Jonathan Mckay
Founder at SameSame (SiyaFanaFana)
Cape Town, Western Cape, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolJonathan Mckay is a founder and creative leader with 11 years of experience designing digital products that address chronic poverty, inequality and social exclusion across Africa and South Asia. Combining a background in information design and user experience with roles spanning product innovation and global partnerships, he has led initiatives at Girl Effect that reached tens of millions and launched in more than 40 countries. He bridges public and private sectors to create sustainable programmes and partnerships, and has hands-on technical contributions—such as improving SMS handling in the widely used Praekelt messaging engine. Based in Cape Town and active on advisory boards, he blends creative practice, systems thinking and mental health leadership training to tackle complex social problems.
11 years of coding experience
12 years of employment as a software developer
Masters Cultural Studies & Humanities, Masters Cultural Studies & Humanities at Birkbeck, University of LondonLeadership in Mental Health, Leadership in Mental Health at SangathBA Information Design, BA Information Design at University of Pretoria
Afrikaans, Spanish
Github Skills (7)
sms-messages10
messaging10
python10
sms10
testing9
configuration-management8
read-me7
Programming languages (13)
Github contributions (5)
praekeltfoundation/vumi
Jan 2017 - Nov 2020
Messaging engine for the delivery of SMS, Star Menu and chat messages to diverse audiences in emerging markets and beyond.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:2 reviews, 13 commits, 39 PRs in 3 years 10 months
Contributions summary:Jonathan primarily worked on improving the SMS messaging engine. They refactored code related to multi-part SMS messages by implementing a modulus operator for reference number rollover and adding configurations to customize the rollover limit. Furthermore, the user addressed the display of badges in the README file by switching to a different service and removing non-functional elements. These changes indicate a focus on improving SMS handling and project documentation.
diverseaudiencessms-messagesmenuchat
praekeltfoundation/seed-control-interface
Sep 2016 - Feb 2020
Seed Control Interface
Contributions:23 PRs, 25 pushes, 24 branches in 3 years 5 months
seedphpcontrol-interface
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