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 philosophy

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 experience

I am a visionary and results-driven leader with over 20 years of experience passionate about working with teams.

My background in telecommunications engineering and MSc in organizational 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 adoption of new technologies with business teams different sectors (e.g. insurance and aeronautics).

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.

I have helped individuals successfully navigate career transitions, take ownership of their personal development, and improve their job search strategies. I am proud to have helped them achieve their career goals.

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.

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.