Nasim Assadi, Vice President of People and Culture at Angel City Football Club

As we launch into a new year with a blank slate, we'd like to recap our last Women in Tech session of 2023. Nasim Assadi, Vice President of People and Culture at Angel City Football Club, ACFC, recently spent some time with our Minders to discuss her career journey and share some great career advice.

Nasim is responsible for hiring top talent and cultivating an environment where employees can do their best work at ACFC. She believes that an inclusive, employee-centric philosophy allows team members to realise their full potential, and she has a wealth of experience in the tech industry, including the startup world.

Here are some key takeaways from the conversation:

Lean on your broader team

Even if you’re a department of one or a small team trying to get big things done, remember that you’re part of a bigger organisation, and everyone has a vested interest in your success. So, if there’s something you can’t quite crack, don’t be afraid to reach out to your broader team to help brainstorm and troubleshoot.

Relationships, relationships, relationships

One of the conversation's most prominent themes was the importance of cultivating your work relationships, especially the relationship with your manager. Nasim encourages people to learn their manager’s work style and share their needs with their manager. “It’s a two-way relationship,” Nasim notes, and your manager will be the one to advocate for you, so you want this relationship to be strong. If possible, when starting a new position, Nasim believes that spending your first ninety days building those relationships will get you far. Don’t be afraid to ask, “Who should I be networking with or talking about X?”

Be honest with yourself

You won’t have all the correct answers 100% of the time, but you will do your best. Nasim reminded Minders that so much is learned from failures, so just take things day by day. Sometimes, the harshest pressures are not from strict work deadlines or goals, but instead from the pressures people often put on themselves.

You are more persuasive when you tap into the needs of the business

This echoes a previous speaker’s advice on stakeholder priorities as well. When it comes to something you want to implement or experiment with, you will be much more successful in moving things forward if you can tie that interest to a business goal, regardless of what it may be. To do this, Nasim recommends the following:

• Understand your business
• Know your stakeholders and understand their goals
• Define success. What does success look like, and how will you be able to measure it to show how you moved the needle?

Foster culture and diversity from the top down

As a passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion, Nasim also gave examples of how she’s fostered DEI in her organisations. Building it from the top down is one of the most critical things in promoting DEI. She emphasised that diversity in leadership helps drive diversity throughout an organisation and helps put DEI front and centre, partly because leadership allocates resources and ultimately has the final say.

Mindera is thankful for the time Nasim shared and continues to look forward to amplifying new stories and insights.

Contact us if you’d like to be involved in our Women In Tech talks.