at Fotolia and iStockphoto, both leaders in the ever-changing, dynamic microstock industry with a relatively straightforward approach: business and community are linked at all levels – something Meticulon is about as well.
Embracing this philosophy, coupled with his trademark humorous twist, Johnson develops business relations and strategic partnerships as our CEO. Because of his business experience owning and managing several entrepreneurial businesses and his personal experience having a child with disabilities, Johnson became inspired to build the team that would make Meticulon’s vision of being not only the first but also the best IT Consulting firm in Canada to employ the unique abilities of our consultants with autism.
Al Bhanji (he/him)
Al Bhanji, Meticulon’s Director of Training, is a true “people person” and he uses his innovation, creativity, and dedication, to find ways to improve the quality of life for the people Meticulon supports. Al’s passion about his work is evident, whether by his negotiating the best rate for our next state-of-the-art digital training program, with business clients discussing how diversity, equity and inclusion brings value to their companies, or by developing training sessions for our site partners. Al doesn’t just talk the talk; he walks the walk, as he also coaches young neurodiverse adults towards reaching their individual goals.
Al has many years of experience educating young adults, parents, as well as professional staff. His background as Senior Development Officer at Big Brothers Big Sisters of Calgary, as a Program Coordinator at Employment Works Canada, and as the Social Program Specialist for the City of Calgary, have enhanced Al’s skillset to be a great fit for Meticulon. Having also been a business owner himself, helps Al to easily connect with business clients and effortlessly builds our clientele.
Outside of work, Al loves spending time with his wonderful family, including his amazing wife, his two young children, and his two super dogs!
Danielle Rutkowski (she/her)
Danielle oversees the success of Meticulon’s MAS project. As the project manager she is focused on keeping our team organized, managing deadlines, and meeting our goals. She aims to reach the many lives of neurodiverse individuals and people with disabilities. She brings an encouraging energy and a bright smile to the day while remaining observant of each team member’s needs. Danielle ensures all voices are heard; she is the glue that holds our team together.
With a master’s in museum studies from the University of Toronto, Danielle is skilled at balancing the many values and objectives of each stakeholder involved in a project. She understands the bigger picture as well as the small details which makes her excel at providing a clear direction for our team.
Outside of work, Danielle spends her free time tending to her beehives with her partner, playing frisbee with her dog, gardening, or sewing clothes while listening to her favourite music.
Miko Legaspi (she/her)
Meticulon’s Data Manager, Miko Legaspi brings a positive energy to the team. Motivating innovation, thinking outside the box and a fun-loving attitude are only some of the assets she brings to the project. Having obtained her bachelor’s degree in Science, Miko understands the importance of collecting and proper management of data, and how it drives business initiatives and objectives. To the team, Miko is so personable and a key player in achieving our goals.
Understanding that everyone is unique, Miko strives to increase neurodiversity awareness in the workforce through her dedication and passion for inclusion and equality. With over 5 years of experience working with neurodiverse individuals and people with disabilities, Miko has developed a great commitment to ensure that participants build and strengthen the necessary skillset to obtain their education or employment goals.
Outside of work, Miko is busy doing CrossFit, and activities with her husband and 2-year-old son
Tim Murray (he/him)
Tim brings his neurodiversity and wealth of experiences to Meticulon as IT Support Manager. He holds diplomas in Engineering and IT, as well as a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and is one year into a Masters of Adult Education. A natural mentor, Tim brings positive morale and open communication to every project, whether as a technical consultant, support, writer, or trainer.
He loves tackling complex problems of all kinds, whether it be designing video games, writing music, or discussing neurodiversity. His true passion, however, is building opportunity and equality into the world around us.
Teresa Van Loon (She/Her)
Teresa holds a dual role with Meticulon, serving as both Human Resources Manager and Executive Assistant to Garth Johnson, Meticulon CEO.
In her career, Teresa has worked in both the private and public sectors, working across a few different fields including IT, Real Estate, Childcare and Health care. Teresa’s professional HR experience includes executive level management, organizational development, corporate benefits administration, and employee relations. Teresa’s core values include and are deeply rooted in creating a safe, inclusive and collaborative working environment for all Meticulon employees. Currently Teresa is taking courses at the University of Calgary and is working towards her CPHR designation. In her spare time Teresa volunteers at the Alberta Children’s Hospital in the FAC (Family Advisory Council) program working together with the hospital to help make experiences for families and patients as comfortable as possible.
Our Board
Russ Perdon
Bill Trafford
Roland Labuhn
Jan Bergstom
John Gulak
Nigel Chanter
Chantal Robitaille
Anthony Burns
Russ Perdon
Russ has more than 25 years of IT leadership experience in tourism and tech industries. He was VP of IT for Viad’s Pursuit-branded companies, and previously led IT at Canadian Mountain Hospitality, the largest heli-skiing operator in the world.
Russ developed and later sold a software product used by 500 Canadian physicians to run their healthcare practices. He has also provided consulting services to a wide variety of industries including energy, banking, insurance, telecommunications and media in the USA, Europe and Asia.
Russ has a passion for teaching, starting early in his career on the Computer Science faculty at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, and later developing and delivering commercial courses for software language vendors. He is the founder and Board chair of the non-profit enterprise Meticulon.
Russ enjoys skiing, hiking and mountain biking, and especially loves playing clarinet and trombone with his Dixieland combo. He lives in Canmore, Alberta, Canada with his wife Norine.
Bill Trafford
Bill Trafford has over 35 years of experience in the IT industry and the health sector. Bill began his career as a developer and systems programmer. He worked on early versions of commercializing relational databases for high performance systems. Bill moved from that to a role shifting his company from pure consulting/project work to transformational outsourcing – a build/operate/maintain model. This business was very successful growing to over $2 Billion in annual sales and was eventually acquired by a large U.S. Telco. He remained with the Telco integrating their Network Management with the acquired business and then running the combined business Subsequently MCI was acquired and Bill acted as the business lead for the sale of his unit to EDS.
After the outsourcing business business was sold, Bill moved to Calgary and took on an executive role with TransAlta as part of their merger/integration team developing and implementing a common SAP platform for all Finance/HR and operational areas.
Bill was attracted to the heath sector both because of the obvious need for successful use of modern IT systems and a personal desire to give back to the community. He joined the Calgary Health Region as Executive Vice-President responsible for large and difficult initiatives. These included the largest implementation of a clinical support system in North America for the entire city of Calgary. This encompassed transforming the clinical work of 3,000 physicians, 10,000 nurses and 5 major hospitals. Other major accomplishments included developing and implementing province wide systems for sharing health information – lab results, DI results and numerous other capabilities.
Bill carried on this role with the creation of Alberta Health Services as Executive Vice President and Chief Development Officer. In this role Bill was responsible for a portfolio of services including IT, Procurement, Support Services and major projects. The initial function was to lead the integration of the 13 distinct organizations encompassing over 120,000 staff. The end objective of optimizing common functions and services was successful with annual savings in the 100’s of millions of dollars.
Bill continues to work in the health sector as a consultant to large health organizations and working with smaller companies in the health sector.
Roland Labuhn
Roland is a Calgary based Technology Partner responsible for leading the Oil and Gas Operations Excellence Technology practice as well as Deloitte’s Alberta Information Management and Analytics practices. He has over 25 years of large-scale business transformation experience in the Energy and Resources sectors.
With a background that includes President, Director and founder roles in a diverse range of Energy and Technology profit and non-profit firms, Roland is an innovation and growth focused executive.
Roland has an MBA from University of British Columbia and has completed the Institute of Corporate Directors program (ICD.D).
Jan Bergstom
Jan has spent most of his 25 year career seeking interesting problems, exciting companies, and a little bit of adventure along the way. The first half was in the heli-skiing industry, working for Canadian Mountain Holidays designing software, managing a diverse IT team, and contributing his IT skills to the broader avalanche safety community. After this he was off to Europe and spent 4 years working for Amplex, a Danish technology company in the green technology field designing distributed monitoring solutions for the electricity network’s “smart grid”. Most recently, Jan is managing development efforts in large scale, high performance storage and computing for Seagate Technologies.
In his free time, Jan loves spending time with his family in the outdoors cross-country skiing, mountain biking, kayaking or just exploring the world.
Having worked with Meticulon’s founder, Russ Peardon, in various capacities, he was very excited to get involved with his idea of starting a social enterprise in the IT field based on a concept stemming from his native Denmark.
John Gulak
John Gulak is Vice President, Legal & Fun with Prairie Merchant Corporation, a Calgary private equity firm. Prior to 2005, John was a partner at Bennett Jones LLP where he practiced corporate commercial and securities law for 20 years. He has a law degree from the University of Western Ontario.
John has served on the board of directors of a number of not-for-profit organizations including Boys & Girls Clubs of Calgary, Outward Bound Canada, the Calgary Drug Treatment Court, the Calgary Arts Academy, and the Alberta Lawyers Assistance Society.
He has recently written a book, Sick to Death of the Silence, together with photographer Cole Grey, that chronicles the personal stories of 15 Calgarians with lived experience of mental illness.
John enjoys photography, writing, cycling, snowshoeing, hiking, and whistling.
Nigel Chanter
Nigel brings with him 20 years of experience working in California’s Silicon Valley software industry. Most recently he was chief operating officer at Perforce Software, a company that revolutionized the ideas behind the version management of source code and all forms of digital assets. Nigel joined Perforce when it was a garage start-up and went on to help bootstrap the company to an organization with offices around the world and a marquee customer list that included Google, Salesforce.com, SAP, Electronic Arts, Samsung, and Pixar. Currently he is embarking on another software start up, VersionRocket, which introduces a new technology for SCM backed file-sync. The Snirt Labs team hope it will simplify document collaboration for millions of people including governments who are starting down the road of legislative collaboration with the public.
Nigel got involved with Meticulon through a long association with founder Russ Peardon and was excited to try and bring a little of his Silicon Valley experience to the table. Away from technology Nigel enjoys skiing, flying, but more often doing the school run with daughter Alice on the back of his Vespa scooter.
Chantal Robitaille
Driven by the values of justice and compassion, Chantal has dedicated her career to the social sector. Over the last 15 years she has worked in the areas of homelessness, gender-based violence, mental health, addictions, and post-disaster recovery in front line and leadership roles. She is known for her ethics-centred leadership and commitment to creating positive work environments.
Initially trained in microbiology and holding an MBA, Chantal is a lifelong learner that brings a curious mind to board governance. She is a founder of two non-profit organizations in Northern Alberta and has served on multiple boards. In addition to Meticulon, Chantal currently sits on the boards of the Calgary Fetal Alcohol Network and IntegralOrg.
When it is time to restore and recharge, Chantal heads to the mountains. She most enjoys running, hiking and cross-country skiing.
Anthony Burns
Pilotpriest is the music-making moniker of writer, director, cinematographer, editor, VFX artist, and composer Anthony Scott Burns. Under this pseudonym, he has released a number of critically successful albums and EPs, including the cult vinyl hit Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. He has just completed the upcoming soundtrack for the feature film Flashback starring Dylan O’Brien (The Maze Runner) and Maika Monroe (It Follows), and his own film Come True.
Burns is an autodidactic artist with ASD, who derives inspiration from the simplest motivation: to create art on his own terms. He shoots, edits, scores, writes, designs, and completes the brunt of the post-work on his projects. Born in Kitchener, Ontario, and based in Toronto, Burns was drawn to music/filmmaking from a young age. He started his professional career in graphic design at MTV and was an award winning director in the commercial/advertising sector before focusing on feature films.
In 2021 Burns’ sophomore feature, Come True, starring Julia Sarah Stone (Honey Bee) and Landon Liboiron (Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare), was nominated for two Canadian Academy awards, including Best Direction. A critical success, Come True was theatrically released in the US by IFC Midnight.