About Me, Amaia Lesta

I am a Spanish woman, from the Basque Country, who lives in the UK.

With MScs in Telecommunications Engineering and Organisational Psychology, my professional work has driven me to multiple countries in three continents, and through multiple roles, from researcher to engineering lead to product manager. I had lived in Spain and France before arriving to the UK.

This unexpected journey has allowed me to experience diversity at work and beyond. It has also helped me understand the importance of self-development, and team development to create great organisations everywhere in the globe.

My current focus

Currently I am the founder of Develop At Work, with focus on facilitating organisations getting started with AI in a way that enables them to achieve their vision for customer service, business outcomes and employee experience.

My Why

My drive is to partner with organisations so that people want to go to work everyday because of what they achieve when they work together: better value for their customers, their people and themselves.

And my focus is to achieve to create that feeling through a combination of technology innovation and people development initiatives.

My background

I am a visionary and results-driven leader passionate about working with teams.

My background in telecommunications engineering and MSc in organisational psychology equips me with a holistic approach at work. In my 20 years experience in tech companies, I have successfully created and transformed technical and product teams. I have lead innovation and adoption of new technologies with business teams in different sectors (e.g. insurance and aeronautics). My approach is human-centred, loved design thinking, LEGO(R) Serious PLAY(R) sessions to make the most out of what people bring into the room and at the same time help them get out of it with something new (new ideas, perspectives, knowledge, work partners), and evidence-based.

This included implementation of collaboration tools and lead adoption of agile software development practices, implementation of organisational change based Team Topologies and Project to Product principles. Working with individuals is very rewarding for me too.

Giving back, paying it forward

Learning for good

I am an avid learner who loves to give back by mentoring others and posting about lightbulb learnings.

I am passionate about learning new topics, applying them in my day to day and sharing them with other people. I started my career with roles in R&D departments which focused on technology research. The culmination of my first role was the publication of a book about security in WLAN networks: Fundamentos y Aplicaciones de Seguridad en Redes WLAN (Ed. Marcombo) in 2006. (Fundamentos y Aplicaciones de Seguridad en Redes WLAN)

Since then I have done research in team formation. My long term goal is to achieve a Professional Doctorate in Organisational Psychology with research focus on building healthy teams.

Voluntary work – Coach, mentor, move for good

Since I moved to UK in 2015, I have discovered new and easy ways to help others through charities.

I have paticularly enjoyed volunteering as a coach for Teach First, coaching people in the educational sector to evolve into leadership positions in their career, and as a judge for Engineers Without Borders in their yearly Engineering for People Design Challenge. Since 2024 I am a workshop facilitator for Action for happiness.

I am a volunteer for the Amplify collective, a group of professionals championing inclusive digital product development.

Finally, I support cancer related charities. I love taking part in the magical yearly walk for Cancer Research UK, the Shine Night event and other trekking and walking challenges that support the same cause. I am also a volunteer for Breast Cancer Now as part of their Young Women with Brest Cancer initiatives.

What people say about working with me

"Amaia knows how to foster a great working culture full of energy and motivation for the future. She’s a seasoned leader that I can highly recommend to any organisation looking for someone passionate and dynamic to help create and achieve their technology vision."

Carl Messer

Senior Manager Vodafone

"Amaia you are an absolute gem . Your positivity, pragmatism, openness and thirst to grow and learn is infectious. You are leaving our team in much better shape than when you got here”

Senior Cloud Delivery Lead at Vodafone

"Amaia is an awesome person and mentor, she is always available and support all the team members, leading by example is one of her strengths along with the safe and trust environment she sustained I was always feeling empowered and secured knowing she is there for all of us as a team."

Ahmed Essayed

Product Manager Vodafone

"Amaia has showed me to be a fully ethical and caring person with a positive view of the environment, so it is no wonder that she is constantly looking for solutions in her professional life and never presented the challenges as problems. Amaia has proven to be an asset in any organization I have seen her pass through, and it was absolutely a good investment for my company during the years we had her."

Daniel Simo

General Manager / Senior Partner Wised Telecom

"Unlike many technical ‘experts’, Amaia also excels when coaching and managing teams, always focusing on the person behind the role, building strong personal relationships across and outside organisations. Where she really excels, is looking more strategically at how the Technical and People aspect converge within organisations, connecting directly with experts in the field, and able to consider the technical, people, commercial and organisation impacts of any decision."

Alan Harper

Vodafone Distinguished Engineer and Senior Manager