"The master program has given me a path to this profession, for what I will be forever grateful."

Pavel Volosciuc, a ZLOGger ‘11 from Moldova, is always on the go. He has recently accepted employment with Amazon as Program Manager, having worked previously for Accenture, Vestas and KPMG. From Russia, Denmark and Germany, to Luxembourg. This is surely an adventurous career path so far.

Congratulations on your latest post! You must be very excited about all the new challenges ahead?
Thank you. Indeed, truly excited about the opportunity to join such an innovative and customer focused company as Amazon. It is rare for a business to both grow at 20% per year and have more than 100 Billion USD in revenue. That combination creates unique culture, operational challenges and potential for professional growth. Needless to say, when it comes to supply chain management, the scale and complexity, at which Amazon operates, makes it an exciting place for a ZLOGger.

How do these new responsibilities compare with those of previous jobs? Are they more demanding or simply different?
Probably both. The pace at which the company is growing, as well as the amount of highly motivated and knowledgeable employees, creates a rather demanding work environment. One of the Amazon leadership principles is called “Bias for Action”, and from first glance, I can tell that initiatives that would be planned on a 2-3 year horizon in other companies, here get initiated and delivered in a year’s time. My new role as Program Manager, will require a combination of all previously learned skills and much more. Issue driven approach, project and stakeholder management from consulting, as well as ability to work with large data sets from auditing will be key to finding solutions to problems. Working in cross-functional teams and constantly learning from colleagues will be required to deliver these solutions, make them sustainable, and grow my skillset along the way.

Specifically, how has the ZLOG master program influenced your career path? What are the most significant aspects of the master that you have applied at work to achieve success?
In my case, before coming to ZLOG, I had no prior experience in supply chain management or logistics. The master program has given me a path to this profession, for what I will be forever grateful. In terms of specifics, I believe ZLOG most importantly provides unmatched end-to-end knowledge of supply chain management concepts and gives students the practice grounds to learn how to effectively work in diverse teams. These two pillars are the foundation of achieving success in operations within large multinational companies.

Russia, Denmark, Germany and now Luxembourg – do you embrace the change of lifestyle, or is this also a challenge for you?
This was never my plan, and at the same time, I have never shied away from taking on a new challenge, no matter which country it brings me to. It doesn’t come without drawbacks, but moving around is something to be expected if you truly want to maximize the learning curve and experience gained during the initial stages of one’s career.