Hi! I'm Michael.

Michael Kihanya on the coast of Portugal

I'm a Solutions Engineer at Partly in Christchurch, New Zealand. I got here by following curiosity through neuroscience, research, farming in Portugal, and a lot of career pivots.

I studied Behavioral Neuroscience at Western Washington University, where I fell in love with understanding how people think. That led to a research lab, a science magazine, and eventually a role as Lead Research Scientist at Dose Coaching — writing white papers and building a 200+ publication repository.

In 2024 I moved to Portugal, spent mornings on a farm and afternoons teaching myself to code through The Odin Project. I shipped two apps (Jamii and Grannell Cottage), did UX research and analytics at VerbMaster, and then made the leap to New Zealand.

What ties it all together: I love sitting at the intersection of people and technology — understanding users deeply and building things that actually help them.