Charles Leaven

Biography

Learning by building

Leaven's technical interests began at school through Engineering Graphics and Design. He learned computer-aided drafting early and gravitated toward digital design rather than conventional hand drafting. He later spent time learning under an architect and became increasingly interested in architectural visualisation, three-dimensional modelling and animation.

Between approximately 2012 and 2014, he worked in architectural visualisation, producing animations and rendered fly-throughs for architectural projects. His tools included Autodesk 3ds Max, Maya, V-Ray, Lumion and post-production software such as After Effects and Nuke.

During the same period, he pursued a broad programme of independent technical study using resources including MIT OpenCourseWare and The Great Courses. Python became his primary programming language, alongside MATLAB. His studies ranged through differential calculus, linear algebra, computational methods and mathematical models used in engineering and finance.

Computational fluid dynamics became a particular interest. He experimented with fluid and water-flow simulations and studied the mathematical ideas underlying systems such as the Navier–Stokes equations. His wider reading also took him into financial mathematics and models such as the Black–Scholes equation.

Rather than following a single formal academic track, he tended to learn according to the problem in front of him. A recurring feature of his career was moving into a field, understanding how its system worked, and acquiring whatever tools were necessary to work with it.

Professional work

From mechanical systems to municipal systems

After architectural visualisation, Leaven moved into industrial HVAC. Beginning in a junior field role assisting technicians, he gained both practical and administrative exposure to large commercial heating, ventilation and air-conditioning installations.

His responsibilities expanded into supplier liaison, pricing and the assembly of operation and maintenance manuals. The work required understanding the components that made up large systems, including chillers, heat pumps, actuators, flow meters, control equipment and testing systems, as well as the logistics through which major HVAC installations are won, planned, installed, commissioned and handed over.

Between 2022 and 2025, engineering-related work took him across all nine South African provinces and into more than one hundred municipalities. His responsibilities included site visits, reviewing technical drawings, preparing and submitting documentation to municipal building inspectorates, interacting with council offices and obtaining property and title information when required.

The experience gave him a ground-level view of building control, property development and the relationship between private development and local government. Travelling for work also became a way of exploring South Africa: museums, historic towns, landscapes and conversations with people in places that conventional travel often passes by.

Civic & public infrastructure

Community liaison and local economic development

From 2017, Leaven worked at various times as a Community Liaison Officer on public infrastructure projects. The role sits between contractor, public authority and host community: helping a project understand local dynamics while helping residents understand and participate in work taking place around them.

Much of his work was centred on Durban's South Durban Basin and later extended into the Upper Highway and Pinetown areas. Projects ranged from roads and stormwater work to large water and wastewater infrastructure. His experience included the Hitachi-led REMIX Water demonstration project at Durban's Central Wastewater Treatment Works and, later, the rehabilitation of the Umbilo Wastewater Treatment Works.

Civic involvement grew naturally out of that work. In Ward 66, Leaven served in structures dealing with economic development, policing, health and municipal coordination. Contemporary local reporting records him as chair of the Ward 66 OSS War Room, head of Economic Development and chair of the CPF Youth Desk.

Employment became a particular focus. Public works could create meaningful short-term opportunities in communities with high unemployment, but only when the processes connecting projects to local labour were organised and visible. Leaven worked on job-seeker databases, local contractor participation, liaison reporting and oversight processes intended to improve that connection.

In February 2020, local reporting recorded that 158 people had secured employment through the Ward 66 job-seeker programme during the preceding year. Across his wider period of community-liaison work, Leaven estimates that he directly facilitated employment opportunities for more than 280 people.

Civic technology

Bluff Projects and Local-Link

By 2019, administration itself had become a problem. Coordinating community-liaison functions, labour information, projects and reports through spreadsheets was increasingly labour-intensive and unreliable.

That problem became the starting point for software.

Working with one of his first developers, Kayla, and investing his own resources, Leaven commissioned a platform that became Bluff Projects. Launched in 2020, it was designed to make local construction projects more visible by publishing information such as project details, allocated budgets, contractors, duration and community employment while also creating a structured way for job seekers and local enterprises to register for opportunities.

The underlying idea was straightforward: residents should be able to see what public projects are taking place around them, what is being spent, and what measurable benefit reaches the host community.

After leaving the Bluff, Leaven continued developing the concept. A subsequent development partnership produced Local-Link, a broader civic-technology platform built in React and launched in 2022.

Local-Link also changed his relationship with software. Until then he had often been the person defining the problem, designing the system and working alongside developers. The experience convinced him that he needed to command more of the implementation himself. He moved deeper into hands-on development using tools including Visual Studio Code, Android Studio, Replit and modern web-development stacks.

Software

Building digital tools

From 2025, Leaven increasingly focused on software for small businesses. One recurring observation was that large retailers had sophisticated loyalty infrastructure while smaller independent businesses often had little beyond paper cards or isolated tools.

That observation became Loyaltee, a configurable loyalty and customer-engagement platform designed for smaller businesses. Its development brought together product design, web and Android development, backend systems, databases, authentication, reporting and practical business workflows.

Today, software development occupies most of Leaven's professional time. He describes his approach less in terms of a narrow technical specialisation than in terms of building: understanding how a business or institution actually works, identifying friction in the system, and turning the resulting idea into a usable digital product.

Interests

History, exploration and disciplined learning

Leaven is an extensive reader and self-directed student. His interests include South African and world history, anthropology, economics, geopolitics, science, human behaviour and the history of ideas. He is particularly interested in how societies, institutions and economic systems develop, and in questions that recur across both classical philosophy and modern life.

Travel and exploration form another part of that education. Years spent working across South Africa reinforced an interest in the country's cultural geography and natural landscapes: historic towns, mountains, caves, rivers, coastlines and the historical territories of Southern Africa's peoples.

He also trains in combat sports, including Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and boxing, and has a longstanding interest in hiking and endurance activity.