Katerina Trajchevsk

Katerina Trajchevska

Shifting the Tides of Workplace Ideologies

The modern business world requires an innovative approach in workplaces; we have witnessed the change from cubicles to open workplaces; however, work culture demands another change. With a perception to bring the following desired change to workspaces, KaterinaTrajchevskaco-foundedAdeva, enabling companies to work remotely by creating various solutions based on years of experience in the field.

As the CEO, Katerina strongly advocates that the future of work is not about where you work from but what you deliver. Adeva's efforts hit the nail on the head in the unprecedented pandemic that allowed businesses to operate remotely, expand their roots globally, break traditional methodologies' barriers, implying Adeva's concept of Work Without Boundaries.

Enabling work without boundaries by connecting organizations with tech talent across the world.

Below are the highlights of the interview.

Brief our audience about your journey as a business leader until your current position at the company. What challenges have you had to overcome to reach where you are today?

Back when I was starting my career, my country didn't offer too many opportunities to work on exciting projects. The outsourcing industry was on the rise, and most of what we saw were legacy projects and unexciting work. The startup world was out of reach, together with all the fun challenges that came with it.

I started freelancing in search of more interesting work and instantly loved the flexibility it offered. The challenge was, though, to keep the work supply steady - it was too risky and unpredictable. That's how Adeva was born. Searching for ways to improve our own freelancing experience together with my business partner, we realized that we could do the same for everyone who wanted the flexibility of remote work without compromising on the stability of regular employment.

There were plenty of challenges on the way, especially because the companies that could provide a more stable workload were the ones that were more inclined toward the traditional way of work. Educating enterprises about the benefits of remote work is a major task. Now with the pandemic, we faced a massive shift in the industry, which accelerated the adaptation for many companies and enabled us to grow much faster.

Tell us something more about the company and its mission and vision.

Adeva is a remote tech professionals' network driven by the purpose of enabling work without boundaries for tech professionals worldwide. We're passionate advocates for remote work, and our network is distributed in over 30 countries across the globe.

Using a community-driven approach, we engage some of the brightest talents in the industry, enabling organizations to scale their engineering teams fast. By cutting out unnecessary expenses and minimizing fees, Adeva helps companies reduce their hiring costs while providing longterm, remote opportunities for tech talent worldwide.

Enlighten us on how you have made an impact in the industry through your expertise in the market?

We've been fully remote for five years, and over the years, we dealt with most of the challenges companies are faced with now, having to adapt to the new normal quickly. Our approach has always been to work out our problems, find a solution and once we're certain it works, offer it to our customers to facilitate their work with distributed teams.

Whether it's by educating companies on implementing strong processes for remote working or providing infrastructure for easier management of their remote contractors, we've always used our expertise to enable companies to work remotely without limiting themselves to a certain geographic location.

Describe in detail the values and the work culture that drives your organization.

We stand behind the premise that it's never about how much you work but what you deliver. What value do you create. That's the main thing we want to pass on to every member of our community and each one of our clients.

Being a people-driven company, we measure success in the opportunities we create for people to enjoy life more, to live the lifestyle they always wanted. For some of our colleagues, that means to live and work from a different location every couple of months; for others, to surf or climb mountain peaks because all they need to do to afford it is pack their laptop and hit the road. For most of them, though, it's the flexibility to balance their personal and professional lives, to spend more time with their families, or move to a more peaceful location without worrying about the commute or lack of work opportunities.

Those are the experiences that drive us. Knowing not that you helped someone make a living, but that you helped them live the life they want.

Undeniably, technology is playing a significant role in almost every sector. How are you leveraging technological advancements to make your solutions resourceful?

Technology is imperative to our ability to grow and serve our talent and customers. We completely rely on our platform for achieving that. On one side, we have people interested in remote jobs who can apply to join regardless of if they're actively looking for a job or not. On the other side, clients can easily sign up and post their job requirements to start the hiring process.

The magic happens in the back office, where we have a smart search and matching process to find the best fit for a given position and make an introduction. We're increasingly automating the repetitive steps of our manual processes to be able to focus more on creating value for our clients and our network.

Where do you envision yourself to be in the long run, and what are your future goals for the company?

Our mission is to enable work without boundaries for 1 million people by 2030. To support companies and individuals untap their full potential and remove borders from work by creating an infrastructure for everyone who wants to work remotely.

With more and more companies opening up to working with distributed talent, a completely new set of challenges will arise dealing with fake identities, the inability to stay compliant with local laws, the overhead of managing and paying people across borders. Utilizing our experience and the obstacles we've overcome to get where we are today, we aim to solve each of these challenges for companies across the world and enable more individuals to access opportunities that never existed before.

What would be your advice to budding women entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the industry?

The glass can be half full or half empty, depending on how you look at it. We're far from having a favorable environment for women entrepreneurs, but just because of that, there are so many communities and networks that support women and create opportunities that would be hard to get otherwise. Make it your strength to use them.

Katy Barfield

Shifting Tides as the Food Waste Warrior

Reducing food waste can significantly lessen stress on the environment, and several significant initiatives can assist the food industry by implementing better procurement. Several organizations and individuals operate at different levels to find an alternative way to deal with surplus food. Finding an innovative solution to deal with the food wastage crisis, KatyBarfield founded YumeFoodAustralia, allowing food manufacturers and primary producers to sell their quality surplus products to commercial buyers at a discount.

As the CEO, Katy has dedicated her life to this cause, designing and implementing award-winning solutions to fix the market imbalances that generate food waste and loss. Her venture is the first Australian tech platform that allows the food industry to sell, donate and buy clearance and excess food.

Insights Success caught up with Katy to understand how her efforts have disrupted the food industry for good making her one of the most inspiring women leaders.

Below are the highlights of the interview:

Brief our audience about your journey as a business leader until your current position at Yume. What challenges did you have to overcome to reach where you are today?

The biggest challenge you face as a startup founder is money and time or lack of it. You have a plan, but more often than not, when dealing with innovation, nothing goes according to that plan. It's a constant interactive process to find that elusive product-market fit, and when it's technology-based, it's an expensive process. I've found it always takes three times the money and four times the time you thought it would, and you have to dodge mister left field on a daily basis!

Tell us something more about Yume and its mission and vision.

Our mission at Yume is to make commercial food waste a thing of the past. Currently, the commercial sector in Australia wastes 3.2 million tons of food every year. This is happening before food even reaches supermarket shelves, let alone our homes. Yume's vision is to see all good food getting to where it belongs by connecting clearance and excess food to other businesses in the food industry and to those who need it most via food rescue organizations.

Enlighten us on how you have made an impact in the industry through your expertise in the market?

Yume has only been able to make an impact on the food industry by listening to the industry's needs and collaborating to create technology that is actually of value. One of the reasons food waste occurs is because of inefficient processes along the supply chain. By listening to Yume users, we've been able to find solutions to these problems. So far, this has seen Yume technology prevent 3.1 million kilograms of food from going to waste.

Food waste is an unfortunate reality of supply chains. Yume is here to do something about it.

Describe in detail the values and the work culture that drives your organization.

The Yume team is a passionate group of food waste fighters who are driven by the power of technology in creating a more sustainable future. We value integrity, grit, boldness, adaptability, curiosity, and lively foodie discussion!

Undeniably, technology is playing a significant role in almost every sector. How are you leveraging technological advancements to make your solutions resourceful?

Innovative technology is who we are here at Yume. The Yume platform is an ever-changing solution to the issues we uncover in food manufacturing that are causing food to be wasted. Our most recent advancement within the platform was building technology that streamlines how food manufacturers donate excess food to food rescue organizations.

If given a chance, what change would you like to bring to the industry?

Ultimately, we believe in the creation of a circular economy, where nothing produced is wasted. Yume has already started to facilitate repurposing projects, for example, the creation of a beer brewed with upcycled cereal byproducts.

What, according to you, could be the next big change in the industry? How is your company preparing to be a part of that change?

The big change happening right now in the food and beverage industry is that companies are waking up to their food waste problems. Writing off stock has been an ingrained and accepted process for a long time, and leaders are stopping and asking, "why?". They want to do something about it. Yume technology is here to support this shift.

Where do you envision yourself to be in the long run and what are your future goals for the company?

Eliminating food waste is one of the most actionable levers in reducing CO2 emissions. Our planet is at a critical juncture, and we need to do everything we can to change how we think about food. Yume's goal is to show all food manufacturers in Australia how valuable their food is and why it is so important that it is eaten and not wasted.

What would be your advice to budding women entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the industry?

The most important thing about doing business for good is to be surrounded by people who get the vision. They need to have the passion, integrity, and resilience to disrupt industries that don't really want to change. You can't do it alone.

The Need for Compassionate Leadership During a Global Pandemic

- By Eileen Willet Co-founder Cucumber Clothing

wo years ago, when Nancy and I decided to dip our Ttoes into the world of start-ups, we had absolutely no idea where it would take us. We were both mums in mid-life. Between us, we had two dogs, six children, a strong friendship and what we thought was a damn good idea. At the time Nancy was involved in the charitable sector (formerly at Saatchi and Saatchi), and I was running my own successful accessory brand (having helped start up Nicole Farhi Menswear). Hindsight is a great thing, at the time, we thought Cucumber Clothing would fit into our lives. Instead, it soon became a nineheaded hydra disguised as a start-up, swallowing up as much time, energy and passion as we could muster. We can honestly say we’ve enjoyed the challenges, the highs and lows and the wonderful people we have met every step of the way.

Then Covid arrived. Which company can say honestly that they were prepared for a global pandemic? I would venture, absolutely none. The past two years have brought us more intense, demanding, and tough hurdles than we could have imagined. The flip side is that we have been stretched, stimulated and forced to be both exacting and flexible all at the same time.

What has this taught us about leadership? Mainly that leadership, in particular compassionate leadership, becomes even more essential in times of deep stress, both professional and personal, as well as in times of conflicting demand. The ability to invite opinions and truly listen to them; the ability to retain high standards, and yet remain flexible; the ability to sometimes accept that something cannot be achieved. The ability to be compassionate. These are all lessons we have learned and taken to heart in these tumultuous past months. Broadly speaking, compassionate leadership can be broken down into four pillars with the consistency of application and open communication throughout being key (all definitions taken from merriam-webster.com) :

Listening – to hear something with thoughtful intention Understanding – to have sympathetic awareness or tolerance Empathising – to understand and share the feelings of another Helping - the act or an instance of doing or supplying something to make it easier for another to complete a task, deal with a problem, etc. Regular and open communication allows these pillars to be fully used. Each member of a company then feels able to safely raise issues that may otherwise remain buried, only to arise at a later in possibly a much more inconvenient shape, size and time.

It is no surprise that matters can take a negative turn when employees feel that compassionate leadership is lacking. When leadership is reactive, not proactive and issues are dealt with only after something has gone wrong a cycle of negativity is created, particularly when issues are raised and even then, there is no change.

Compassionate leadership ensures a greater likelihood of creating a productive and harmonious workplace whatever the external pressures – for example, a global pandemic! - may be.

Properly using and integrating the above four pillars of compassionate leadership into a company’s functioning allows for a collective focus and corresponding collective responsibility on issues arising in the workplace in achieving and maintaining goals and targets – a huge win for any company. This in turn, leads to a workplace where the collective good is prioritised over individual needs and reduces friction between both individuals and groups regardless of status, again an enormous positive when, especially in times of increased pressures.

Whether an SME or micro business, I believe compassionate leadership is key to keeping a company functioning well at any time, and absolutely critical in times of huge stress. Investing in and ensuring that the simple pillars of listen, understand, empathise and help are in place, can make the difference between the survival and failure of businesses in a bruising world of change.

Two years in and no business can have any real clarity about what 2022 will bring. The best way to prepare is to commit to ensuring that your own business is emotionally robust and prepared for the worst while very much hoping for the best. With compassionate leadership baked in, it will have every chance.