Our Team

Phillip Djwa
Strategy and Planning
www.phillipdjwa.com

Agentic is led by founder Phillip Djwa. Phillip is a certified Internet Marketing specialist and strategist with more than 18 years experience in the high-technology industry. During this time, Phillip has worked on a wide range of technology and web-integrated communications projects for Fortune 500 companies, high-tech start-ups, and not-for-profit organizations. His clients have included the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, VanCity, BC Ministry of Labour and Citizens’ Services, Community Legal Education Ontario (The Law Foundation of Ontario), First Nations Schools Association, Granville Island (Canada Mortgage and Housing), and many others.

A career-long social entrepreneur, Phillip has provided support to many worthwhile community initiatives, including the First People’s Heritage Council, Friends of Chamber Music, and the First Nations Technology Council. Phillip has a BA from Simon Fraser University in Fine Arts with a concentration in electronic music, and an MFA in Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York. Phillip invites you to read his blog discussions on technology and social progress. Phillip is the  Agentic team member responsible for new business and working with our clients on the strategic planning of their online initiatives; and designing, developing and implementing web-based and web-integrated projects for our clients.

Phillip is currently one of the executives behind the Melting Silos initiative, which is a NFB and Telefilm funded project to match new media companies and filmmakers in an innovative and supportive development process.

Darko Hrgovic
Senior Developer

With more than ten years of experience, Darko Hrgovic is our tech guru. He is an advanced database and web programmer skilled in the implementation of web solutions with various technologies, including our core use of the CMS Drupal. His skills are in XHTML, PHP/MySQL, and JavaScript. Darko is dedicated to sharing his technical knowledge, with more than eight years service as a teacher of web design, programming, and business applications for the Vancouver School Board. At Agentic, Darko is the senior Agentic team member responsible for designing, developing, and deploying open-source and proprietary database components within client projects as well as his responsibility of technical lead.

Emily Birr
Web Developer

Emily has a passion for design and illustration. She's a careful and considerate designer who knows how to turn beautiful design into functional websites. Having worked with us for more than two years after she completed her training, Emily has worked on most of our key accounts. Her prior experience included many years working in a high-paced television production environment, including 4 years working for the famed News Hour on PBS with Jim Lehrer.

Laura Mitchell
Project Manager

Laura Mitchell is an seasoned manager of creative and digital projects with 15 years of experience in both corporate and non-profit industries. 
She joins Agentic after a successful term as an account manager and producer at Fjord, the digital division of Cossette, one of Canada's largest advertising agencies.
Prior to Fjord she spent several years at Lunny International Group Inc. where she managed educational and interpretive projects for a variety of government and institutional clients after having launched her career working for a local Vancouver architectural firm and a number of non-profit performing arts agencies.
When not immersed in project management Laura enjoys reading extensively, both bad and good television and making sure her dog is able to chase its natural prey - those tiny white moths you find in local Vancouver parks.

Deirdra Kiai
Flash Programmer
Deirdra's Blog

Deirdra is a programmer and game designer with a passion for interactive storytelling. Having previously worked on PC and console games ranging from short to epic in scope, she is thrilled to be putting her talents to work in developing unique, socially conscientious Flash applications for Agentic. Games, in her opinion, have unique interactive properties that make them perfect conduits for teaching, demonstrating, and persuading others to effect a positive change in the world. In her spare time, Deirdra writes and designs a variety of solo interactive story projects, and plays the sousaphone in a local Balkan brass band.

Dale McGladdery
Web Developer
Dale's Website

Dale has 20 years of information technology experience spanning education, municipal government, and the private sector. He knew after running the project creating the City of North Vancouver's website, one of the first municipal websites in Metro Vancouver, that the world wide web was his new home. He's worked with web technologies ever since. Though Dale has experience with Java, for the last four years he's specialized in the Drupal CMS. In addition to building websites Dale is also active in the Drupal community by contributing documentation and bug fixes back to the Drupal project and organizing local Drupal user group meetings. He's also served on the organizing committee for two Vancouver Drupal conferences and OpenWeb Vancouver.

Patricia Marcoccia
Producer

Patricia is passionate about stories, ideas, digital innovation and social change. She brings her background in journalism and documentary to produce special digital media projects at Agentic. Last year she participated in DOXA's Kris Anderson Connexions program for young women in documentary filmmaking and was an assistant film mentor at Peace it Together. She completed a master of journalism at Ryerson University in 2010, where she focused on in depth, online and multimedia journalism. During this time she interned at The Agenda with Steve Paikin, TVOntario’s flagship current affairs program, and at Haaretz.com, the premiere English-language website for news and analysis of Israel and the Middle East. She also produced a short documentary about the deteriorating meaning of peace in Israel/Palestine.

Jill Binder
Web Developer

Ukulele-wielding web ninja. Thanks to her Bachelor of Computer Science, Jill thinks in code, which is great for the web development work she does in Drupal. She also graduated from BCIT's New Media Design and Web Development program with the Apple Canada Award for top marks and leadership. She has expertise in usability and loves web development almost as much as she loves her five ukuleles, which, for a ninja, is a lot.

Victoria Angell
Development and Business Coordinator

Victoria comes from a business background in rights management and licensing with Simon and Schuster Children’s division, working with titles such as THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES, PENDRAGON and OLIVIA. Her areas of expertise included sourcing and licensing content into the educational markets. After relocating from NYC to Vancouver, BC in 2009, she has refocused her attention from traditional print publishing to developing and producing film projects. In addition to working alongside the Director of Development of Foundation Features, she has been honing her stills as a producer of independent, artistic short film. Her debut producer credit on SQUARE DANCE STORY is premiering in Canada at the November 2011 Vancouver Asian Film Festival. She has two other short films currently in post-production, set to release in early 2012, and another handful of projects being developed. She is excited to bring her background in publishing, and her passion for developing film and cross-platform media content to the Agentic Team.

Daniel Sanchez-Tovar
Web Developer

Daniel is a PHP/MYSQL developer and has a passion for developing beautiful websites with great user experience. His professional path took a turn when he was bit by the Drupal bug two years ago and since then, he has been enjoying making websites almost exclusively with this CMS. His background includes IT consulting for various clients including two years at the European Commission and two years of self-launched online entrepreneurial experiences.