My passion started young; I was still a nine-year-old when I started experimenting with programming languages. Though it didn’t take me long to get hooked on and in fact at age thirteen I presented my IT project in Pascal…needless to say my teacher was shocked by the project. Three years down the line I advanced to a programming school. Though unfortunately, this wasn’t as I expected and after two years of coding experience with many high grades I decided to drop school. I was just lusting for a challenge and school was not providing any.
With no official grades starting small was my only option; I soon applied and got employed as a porter at a 276 room hotel. I quickly gained experience and in about 1 year I was promoted to a receptionist. I did not lack enthusiasm and infect I quickly caught the eye of my management and only after a couple of months I was promoted to the hotel’s cashier.
It took just one year and a half doing this role and I was soon promoted once again to Ecommerce Coordinator. From here onwards my experience exploded, every day brought its own challenges where I soon started to fully manage the hotel online & offline rates, hotel image, managing a wide array of promotions & even fully confirming & coordinating groups, conferences & weddings. My hard work was quite evident since the hotel’s annual revenue increase exponentially and infect my effort was not unnoticed since I was often offered carrier changes. Though every being has an end and after four years I decided a change is required.
I ventured out of my comfort zone and I joined a new startup called Busy Rooms. We developed online software that specialized in the hotel industry and even though my initial role was of a Support Executive I was presented with new challenging situations daily. History repeats itself and once again I learned that hard work pays off. The company soon started growing exponentially; and from a handful of hotels, we grow our customer portfolio to a thousand and nine hundred in only about 3 years. Throughout this role, I onboarded new support people, new tools, setup proper procedures, and quickly gained very good experience. We were often praised by our clients and infect we had good customer feedback of 98-100%.
Nonetheless, my dreams never ran short after three years running the department I was soon presented with a new challenge, Product & Project Management. Even though I had very little experience in this role I soon started picking up and after a couple of months I was already coming up with ideas, design changes, engaging with stakeholders, building and maintaining the overall roadmap, and managing the entire development processes. In only a couple of years, the company grow exponentially and even though it was still a start-up at the time I was proud to say that I was part of that success.
With regrets, my time in Busy Rooms came to an end. But a new exciting chapter of my life was just opened at a software company called ICON. I started my new exciting role as Product Owner and only in the infancy of my role I immediately took over key projects. With the help of an awesome crew, we are today still making the impossible, possible. Nonetheless, who knows what exciting experience tomorrow will bring….
If you are interested in knowing more do not hesitate to contact me, I don’t bite trust me!