Why this finalist deserves to win Best Tech Manager:
HatchWorks Technologies was founded in early 2017 and over the last couple of years grew very quickly from $0 to doing $7M per year in 2019. Our business focuses on building tailored software products for clients in healthcare, FinTech, and communications. We can take an idea from the initial concept to Minimal Viable Product then help the client run and scale the solution. Prior to six months ago, we built 10+ products over the course of three years with no technology leader. After using multiple search firms and talking to 100s of candidates we selected Adam Ticheelar as our overall technology leader.
Adam came in and on day 1 inherited a team of 15 engineers and 5 clients that were currently in the middle of having products in the process of being built. So essentially he had to take over an entire team that had never had a real manager/leader along with a bunch of products that we're already half-way through the development process which he was not involved in the design of. His leadership style as a servant leader immediately won the team over and it was clear they respected him and were happy to have him as their manager. He makes every person on his team feel like he cares about them as a person as well as about their personal and career growth. He does this by having a 1 on 1 with each of his 15 employees every other to listen, learn, and guide them as individuals. He also gives them every opportunity to be elevated into positions to be successful and be recognized.
Our culture at HatchWorks is one of collaboration, learning, and giving back. Adam signifies this in every way and creates that for his engineering team. I have never worked with a technology team that communicates and works as well as his team does with the business side of HatchWorks. He drives this by implementing tools like Slack, Google Drive, and Jira that enable the teams to collaborate efficiently and effectively. Adam has created a culture of learning by owning our Amazon Web Services employee certification program. He put together a plan that allows any HatchWorks employee to get AWS certified for no change including the on-line training curriculum, in-class workshops, and employee-led training sessions. So far six of our employees with Adam's leadership have become certified. Giving back is part of who we are at HatchWorks with the goal of helping kids learn more about technology so they can get better jobs that end poverty cycles. Adam leads his team to think about how we can give and help others. He has worked with and supported organizations such as Girls Who Code to help drive up additional diversity in the engineering work which hopefully one-day HatchWorks and other companies can hire.
Innovation at HatchWorks is key to our business because take all of the money we make from building clients products and invest in our incubator side of the business for building our own products. Adam is responsible for all innovation at HatchWorks and has really delivered a best in class innovation funnel and process that we are in the process of adopting. He spent many years at the Georgia Institute of Technology R&D center so he has brought many of those principles to the team at HatchWorks. He recently presented to the entire company his vision for innovation at HatchWorks and how we are going to execute on generating additional product ideas. Our first product from the innovation side of our business will launch in a couple of weeks which was engineered by Adam's team.
Adam is one of the few technologists that I have ever worked with who is able to clearly articulate a vision of developing products. He played a key role in the development of our HatchWorks transformation platform which is our methodology for how we build products. Adam has a unique ability to get up in front of a group of people no matter how technical they are and communicate a complex issue in a simple way that everyone in the room will understand. It's clear when he talks about product engineering and development that he has not only built many products over the years but has done so in a variety of areas including IoT, Artificial Intelligence, and automation.
In summary, HatchWorks would not be the company we are today without Adam's leadership, knowledge, and efforts to make our firm a best place to work and one in which our clients know we will deliver.
