Nisreen Haddadin
Life @ Aspire Series
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She has a passion for interior design, manages NOC and DevOps operations by day and is a mom to two little boys. Continue reading to find out how this Aspire Superwoman does it all! Meet Nisreen Haddadin, our very own Deputy Delivery Manager.
What do you work on at Aspire?
I am currently the Deputy Delivery Manager, managing NOC and DevOps operations for Aspire. I am also working on growing my team, their skillset and DevOps capacity building.
What is your background?
I got my BA in Information Technology, however, even though I am technical, my passion has always been to decorate things. When I graduated from highschool, in Jordan there weren’t any bachelor’s degree in the Interior Design field at that time, so my family told me that this passion should be my hobby. It’s funny because, even though I am creative, I have always loved to study, read books and learn about new technologies. My hobby became parallel to what I do on a day-to-day basis even though I like to link my creativity back to my role (which is what I think most technical staff lack nowadays). In interior design, you have to think about changes, organization, updating the old to new (at least most of the time); while in DevOps, we articulate all the tools and technologies putting everything together in a life cycle. These two things might not be the same in terms of tooling and concept, however, both involve the process of identifying and defining what a solution should look like, development, optimization and feasibility to reach the desired output.
What was the path to your current role at Aspire?
I have been with the company since 2008. I started as a Senior Network Engineer, I then moved to a Team Lead position and for the past 4 years I have been a Deputy Delivery Manager.
What do you love the most about working at Aspire?
It’s a very dynamic environment, where you have the opportunity to grow and learn continuously. We are also a family and you are made to feel at home. This isn’t very common compared to other companies.
What is something that will surprise your colleagues?
My love for Interior Design, I love to draw and the fact that I smoke (my colleagues didn’t know, but now they will).
What’s your favorite movie/song?
The Lord of the Rings, I am a big fan of all 3 parts and I have watched it many times. I also have two favorite songs: Chandelier by Sia and Set Fire to the Rain by Adele. I simply can’t choose between those two.
Sia vs Adele meme
What is one thing you want to do before it is too late?
I would like to have a baby girl one day. I already have two boys but one of my dreams is to have a baby girl.
Does a particular time in your career stand out?
Getting my team to become more qualified and certified in different areas related to DevOps and Automation made me really proud and is a time I will never forget.
What, in your opinion, are the most important issues in the IT industry?
Currently, we have a lot of emerging technologies out there and it’s really hard to keep up and understand how we can move our current setups along with seamlessly migrating to these new technologies. The most challenging part in my opinion is being able to adapt, implement and deploy quickly.
How do you believe Aspire can make an impact on our industry?
Aspire started to make an impact by adapting to new technologies such as DevOps, AI and new software development mechanisms in order to become more agile. We are constantly adapting our frameworks to what is new. We like to see the bigger picture and think outside-the-box. Aspire constantly tries to educate employees on how to be technology-agnostic, in order to accept different solutions and align it to strategies. We previously moved from a waterfall methodology to a DevOps/agile methodology.
What does your day look like and what do you love doing when you aren’t in the office?
I wake up early and prepare my kids to go to school. After this, I go to the gym for 30-40 minutes before coming to work, this gives me energy for the rest of the day. When I get to the office, I always love saying good morning to everybody, it makes me positive and more motivated. I also can’t operate without coffee, so I grab a coffee then meet my team. We have a daily meeting every morning, especially since we operate 24/7 so I need a summary in order to understand what happened during the night shift. I always prefer having face-to-face meetings with my team to be able to coach them in order to streamline processes and improve their workflows. Most afternoons, I have calls with my director who is remote and with clients. I like to prepare for my calls beforehand and during my calls I always do things the old-fashioned way, I make notes with pen and paper (yes, even though I am in IT). At the end of the day I always like to communicate verbally and via email back to my team what changes we need to make to our processes and workflows. Outside of work, I love to spend time with my family and kids, hang out with my friends and sometimes just stay in and relax on weekends (which is never exactly easy being a mom). I also love travelling and every year I take a vacation with my whole family and visit places that we haven’t been before, I recently just came back from Sweden.
Nisreen and her family in Sweden.
How do you manage being a mother and a manager at the same time?
Being a working mom is a hectic job in itself, however, I always try to create the time for my kids to help with their homework. I am not exactly your ad-hoc mother that sticks to timings, sometimes after school I bring them here to stay in the office while I have meetings.
What superpower would you like to have?
If I could, I would like to be able to control time and have more hours in the day to do all the things I would like to. I feel like 24 hours just isn’t enough.
More time meme
What’s your life philosophy?
Live, eat, work, have fun, travel and be grateful for everything you have.
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If you want to work with amazing people like Nisreen and become an Aspirer yourself, have a look at our careers page.
