Cost:

Free for FWA Members  |  Non-Members: $10

Registration closes at 11:59 pm EST on Mar 17, 2025.

 

Description: 

Join FWA President Annette Stewart and featured guests for Transition Tuesdays!

This forum will gather via zoom on one Tuesday of each month from 6-7 pm. Come share space with other FWA members for support and tips on advancing your career and navigating professional transitions. Sessions will be interactive and are open to all experience levels. This month Annette will be joined by Marat Khandros, Diana Najda, and Alex Spyridakos for a discussion of this session's topic, "Unlocking Potential: The Power of Continuous Learning in Tech."

Bios:

Marat Khandros

Marat started in the tech world as a Java developer in 2004 after graduating Polytechnic University (now part of NYU) in Comp Sci, and Masters in IT Mgmt right after. Throughout the next decade or so, he worked in tech giants such as Veritas, CenturyLink and Symantec until moving to the banking industry aka RBC.  The common thread was automation and self service capabilities to internal clients including developers, site reliability engineers, and data engineers; essentially safely mitigating time intensive process and manual toil from the equation, implicitly injecting agility into the tech stack.

At RBC, Marat spent 8 years in Tech Infrastructure - constantly solving problems through code, and (unbiased, fact driven) data driven insights before moving to the Digital Channels part of the organization, managing shared platforms that underpin RBC’s Online, Mobile and Direct Investing systems.  Any success he has seen is owned to amazing partnerships and brilliant people who live/breath technology.

Diana Najda

Driven by curiosity and powered by sunshine, Diana Najda is the observability guru on the digital platform engineering team at Royal Bank of Canada (RBC). Her team concentrates on providing reusable services and components, all consumable in a scalable self-service model to its development community.

Diana is responsible for delivering the overall technical strategy to ensure that all code released automatically has effective observability from initial deployment. She also oversees RBC’s digital end-to-end integration and automation with observability tooling to deliver world-class “everything as code” products to support the pace and complexity of the enterprise's business priorities.

When not pushing the envelope of end to end Observability, you can find Diana enjoying bike rides around the city, checking up on the capybaras at High Park, getting lost on hikes throughout the Don Valley, enjoying conversation on patios with friends, curling up with a good book, and going up to the cottage with family.

Alexandra 'Alex' Spyridakos

Alexandra began her journey at RBC as a software developer intern in 2021 during her studies of Software Engineering at Concordia University (Montreal, QC). Over the years she has built her network at RBC to grow into her role from developing online banking apps to the world of digital platform engineering, wherein she presently holds a full-time role.

Currently she is honing her skills in full stack development and expanding her skillsets through working with interdisciplinary teams across RBC's business units. Alexandra is passionate about delivering excellent user experiences and amplifying the impact of projects through increased visibility and user-driven software development.

She credits much of her success to the strong mentorship and support in her career journey thus far and actively seeks opportunities to pay this forward to future generations.