Charlie is a seasoned leader with a diverse background in engineering and product management. He currently plays a key role in the management team of Salve’s private equity-backed parent company, Care Fertility, as their CTO. Starting (and exiting) Salve means he has deep expertise in team building, product development, fundraising, and navigating the M&A lifecycle. He currently has board-level responsibility for Salve.

Q: What is the nerdiest thing you’ve ever done?

A: Queued for 4 hours at Wembley Arena to try out for the main part in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Watched the extended edition of LOTR in the queue. Got to the front, said one line and was swiftly moved on, tragic…

Luke manages the day to day activities of the Salve business, helping to guide the product in the right direction and keep the team focussed and motivated. With 12 years of B2B sales experience, Luke also heads up both clinic sales and EMR partnerships. Before Salve, Luke worked for a handful of nimble companies and startups – so he’s used to getting involved in all aspects of business, from finance and operations to marketing and design. He has a keen interest in technology and how it can be employed to make the world a better place.

Q: What was your first record, tape or CD that you ever owned?

A: My first ever album (age 9) was ‘You’ve Come a Long Way Baby’ by Fatboy Slim, which I have to say I’m rather proud of. However, the moment I got home, I turned my CD player to max volume and blared out the tune ‘Fu#@ing in Heaven’. As a devout methodist (at the time), my Mum came racing up the stairs, put the CD back in its case and dragged me back to HMV to return it and pick something more appropriate. What did I pick? Vengaboys (facepalm emoji).

Kharo oversees business operations, leads technical delivery management, and provides team leadership, ensuring streamlined operations and fostering sustainable growth. She is a highly accomplished leader in the technology space with over 14 years of experience driving digital innovation across diverse industries, including investment banking, consumer media, and now healthcare. Drawing from her engineering background, Kharo has excelled in senior roles as a VP and senior software engineer for bank ledgers and payments products. Notably, she contributed to the success of projects like Marcus UK by Goldman Sachs, a digital-only retail bank that amassed £5 billion in UK deposits within its first three months. Prior to joining Salve, Kharo was the CTO of a start-up (now shuttered) to empower music superfans to monetize their passion.

Q: What is the nerdiest thing you do in your spare time?

A: Watching DIY YouTube videos and real estate TV shows e.g. @lonefoxhome, @homeofshade, Location Location Location, Grand Designs

Hoi is Salve’s longest-standing engineer and has played a pivotal role in its architecture. He has helped Salve uncouple itself from single points of failure, helping to upskill the team and provide structure in the way knowledge (both new and old) is disseminated and documented. Hoi has worked in a variety of positions, ranging from teams of thousands of software engineers to startups with just a few, producing software that is used across many industries including government, finance, motorsports, space, and, of course, healthcare. Hoi is a keen problem solver both inside and outside of work and enjoys logic problems including puzzles, escape rooms, and doing home DIY!

Q: What simple thing still blows your mind?

A: Electronics. Not the devices themselves, but how humanity went from discovering electricity from static shocks, to understanding electromagnetism, electrons, quantum effects, and eventually transistors which lead to the first building blocks of electronic circuits. It's one of humanity's greatest achievements that has enabled billions of people to watch cat videos on the Internet.

Marco joined Salve as a middle-weight backend engineer but has excelled in his knowledge and capabilities to become a hugely valuable part of the team. Marco has been instrumental in our latest versions of DataSync and also works as part of the customer service team. Marco studied at ITI Leonardo Da Vinci in Florence, Italy. During his studies, he began working in software engineering and has continued to self-teach himself throughout his career. In 2017, Marco moved from Italy to the UK and was working in various backend software engineering roles before he found Salve. Marco is a self-professed ‘nerd’ and loves playing games, watching ‘let's play’ videos with his son and, when time is available, using Unity to try and create one.

Q: If you were stuck on a deserted island with two books, what would they be?

A: A survivalist guide and a copy of ‘50 Shades of Gray’ to light the campfire.

Jane is one of Salve’s longest-standing team members and has been invaluable in helping to shape the product into what it is today. In classic startup tradition, Jane has worn many Salve hats over the years. In addition to her primary role as Senior Product Manager, Jane also lead on building out our customer support function, oversees most of the user experience and design elements, and even used to file our R&D tax claims! Jane has been working in startups for over 10 years in both the UK and South Korea – predominantly managing B2B cloud-software projects in algorithmic business consulting and PropTech. Salve is Jane’s first venture into health tech, but she feels it best suits her human-first approach to product management. Before her career change, Jane worked in luxury retail and hospitality management and brings that customer service experience to the forefront when working on product features.

Q: What topic could you give the longest presentation on right now with no preparation?

A: The longest impromptu presentation I could give right now would probably be on the Cardassian occupation of Bajor. (Honestly, it’s probably something like fertility EMRs or the best way to load a dishwasher – but I do know a lot about the Cardassian occupation of Bajor.)

After graduating from Newcastle University in 2019 with a degree in Philosophy, Sophie joined the workforce just as the world came to a halt with COVID-19. Determined not to fulfil the prophecy of a philosophy student’s most asked question (“Would you like fries with that?”), Sophie found employment in assistant and administrative roles. Once the COVID dust had settled, Sophie wanted to find a role where she could apply her critical thinking in a creative way and help others in the process, which is where she found Salve to be the perfect fit. Sophie has been a part of the Product team since early 2022 and works on the discovery, ideation and definition of new features for the Salve platform.

Q: What would your superpower be and why?

A: It would have to be teleportation. I love traveling but hate actual travel days so being able to get anywhere in the world at the snap of your fingers is the dream, even being able to literally ‘pop’ to the shops would be nice.

Marta loves being able to make a difference, so she chooses to work in Customer Success, where she gets to collaborate with customers every day to focus on helping them get the best results. With over ten years of experience working in startup environments, it taught her to stretch boundaries, have the capacity to learn from trial and error, and adapt to achieve the desired outcomes. In her current role, Marta ensures that patient and clinic staff queries and issues are resolved as quickly, efficiently, and empathetically as possible. She likes baking alfajores de maicena, dancing to Latin music with her kids, and going camping.

Q: What is your earliest childhood memory? If it’s something ‘mundane’, why do you think it stuck in your memory? If it’s something unusual or unique, what do you remember most vividly about it?

A: When I was two years old, I used to enjoy playing with my neighbours. My best friend, Olaya, was of the same age as me, and her brother, Jorge, was a few years older. Once, I followed Jorge to school (which was just 40 yards away, around the corner) because I wanted to go to school like him. My family searched for me everywhere, but a teacher found me in a classroom drawing on the blackboard. After this incident, my mum started sending me to nursery, and since then, I have loved going to school. I used to feel very sad when I had to miss a day due to sickness (and the same thing happens now with my kids!).

Starting off as a part-time software tester for educational products and meandering briefly into the worlds of game dev and teaching before settling into testing - Steve's a seasoned QA with a decade's worth of experience across digital publishing, commercial VPN and security spaces and technologies to aid medical personnel, as well as experience mining requirements as a Business Analyst. He boasts a genuine passion for the philosophies and application of software testing - most recently he was involved in a focus group around discussion and applications of AI in testing (spearheaded by James Bach and Michael Bolton) and continues to be an active member of the QA community. He's also a massive nerd, having played the same D&D campaign for 8 years.

Q: How would you describe your job to a class in nursery school?

A: I break things for a living. No, I don't have to clean up the mess.