About

About

Kia ora and welcome!

The short version

Profile picture of Ryan Apsden Hi, I’m Ryan Aspden, an IT and Electrical Engineer working for Powerco. I lead a team of incredibly passionate folk who develop and maintain the software that controls our electricity and gas distribution network. In this respect, I enjoy speaking about business transformation, cybersecurity, and operational technology, plus I enjoy helping educate others.

On the home front, I love getting outdoors with my daughter to go biking, hiking, running, swimming, etc. I’m also an electrical engineer who is passionate about leading sustainably. I enjoy experimenting with technology (IoT and energy inverter systems) to help reduce my carbon footprint.

I built this blog myself using Chirpy hosted on Render. It was a 2024 New Year’s resolution that I’ll explain in a follow up post (search for the tag “hello world”). If you want to say hi, or share any cool ideas with me, the best way to contact me is by email (my address in in the side-panel).

The long version

Settle in, get comfortable, and allow your computer (or phone) to tick over a few more CPU cycles whilst you take a moment to read on…

Ryan's dogs swimming in the ocean with Mt Taranaki in the background My name is Ryan Aspden and if my mannerisms haven’t already given it away, I am a Kiwi. Aside from a brief 2-year stint living in Western Australia, I’ve always lived 42 degrees south of the equator in Aotearoa New Zealand. It is an amazing country with easy access to beaches during summer, pristine mountain slopes during winter, and plenty of natural reserves to go hiking through.

Whilst many things drive me, my biggest passions lie in sustainable living and digital technology. I have a lot of love for the electricity industry (e.g. power generation, transmission, storage, etc.), as there is some fascinating stuff happening in this space right now, and much of it aligns with my desire to be more sustainable in my personal life.

I started my career as an industrial electrician, working with companies in the dairy, food processing, and agri-chemical sectors. Over time, this evolved into pursuing a degree in electrical, instrumentation, and control system engineering, offering me my first exposure to process automation and control. Being able to breathe life into some truly colossal machines is a very cool feeling – I also met many great people along the way (some of whom turned out to be amazing mentors in hindsight).

In my early thirties, I earned a degree in Information Technology, leading me into a career in information/cyber security. Serving as Powerco’s Chief Information Security Officer I was able to bring a level of authenticity to the role and apply my experience working alongside my peers. It was a fulfilling role where I got to see my team flourish as they helped the organisation build and maintain cyber-resilient systems that are ultimately for the betterment of ‘New Zealand Inc’.

I now work as Powerco’s Head of Operational Systems, sitting alongside my peers in the operational parts of Powerco’s business. Given the pressures on our business, one of which is to be more productive, and our customer’s desires to decarbonise, it is a fascinating role with plenty of change on the horizon!

As for the future, I’m not entirely certain what it holds for me. I enjoy the path that I’m on right now – it strikes the right balance between work and home, and it allows me to pursue some interesting things in both spaces, top of which is seeing my daughter flourish, but that’s a story for her to tell when she is older.

Mā te wā – Ryan Aspden.

Work experience

  • Powerco - Operational Systems Manager (July 2024 - Current)
  • Powerco - Chief Information Security Officer (Jan 2022 - July 2024)
  • Powerco - Information Security Analyst (Mar 2018 - Jan 2022)
  • Ballance Agri-Nutrients Kapuni Ltd - DCS and SIS Control Systems Engineer (Apr 2013 - Mar 2018)
  • Contact Energy Ltd, Stratford Power Station - Control, Electrical & Instrumentation Engineer (Feb 2009 - Apr 2013)
  • Perth Mint - Electrical & Instrumentation Engineer (Jul 2008 - Feb 2009)
  • Austal Ships Perth - Electrical & Instrumentation Engineer (Jan 2008 - Jul 2008)
  • Obertech Ltd - Electrical & Instrumentation Engineer (Jan 2003 - Jan 2008)

Speaking experience