Katerina is the co-founder and CEO of Adeva, a company that enables global collaboration by connecting businesses with tech talent. She is a proponent of remote work and a firm believer that the future of work will depend more on what you produce than where you work from.
In both her personal and professional lives, Katerina is a strong advocate for diversity, inclusivity, and giving back to the community. She served as an ambassador for the Women in Tech Global Movement and serves as a volunteer mentor and advisor for many initiatives and programmes.
The following list of interview highlights:
What did you do before joining Adeva? Please describe.
I’m a software engineer myself and, facing the lack of opportunities in my country, I started freelancing soon after graduating. Freelancing is a whole different challenge than the 9-5 job. Finding the right project and then proving to potential clients that you’re the right fit takes a lot of time and energy, and requires a whole new set of skills.
Navigating through this new experience, my partner and I realized there are so many people out there required to settle for whatever opportunities they have locally because finding a remote one is a hassle. That’s how Adeva was born. To help people like us enjoy the flexibility of remote work without having to compromise on the stability of a full-time job.
Tell us more about Adeva.
Adeva is on a mission to enable 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 talent in the industry. We focus a lot on empowering local tech communities and creating opportunities where they’re lacking. This approach to hiring is what makes Adeva unique. It allows us to help companies scale their engineering teams fast and reduce their hiring costs while also providing long-term, remote opportunities for tech talent worldwide.
Who is your target audience? How do you create services that align with what they’re looking for?
Our target audience is tech companies that need to scale fast and extend their teams with remote engineers. It’s either funded startups with fierce milestones to hit or enterprises rolling off new projects-in both cases, companies that need to scale fast and flexibly.
Adeva acts as their partner for sourcing, vetting, and hiring exceptional tech talent. We’ve ramped up full teams in a single weekend for clients with extremely time-sensitive needs. We’ve been a reliable talent partner for companies needing constant talent supply.
The reason we can respond to their needs so effectively is our promise to our community. We invest in the growth of our local communities and maintain nontraditional ways of attracting the best talent on the market. Companies recognize that and they choose Adeva as their talent partner.
What are the major changes that happened in client behavior and market operations since the pandemic?
The pandemic actually accelerated our growth. It proved that remote work is possible for any tech company. At the beginning of the pandemic, there was this hesitation to invest, not knowing what would happen. After the initial shock, though, digitization boomed and more and more companies started hiring remotely.
What gets you up in the morning? What are your responsibilities as the CEO of the company?
The impact we make on thousands of lives across the world is what gets me up in the morning. My main responsibilities as a CEO include strategic planning, coordination with the teams to optimize work processes and operations, and sharing our vision and experiences with the public.
Kindly describe how you will specifically know what success looks like for you.
For me, success is knowing that every action we take as a company is driven by our mission without compromise.
Being a people-driven company, we take pride in the opportunities we create for people to enjoy life more and live the lifestyle they always wanted: travel the world; take on new adventures and hobbies; have more time for their families. It’s knowing not that you helped someone make a living, but that you helped them live the life they wanted. That’s our success.
What advice would you give to the next generation of female leaders?
We’re far from having achieved equality in tech, but that’s exactly the reason why there are so many opportunities for minorities that you can embrace. Whether it’s a program for networking, funding, or education – there are a ton of resources and support networks you can utilize to become more successful in what you do. Don’t overlook them.
What are your future plans to sustain your and the company’s success?
We’re intensively working on strengthening our core team and automating the repeating processes to make sure we have a strong and scalable offering for both our clients and talent. In addition to that, we’ll keep expanding with new local communities, moving toward our vision of work without boundaries.