Zarif Shafiei

I had the pleasure of working with Zarif when he was appointed as the Installation Project Manager for a high-profile project in Japan that was already underway. He stepped into a complex environment with confidence and clarity, quickly getting up to speed through a deeply technical, logical, and mathematical approach to understanding the project. Zarif brought a positive and encouraging energy to the team, and it was clear from day one that he was a natural leader. He not only embraced the challenges but thrived on them, nothing ever seemed to phase him. Just as impressively, he embraced Japanese customs and business etiquette, built strong working relationships with everyone on site and created a truly collaborative atmosphere, enabling him to work seamlessly with diverse teams, building trust and rapport across different functions, languages, and backgrounds. He demonstrated remarkable resilience in the face of significant challenges, from navigating complex logistics and tight timelines to bridging cultural differences and solving difficult engineering problems. Working with Zarif was a great experience, and I'd gladly do so again. Any team would benefit from his positive leadership, problem-solving mindset, and professionalism.

— Sophia Miwa Anderson — PMI PMP®, ACP® | AWS Certified | Yale University MBA | Project Manager

I had the privilege of working alongside Zarif during the University of Cambridge course, where our team unanimously elected him as our project lead for our high-stakes Bank of England case study. Our task was to solve an issue that the BoE had not been able to solve at that point i.e., predict a bank's failure without resorting to financial metrics. Zarif's exceptional ability to grasp complex concepts and their implications at remarkable speed proved invaluable given our tight six-week timeline. His natural talent for coordination and project management kept our ambitious project on track, particularly when navigating competing viewpoints. What truly distinguished Zarif was his balanced leadership approach, driving consensus whilst recognising when majority opinion needed tempering with data-evidenced expertise. He demonstrated impressive flexibility, stepping in to unstick individual technical challenges when needed whilst still maintaining overall project momentum. His meticulous attention to detail and proactive implementation of collaborative technologies significantly enhanced our team's efficiency during this time. Throughout our intense project, Zarif maintained open and collaborative communication, ensuring all team members felt engaged and valued. His ability to synthesise our discussions into actionable data science solutions was particularly impressive, and he consistently moved us forward with clear direction after thoroughly weighing alternatives at different stages of this data science project. Zarif combines strategic thinking with practical execution skills, making him an exceptional leader for complex, time-sensitive data science projects. Any organisation would greatly benefit from this unique blend of technical understanding, collaborative spirit and decisive leadership regardless of his role.

— Rean Da Costa — Behavioural + Data Scientist | Delivered 80% Improvement in data-driven decision-making among FTSE 100 companies utilising behaviour science | Ex national advisor