Our Team
We are working hard to transform water rescue and victim recovery
VodaSafe was born from the intersection of engineering and lifeguarding on the West Coast of Canada.
Carlyn Loncaric
CEO
Bio
Carlyn is the founder and CEO of VodaSafe, and an engineer with over ten years of lifeguarding experience. Witnessing first-hand the trials and tribulations of water rescue led Carlyn to envision a sonar equipment as a simple tool in hand that would help save lives, VodaSafe and its AquaEye® were born. Carlyn believes that VodaSafe’s AquaEye® will be to waterfront rescue what the AED or portable defibrillator has been for CPR.
Patrick Davies
Director of Engineering
Bio
Patrick is Director of Engineering at VodaSafe. Leading the R&D and in-house manufacturing operations, he brings extensive experience in product development, mechanical design, and high-volume manufacturing. With degrees in Mathematics and Engineering Physics, and over 12 years of experience with tech startups, Patrick is devoted to technological innovation and creating impactful products.
Doug Peyser
Territory Manager North America
Bio
Doug is a Territory Manager at VodaSafe working to improve water safety by empowering organizations to address their water rescue protocols with the help of AquaEye. He is determined and goal driven to demonstrate the impact that advanced technologies such as AquaEye offer to emergency responders and continues to expand AquaEye’s reach and customer base. As an ex-athlete, Doug has always considered health and safety, not only for himself but for his teammates as a top priority, which he believes AquaEye will help other teams to achieve as well.
Wylie Spencer
Marketing Manager
Bio
Wylie arrived at VodaSafe from an entrepreneurial and business background in Vancouver. Communicating the story and benefits of AquaEye® to the first responders around the world is a fulfilling and enjoyable task. Spending most of his Out of Office time chasing snow, paddling the seas or biking the mountains, Wylie is happy to be able to assist the teams that provide rescue services in the outdoors.
Grace Stelmachowicz
International Business Development Manager
Bio
Grace is an engineer turned Business Development Manager. With her background in engineering and customer success, she assists first responders and lifeguards in implementing AquaEye into their current operations. When not working, Grace can be found exploring the mountains hiking, skiing, and climbing. While out exploring, she has seen how fast things can go wrong in the outdoors. This has helped her better understand the tough role these emergency lifesaving professionals have and has encouraged her to help where she can.
Sean Boyd
Hardware Engineer
Bio
Sean is an electrical engineer working on the design, testing, and manufacturing of AquaEye®. He has over 15 years of experience designing complex electrical and electronic systems for medical, military, and electric/hybrid automotive projects, where safety and high reliability are critical. Sean is driven to apply technology and engineering to solve important problems; this is what attracted him to VodaSafe’s mission to help save lives and keep rescuers safe.
Erik Wolfe
Director of Sales & Marketing
Bio
Erik is the Sales and Marketing Director at VodaSafe. Erik leverages his 15 years of Sales & Marketing experience in the tech-sector to help turn new technologies into industry proven solutions. Erik has built a career helping teams sell technical products that solve long standing industry problems. With an active young family, which includes two kids who love the water, helping to reduce drownings and keeping rescue professionals safe is a passion.
Michael Davis
Contract Marketing Strategist
Bio
Michael comes to VodaSafe with 25+ years of marketing and communications experience in businesses from startups to Fortune 500’s. As a long-time scuba diver, the unique benefits of AqueEye for all types of search and rescue applications were obvious. Having an opportunity to support the team to drive awareness and growth of AquaEye was a chance he couldn’t pass up.
Donal McNamee
Mechanical Technician
Bio
With over 15 years of mechanical and maintenance experience, Donal has worked on everything from bicycles to passenger jets. After completing a degree in aircraft mechanics at Technical University Dublin, he spent 7 years as an aircraft maintenance engineer. Before joining VodaSafe he was at Intel doing maintenance on the equipment used to make semi conductor wafers. In his off hours he trains in jui jitsu, and uses his early experience managing bicycle workshops to keep his mountain bikes ride-ready.
Saeed Poorjandaghi
Embedded Developer
Bio
Saeed is an Electrical Engineer with over 10 years of experience in electrical & embedded engineering. He has previous experience delivering challenging robotics and industrial project objectives. He considers himself a ‘hands-on’ engineer and is proud to be working on a product that can save lives. Away from work, Saeed loves fantasy novels and shows, and enjoys both watching and playing tennis.
Declan Johnston
Machine Learning Project Lead
Bio
Declan made his start at VodaSafe as a co-op student from UBC Engineering Physics. He was introduced to VodaSafe when Carlyn gave a presentation to his capstone project class. His eagerness to learn and willingness to take on any challenge made him a valuable member of the team.
After graduation, Declan rejoined VodaSafe full-time as a Firmware and Product Engineer. Today, he serves as the Machine Learning Project Lead, leading transformative initiatives that push the boundaries of water safety solutions. Declan constantly strives to make AquaEye more effective/valuable by adding features and capabilities of value to water rescuers.
When he isn’t in the office, Declan enjoys playing and watching all kinds of sport. A particularly big fan of hockey, Declan enjoys diving into the numbers and bringing an engineering mindset to sports.
Sophie Varabioff
Research Engineer
Bio
Sophie joined VodaSafe as an engineering physics graduate. An inquisitive mind, paired with a passion for everything marine and a desire to help others, led her to VodaSafe. She works researching and synthesizing ideas from the areas of machine learning, data wrangling and sonar theory to enhance AquaEye’s capabilities and features valuable to water rescuers. Outside of the office, Sophie loves music and dance, and spending time by the ocean (which she gets to do when testing AquaEye and collecting data too!).
Carille Mendoza
Software Product Manager
Bio
Carille is a Software Product Manager at Vodasafe whose work is focused on building software products that complement AquaEye– in and out the field. She sits between business, technical, and user requirements by leveraging her software engineering (web and mobile) and product management experience. She is passionate about using technology to solve important problems and make people’s lives easier. Off hours, Carille enjoys sports such as taekwondo, badminton, and fencing. She also spends time placating the green owl, Duo.
Evin Li
Firmware and Research Engineer Co-Op
Bio
Evin is in her 4th year studying Engineering Physics at UBC. She enjoys all things software and firmware and has had experience working with clean energy and medtech startups in the last few years. She has always been drawn to projects that can drive positive impact in the community and is super excited to be working on new features on AquaEye to help water rescuers save lives. In her free time, you can find Evin planning her next hike, at the gym, or bingeing new Netflix shows 🙂
Shawn McGirr
Mobile Developer
Bio
Shawn is a recent Computing Science graduate from SFU with experience in BLE, Kotlin, and Swift. He enjoys building user-friendly apps that make a difference and is eager to start his career in tech by contributing to the development of life-saving devices. Outside of work, you can find him climbing sweet granite cracks or snowboarding alpine bowls in the Sea to Sky corridor.