Kurt Symanzik

Writing software professionally for nearly 3 decades.

Currently I am a Senior Software Engineer for Corvus Insurance . The tech stack that I use daily includes Elixir, Elm and a heavy dose of AWS (lambdas, step functions, s3, and others).

I enjoy writing code, keeping up with new technologies, and helping small teams work productively together.

Life Overseas

In 2006 my family and I (spouse and three children) sold our home and moved to the Philippines where I wrote custom software for Wycliffe Bible Translators. For the first couple/few years I worked on a small team that built a secure collaboration website for mission agencies to use across Asia.

Then in 2014 I changed mission organizations to LightSys in order to design, build and implement a custom Electronic Medical Records system for Philippine maternity clinics serving the marginalized.

This resulted in the use of Midwife-EMR to this day in three different clinics across the Philippines. Midwife-EMR runs on a single board computer that can run on battery during power outages, which can be frequent at times in the Philippines. Currently thousands of babies are delivered and tens of thousands of prenatal health checks are performed each year using the Midwife-EMR system. Although I no longer work for LightSys, I do volunteer with them to support the Midwife-EMR system as necessary.

While living in the Philippines we fostered and then later adopted our son James.

We all moved back to the US in 2018 after nearly 12 years in the Philippines.

Other Pursuits

I enjoy the game of Go and I play as kbsymanz on the Dragon Go Server . I am currently ranked about 8 kyu.

I used to speak Cebuano while living in the Philippines enough to do pretty well in most situations. I would struggle speaking it now since it has been so many years, but I suspect that it would come back quickly if I was immersed in the language again.