According to research by Gallup, 80% of employees who received meaningful feedback in the past week are fully engaged at work. While regular performance reviews exist in most organisations, feedback is often underused or treated as a formal obligation rather than a strategic leadership tool. The connection is straightforward: higher engagement leads to higher productivity, and higher productivity supports stronger business performance. The real question for leaders is not whether feedback matters, but how to use it effectively to support both people and results.
Alice Machová leads the Financial Accounting Advisory Services (FAAS) team at EY Czech Republic, which focuses on CFO agendas, digital technologies, financial processes, and accounting standards, including IFRS and US GAAP. She also heads the Climate Change and Sustainability Services (CCaSS) practice, where she and her team help companies set ESG strategies, decarbonization plans, and financing for sustainable projects. Her professionalteam provides advisory support to communities and businesses seeking to grow responsibly and sustainably.
Five years ago, the idea of leading a fully remote team sounded risky, maybe even lazy. Today, it is one of the clearest signals that work has permanently changed. Slack notifications replaced office chatter, video calls replaced conference rooms, and productivity stopped being measured by who stayed late. Remote work did not just tweak how we work. It completely reset how success is defined.
The end of the year has a certain quiet power. Christmas lights soften busy streets, inboxes slow down, and many of us finally pause long enough to ask an important question: Where am I actually heading in my career?
Between September and November, a group of participants came together to work on something ambitious: building their own digital businesses. The Digital Business Founders Academy brought together aspiring and early-stage founders who were ready to move from ideas toward clarity, structure, and action.
Amsterdam is often celebrated for its canals, bikes, and coffee culture, but beneath that aesthetic is something equally compelling: a city full of ambition. With international companies, startups, research institutions, and creative industries, it attracts people who want to build meaningful careers. Yet for many women working here, locals and internationals alike, the reality can feel complex. We arrive expecting connection, clarity, and direction, only to discover the opposite: professional transitions, cultural differences, and uncertainty about how to grow or who to turn to. That’s where mentoring and community become more than “nice to have.” They become tools for navigating a global city in a grounded way.
When we talk about conflict resolution and difficult conversations, our cultural preferences show up even when we are not aware of them. Here’s the important thing: whether someone tends to choose open confrontation or seeks harmony, the intention and values behind this choice are usually positive.
Sofia Tsiguro’s journey from DevOps engineer to SysOps Team Lead at Wrike is a story of responsibility, opportunity, and intentional leadership. Over the years, she has navigated the fast-paced world of infrastructure, led teams through high-pressure technical projects, mentored rising engineers, and found her own voice in a male-dominated field. In this interview, she opens up about her path into leadership, the lessons learned from missteps, the power of mentoring, and why visibility matters for the next generation of women in tech.
