Zuricka - A Minimalist Entrepreneur

Through this project, I share the exact steps that have been documented and practised through ancient history and that I find useful. Topics include
-- the power of reprograming the mind
-- how to declutter and let go of Chaos
-- How tp set goals and achieve them

At the end of the day, to transform your life as a professional/ business owner/founder or a self-employed professional, strategies and tactics can only work if we figure out what we want at a deep inner level.

Founder

StraightUp

http://www.straightup.net.nz is where you can learn about how we operate as software tech recruiters.

🚀The core purpose of StraightUp is to enable New Zealand companies to find talented software engineers and at the same time to enable software engineers to find companies that are worth investing their careers with. We only get involved when they are unable to find the right talent or workplace.

We span the globe for software engineers with the rare skillset that New Zealand software teams require to stay ahead in the market.

🔥We solve one problem in a very competitive marketplace: That problem is finding talent for hard-to-fill software engineering roles and workplaces that are stable, financially strong and a joy to work at.

I feel grateful that I have had the opportunity to work with some of the most talented software engineers from all over the world who wish to contribute to the New Zealand economy.

Our software engineering clients are down-to-earth, driven and with a mission that is clear and measurable. They look after their people and their suppliers, and I am grateful to work with them.

CEO - Software Tech Recruiter

Defense Task Force

Being an Indie team, we have to wear various hats. My role at Defense Task Force is to make sure we get our Tower Defense PC Game across in front of Game Publishers, News and media personnel, to raise funds through crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter to get the game to its finished stage. The end goal is to have a successful launch on the Steam Gaming Platform. Day to Day my work involves connecting with Media Personnels, YouTube Gamers, Kickstarter Backers, Social Media Planning, Advertising and Project Managing our Game Development Cycle.

Marketing Director

Worked on Commission only with a Recruitment Firm

The job market is going through a complete change. My role as a Recruiter is to work with High Tech Cloud Companies, Software Development teams to find their next developer, tester, lead developer, software development manager, business analyst. If you are looking to work with a company that values you for you, gives you flexibility, understands work life balance then drop me a line and I shall seek to place you in some of New Zealand's thriving workplaces. If you are working for an amazing company that values their people and if you are seeking to fill a role with exceptional talented human beings, then I may be able to connect you with that person you are looking for. You will never know until you seek.....

IT Technical Recruiter

Zap Strategy Ltd

Zap has been an amazing place for me to work with. Having started this business with my best friend, it was fun and our sole purpose was to find consulting work. Zap had no big Vision or mission. It was setup with the prime motive to find contract jobs.

Today after so many years I am thankful that I went down the consulting path as it taught me what to do and what not to do in business. It enabled me to appreciate that working long hours and thinking I will be able to live my life of abundance is folly. Consulting gave me insights that I have everything right in front of me, it taught me when to walk away from toxic environments and who not to work with. Through this experience Zap began to change in personality and values.

Today Zap Strategy for me is not an entity it's my virtual friend who offers very specific services:
Internet Marketing for Entrepreneurs and medium size businesses
Cloud Computing business applications
Coaching for Small to medium size businesses on setting up businesses the right way
Finding the right talent for Entrepreneurs who are seeking staff

What's my Role:
I am involved in being an enabler for my entrepreneur buddies and small to medium size owners. I hire the right talent that will enable me to move forward in life and train my team to handle a large portion of the day to day activities.

I also reach out to find the right partners to partner with so that we are not reinventing the wheel to offer business mentorship to our clients

Director

ChillX Limited

When we started down the path to create a social network presence in India, it was patriotism and giving back to my nation that got me on this journey to start ChillX. It was to connect fellow Indians to their roots. I did not realize the competition we would have with the mighty gods. I would just be another small fish. When we launched most people who came across us laughed and said why should we be part of your social network when all our friends are already on a different network. We got into the circle of being compared. It's amazing how emotion can take the better of us. Having an MBA and having done the right steps in a business plan the numbers for ChillX as a social network were not massive for a country like India. 

This created a flow on effect to attract advertisers and ChillX was suffering in the early stages for 2 years.As a team we had a choice to downscale our dream or to move forward. We took the path to move forward and re brand our service with a purpose. We accepted that we could not serve those who laughed at us or who wanted us to prove our worth especially for a free service. We embraced those members who took time to register and communicate with others on the network. Today ChillX enables people in India who may be introverts, shy and struggle to find friends. It enables people who struggle to move out of their villages to the metros for a better life. It enables people who are being abused to seek help.

So what's my role at ChillX

Understanding the needs of our members.
Researching what personality books could help our members to change their mind perception
Find out what areas our members struggle with e.g. relationship issues, toxic marriages, finding a job to pay their bills, self confidence, communication etc
Providing customized tailored solutions to our members to uplift their lives by partnering with people around the world who have in depth knowledge in their respective field e.g. clinical psychology, marriage counselors, etc

Director - User Experience

Express Couriers

Business Analyst

Sovereign

Ferrit.co.nz

E-Commerce Business Analyst

New Zealand Trade and Enterprise

Played a significant role in the Online Trade Portal for the government. This Trade portal allowed buyers to submit tenders and enquiries to Exporters of New Zealand.
Generated new development deals, Comprehensive database management, capturing business requirements, etc

Online Service Consultant

My mission is to spread one simple concept: keep life simple, enjoy life while building wealth. There is power in designing a life that you truly enjoy. 

If we know the kind of lifestyle that makes us happy, then re-engineering exactly the career/ business that can support that lifestyle  becomes simple👋 

I have adopted a Minimalist Life and document what I learn along the way. These are topics on the power of the subconscious mind, habits, and self-discipline. 

These are learnings that ancient minds in history practised to build empires, conquer battles, and build wealth with clarity.

I document these learnings as short videos or written posts for another fellow being who may be on the same path.

As Buddha graciously defined, " What you think, you become. What you feel, you attract. What you imagine, you create.😊 

For work, I run 2 ventures.

❤️Zuricka - A Minimalist Entrepreneur - Through this initiative, I enable a solopreneur/self-employed professional to design their life and then re-engineer how to structure work that makes that lifestyle possible. I share how to reprogram the subconscious mind and build a working schedule to make this happen.

❤️StraightUp Tech Recruitment - This project enable software engineers aiming to live + work in New Zealand to find meaningful work with thriving New Zealand tech teams. Instead of the vanilla recruitment model, I share with software engineers how to market their skills to find work in thriving, happy workplaces. I work with a selected few tech teams .

In my personal life, I have adopted the core principles of 
❤️Minimalism - For me, minimalism is having more peace, focus, and wealth & less worry, confusion, and overwork. That, to me, is power.

🚀 My ultimate aim is to unlearn chaos and let go of superficial metrics. Through living this way of life, I hope to inspire others too. 

🔥Some Work Accomplishments so far :
- Failed in 5 business initiatives that allowed me to pause and rethink
- Bootstrapped a recruitment software firm from scratch to making it profitable in 3 years as a 1-person business with 2 freelance team members.
- Enabled 80+ global software engineers to find work in awesome workplaces within New Zealand.
- Enriched 100+ professionals, solopreneurs, small business owners, startup founders, to go from inconsistency to having a clear execution plan.
- I am a daughter, sister, partner + friend and animal lover.

*For Software Dev Recruitment visit www.straightup.net.nz
⭐If you need help with simplifying your professional work life, or goal setting - you are welcome to message me.

Zuricka Azavedo

TAFE Queensland

Senior Project Manager

SJS Intellect

Connexa Limited

Program Manager

Vector Limited

Principal Delivery Lead

Uniqway.com

As a Head of Product and Technology for Uniqway and Swivel, I worked with a globally distributed team of in-house and contract - UX designers, Software developers, Machine learning engineers, Data engineers, DevOps, Business analysts, QA’s (testers), and SMEs to build two products from the ground up.

As the product guy, I worked with the team to conduct user research and interviews, built customer personas, and customer lifecycle to understand key touchpoints, pain points, and revenue streams, to eventually build an effective product.

Furthermore, as the head of product, I helped define and execute the product strategy, vision, OKR’s and roadmap for Uniqway and Swivel career coaching and assessment products, using market information as well as feedback from customers and business stakeholders.

As a technology leader, I worked with data engineers, tech leads, and machine learning engineers to architected a data model, extract, analyze, clean, enrich, transform and ingest approx. 0.5 million records from various external sources – only some included direct APIs

Later, I worked with developers to build a stable, fit-for-purpose, secure system architecture that services customers across the globe using AWS, Lambda, Webflow, MongdoBD and Algolia

As a delivery specialist, I managed all the project economics - developed, maintained, and delivered a backlog to transition Uniqway and Swivel to a new web application. Managed risks, budgets, and team to deliver a working MVP within 2 months while continuously delivering new features to improve customer engagement.

During board and senior leadership meetings, I provided technical leadership, encouraged controlled innovation and improvement in the technology and data systems, processes, and ways of working to service our B2C and B2B customers

During this period, we used technologies such as Confluence, Asana, Zoho, AWS, Lambda, Parse Server MongoDb, Algolia, DigitalOcean, and Cloudflare.

Co-Founder and CTO

Swivel Careers

Ran this role in parallel with Uniqway. Refer description under Uniqway role

Head of Product and Technology

Traction on Demand

Trineo was acquired by Traction on Demand (Now Salesforce)

Refer description under Trineo

Trineo Ltd

Working as a Delivery Lead/Senior Project Manager for Trineo, I was responsible for managing the delivery of a programme of work across multiple streams with multiple clients, while coaching the delivery squads to deliver workable increments faster.

I collaborated with a cross-functional team of developers, BA’s, Product Owners, Testers, Change Managers, Senior Stakeholders and guiding them to define requirements, document stories and deliver new features, enhancements each sprint.

During this period, I also worked with the senior IT stakeholders at Fonterra, Seequent and Trineo to provide governance update, input to the IT roadmap, de-escalate the issues, mitigate risks, build, and maintain the relationship.

I also worked with Trineo engagement team to advise clients on the best Salesforce approach and options to meet their needs, both in a pre-sale’s advisory capacity and as part of project delivery

As a delivery leader, I created project delivery plans, risk mitigation strategy and cost-benefit analysis to support digital transformation projects. And led multiple initiatives to identify requirements, drive solution design discussions, and conduct playbacks with the client and their stakeholders to deliver desired outcomes.

To support adoption, I used appropriate techniques to manage change when project was in flight while pushing back in a constructive manner on the client and delivery team when needed.

Delivery Lead

Tech365

Presales, contract negotiations, project management, solution design, of LMS platforms, CRM and websites for customers in UK, Russia and New Zealand.

Principal Consultant

Holmes Group

As a Project Manager part of the Technology Delivery Team, I was working with the Technology Transformation Director to increase collaboration  and improve customer experience. 

Led the implementation of Microsoft Teams calling and meeting solution across all our Holmes Group subsidiaries across all our global offices - US, Australia and NZ to improve collaboration and enable our team of over 500 people with a one team approach. We were regarded as the first few customers in NZ for implementing a global calling solution using MS Teams and moving to MS Teams for all our calling, chat and meetings needs.

Led the discovery and implementation of a CRM - HubSpot after a careful evaluation of small to enterprise scale CRM’s. Before I moved from Holmes we completed onboarding for key stakeholders across 3 subsidiaries. 

I also led the improvements to our meeting rooms across our global offices. As part of this process, we evaluated a variety of tech solutions and piloted AV and Acoustic improvements to selected rooms to help improve how we connect with our team and clients

ICT Project Manager

Seasoned delivery leader with 14+ years of experience driving digital transformation and innovation across diverse industries including SaaS, Telco, and Education.

Proven track record in spearheading cross-functional teams to architect and deliver innovative solutions, enhancing customer experience and driving business growth.

Expertise in delivery management, product strategy, vendor collaboration, and change management, with a hands-on approach to driving value and positive customer outcomes.

Strong communication and stakeholder engagement skills, adept at influencing change and fostering a culture of delivery excellence.


In my past roles, I have

Orchestrated the development of two cutting-edge web applications within a tight timeframe of 2.5 months, leveraging AWS and MERN stack technologies. Led a distributed team of 50 across engineering, design, product, and
data science to ensure successful architecture and delivery aligning with business objectives.

Provided leadership to a team of over 40 professionals spanning various disciplines, fostering a culture of collaboration and accountability to achieve business objectives effectively.

Managed concurrent programs of work across leading multidisciplinary teams of approximately 15 members per squad, including contractors, consultants, and internal delivery teams. Ensured
seamless coordination and delivery of new initiatives to drive business growth and operational excellence.


Directed multiple streams of complex, regulatory programs of work aimed at generating new revenue streams, enhancing customer experience, optimizing operations, improving collaboration, upgrading infrastructure, and enabling data-driven decision-making. 

For reference, 

I have experience with end to end implementation of commercial off the shelf applications, developing web applications, SaaS products and implementing infrastructure projects such as Active Directory,  Server Builds,  file servers and print servers.

I have experience implementing and or working with a variety of ERP’s (Sage, SAP) CRM’s (Salesforce, Dynamics, HubSpot etc) Marketing Automation Tools (Pardot, Hubspot etc), Cloud Telephony Solutions (Ring Central, Amazon Connect, Mitel, MS Teams calling), AWS, Document Management Solutions (Docusign, Conga), Database programs (MonogDB, MySQL), Search Engines (Elastic Search, Algolia), LMS (Moodle), M365, G-Suite, ITSM Solutions(ServiceNow, Freshdesk, Jira), Atlassian Jira and Confluence products, Visitor management solutions and survey Management solutions etc.

taplio

The Battle

Zuricka Azavedo

Sanchit Kaushal

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?