Audrey Shearer
Founder and CEO
“I founded Spiral because I wanted to change the way we do business and make the world a better place. For us, that means reimagining research and helping research teams answer important medical questions.”
Our team: Leadership
Strategic direction & culture
Audrey and Emma work closely with clients to shape trial architecture, guide technical decisions, and ensure each study is built on a strong, strategic foundation.
Who is Audrey?
Audrey has spent most of her working life building software and helping people solve practical problems. Her involvement with computing began in the 1980s, and over time her work moved from general software development into clinical trial systems, randomisation, electronic data capture, and research data management.
She founded Spiral to use technology in a way that is useful, fair, and genuinely helpful. Today, Spiral supports medical research teams in New Zealand, Australia, the UK, and beyond, with software platforms designed for complex and novel clinical trials.
Outside of work, Audrey enjoys walking, motorcycling, reading, crocheting, ocean swimming, and following ideas from science, technology, leadership, and product development.
What's filling Audrey’s brain space right now?
Lenny’s Podcast
Lenny Rachitsky
The Perfect Predator
Steffanie Strathdee and Thomas Patterson
A Bit of Optimism
Simon Sinek
What trials I’m working on
All of them, really. I poke around in all our trials because I love our clients and care deeply about the work they do. Every trial has people behind it; researchers, clinicians, participants, and patients - and that is what keeps the work meaningful for me.
Historial highlight
During COVID-19, Spiral supported research teams in the UK and Australia with clinical trial databases that helped collect data for urgent research. That data contributed to analyses that informed changes in clinical practice in intensive care and primary health care.
My perspectives
For research nurses, the way a question is built in the CRF can be the difference between a clean lock and a month of queries.
