Finding Needles in Haystacks #2 | Fiston Ngabire

In our second interview for Finding Needles in Haystacks, Applied’s Community Lead, WuQing sat down with the Community Lead from Zipline, Fiston Ngabire to chat about his experience moving from a tech-focused role into a people-focused role.

What is your job title? What do you do and what is Zipline?

My job title is Community Lead. My responsibility is to create meaningful connections with our partners and with the communities, we serve at Zipline. Zipline is such a special place to work for many reasons, from our mission to the wide range of people we bring together. It was founded to be the fastest logistics system aimed to solve the world’s most complex access problems. We design, manufacture, and operate the world’s largest delivery system. We serve tens of millions of people around the world and promise customers that they are going to get what they need, regardless of where they live. We believe no one should be left behind when it comes to access.

My role is divided into two categories. My internal community role deals with inclusion and unification to keep the team committed to the company’s missions and values. My external role is about relationships, stakeholders, and partnership building. We ensure people understand what we are doing, and establish strong relationships with them to foster trust and community acceptance.

Drone technology is new. We need to make sure the local community understands what we do. We don’t want people to be afraid when they see a drone flying above them. We need people to understand what is going on.

What other ways do you get involved with communities?

Last year we donated books to the community library to improve educational access for children in the communities. During Zipline Rwanda’s 5-year anniversary, committed to increasing access to health care for vulnerable people by handing out 400 medical insurance premiums to reduce financial barriers to healthcare.

We’ve had initiatives to increase access to sanitary pads, especially in rural areas. Zipline Africa, in partnership with Ruby Love, donated 1,000 reusable period underwear in Ghana and over 23,500 disposable sanitary pads in both Ghana and Rwanda to young girls and women in deprived communities

We also organized over 50 blood donation exercises throughout 2021 and collected 6,700 units to support challenges associated with maternal mortality due to blood shortage which is prevalent in these areas

It sounds like you’ve made a lot of impact on so many different issues from periods to blood drives and people’s attitudes about drones. Is there a normal schedule for splitting your day between internal and external projects?

In a week, depending on the priorities we have, we’ll be working towards the quarter. Especially right now, we are now looking at new use cases like animal health. So now we’re trying to see how this will work and serve a lot of people. So this week, I’m going to need to engage external stakeholders and then I’m going to spend 60% of my time on the external side and then 40% on internal activities.

How big is the internal team that you’re currently managing?

We have two distribution centers in Rwanda. One is located in the south that has 60 people in 3 different departments. One department is Fulfilment operators who deal with medications and everything that we deliver to the hospitals and health centers, and they are the one who speaks with the customers on the ground. Another department deals with the improvement and maintenance of the drones (and anything to do with drones). Then there is the facilities team which also supports those people.

I can’t imagine how you managed to do both of those jobs. I’m very impressed that you can manage to do both of those roles, especially with 60 people.

We still have a lot of support on the country level, so we have a global team that supports us.

How did you manage to land this job? What was your career path to getting this job?

There are two things that I remember about my younger self even today: I’ve always been very curious and interested in tech. I remember when I was 10 years old in primary school my peers used to come to me to ask me to fix their headsets; like the ones I’m wearing now. And then everyone told me: “Hey, can you help us? Can you help teach us how you do it?” And that’s why I started seeing myself really loving technology.

I remember another time when I started secondary school and I bought a small FM radio. But with the radio, you had to buy a battery cell every week and I didn’t have a job to buy it so I thought — fine — I can just plug it into electricity. When I took my radio and plugged it in, of course, it just burned. And this is when I learned about alternative currents and learned those technical terms. Because I was curious and interested in electronics, it really pushed me to study electronics and telecommunication in secondary school. I kept pursuing it in university as well and then in 2015 that’s when I actually got my first job as a field engineer at a company called Zubacx that maintains ATM machines.

In 2019, I heard about Zipline and its mission and wanted to join a company using technology to solve real problems. So I joined Zipline as an engineer. Almost nine months later I switched to being a community lead which I’m really proud of because I was the first community leader who started in this role.

Was that a role that you pitched to the company? Or was there an open role you applied to, to transition from engineering to focus on people?

Zipline is a start-up company — we learn as we go. Rwanda was the first country in the world to use this technology. When Zipline began in Rwanda we only had 10 people on the team, because they were only serving a few hospitals, but now we’re serving more than 400 Health facilities across the country.

So we didn’t need a community back then. But by 2019, that’s when they said: “Hey, we think right now we need a community. We are moving more, across countries, and people should know what is happening. We now have more internal and external stakeholders.” We needed someone who could address people internally and externally. I spent more than 6 years in tech; hardware and software, so this was the best time to get leadership skills.

What was it like transitioning from a technical engineering job, into a leadership people job? How did you manage to upskill yourself quickly or learn on the fly? Or what was that like?

Oh my gosh. It was really very hard. I committed by asking what the challenge was and how I could solve it. As I said earlier, I’m very curious, so getting more feedback helped me to improve every day. In Rwanda, it was very hard to meet any other community leads because it’s such a new role. That also pushed me to learn and not take feedback personally, but treat it as a gift. I joined other global communities, learning how they do things.

That’s amazing. So you’ve been doing it for like three-ish years now. Do you think you have any main lessons that you would give to someone else that’s transitioning from a technical role to a leadership role?

Just telling people that it’s possible is important because most engineers don’t think they can switch from engineering to people management. I’m a living testimony that it’s possible to do it. If you have the courage to do it, if you love and care about people, you’re going to do it.

In engineering and the technical stuff, it’s easier to measure the impact, but on the people side, it’s very hard. You need to be patient and see the results. If you’ve written code and you want to see the results, you can see the results directly. But on the people’s side, that’s not how it works. But it’s really interesting and good work, being able to visit the community and then see the morale impact. If I ask them how many people know Zipline, a lot of people raise their hands but they wouldn’t really know anything about our hardware or software. The things thing they would know is that one day they were at the hospital waiting for blood, and not long after they were receiving it. Those are the impact stories that push me to work. These stories really impact our internal community as well — people are able to see how much their work is saving lives.

Do you think that there’s a specific initiative that you’re most proud of that has had the greatest impact?

The blood drives, supporting local communities, and making people feel part of the missions of saving lives all have a great impact. But right now, I’ve seen a lot of impact on the students. People are being inspired by Zipline, and want to learn about science and different technologies.

Tech, at least in the United States can be seen as a challenging industry to break into if you don’t have a technical background. You enter tech through the conventional way of being an engineer. Do you have any thoughts on how to make a recruitment process that encourages people from diverse backgrounds to be able to enter tech?

We need people to be represented from different backgrounds and different cultures. Of course, if they have the requirements they can apply, but if they don’t have all of the requirements, it’s also okay that they apply. We want to know what their motivations are. For example, on my team, I have people with backgrounds in psychology.

To avoid bias, people are interviewed by colleagues in Rwanda, Ghana, Nigeria, and the United States. We have people who are recruiting in all those countries; not just for that specific country, but for everywhere. When we look for candidates, we look at competency and candidate characteristics: courage, humility, and curiosity.

Do you think that recruitment seems to be quite effective and fair?

Sometimes the system is biased. I’ve spoken to other companies who want to do what Zipline is doing by not having just one person make the final hiring decision. For some other roles sometimes you might find that only one person is going to interview you which can easily trigger that bias — you could easily choose someone who’s going to look like you.

The best thing we can do is to have a system that can remove that kind of bias. The system prioritizes people from different backgrounds. One that doesn’t look for people that have a “good” education,” or if they studied abroad and all of that stuff.

This is sort of how Applied works — trying to address the system rather than either the individual hiring manager or candidate — but changing the process. How does the process work at Zipline?

I love the way Zipline approaches creating teams. We structure interviews to understand a candidate’s values. We test different skills and how they behave in situations on the technical side. So they have to come in, on the ground, to do a piece of work under a certain period of time to see how they do it. It also helps the candidate understand the road they are going down, and sometimes we even find that they didn’t really understand exactly what the role entailed.

We also connect the candidate with the people that do that job. For example, if you applied to be a flight operator, we’ll pair you with a flight operator and ask them if they think it’s something they can do. That’s why we end up having people with passion because they really understand interacting with people. It ensures that people understand the job and the role so that if they join the team, they probably won’t leave in 6 months or a year which I’ve seen in a lot of other companies.

It sounds like you’re doing recruitment pretty well at Zipline!

Well, we are trying! Right now, if you guys see, we have a much more diverse team which is something I’m really proud of.

And just having people from different districts, speaking different languages, and coming from different schools is great.

I remember someone teasing me about moving from an engineering role into the role that I am now, but I think it makes it a more fun place to be able to move around.

Do you use resumes or CVs in the first part of your recruitment process? Or do you use a work-sample question to evaluate people first? Because it sounds like your interview process is really great, but how do you begin?

So we start off by creating a list of questions, and we assess and invite them to do a take-home assignment. From there, we would invite them for a phone call interview, and then an in-person interview. Next, we would invite them to one of our centers. From there the team would have enough information to make a decision.

Finally, we would like to hear what you think about tech. I think that you kind of answered this earlier, but please share five words that you associate with tech.

For me, if I’m thinking about tech, it’s something really big; it’s the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, right? But for me now, and being on the other side of it, I always think of the impact of tech.

#1 is transformation. Zipline is transforming the way goods move. Every four minutes someone receives a Zipline package. We make sure the heroes of the world, the healthcare workers, have everything they need to do what they do best — save lives. When I see this transformation of logistics, I can only imagine what this sort of transformation will look like in 5–10 years. Imagine in 2021, Zipline delivered 143,520 packages to 2,295 different health facilities consisting of 256 unique products. 5.8% of these packages were emergency packages, ensuring that patients get instant access to critical supplies when it was needed the most. This sort of transformation in logistics can improve, change, and save many lives.

#2 is globalization. Trying to get out and connect with the world; technology is central to globalization now. It’s through technology that we extend social control, cost dimensions of space and time, technology determines how we interact, meet each other — and of course zoom — like right now, on this call!

For #3, I’d say communication. Everything that we do — transfer money instantly, medical deliveries, groceries — all happens through tech communication and a lot through social media.

For #4, I’d say productivity. We’ve been able to augment our capabilities to do more in less time.

And last but not least #5 is creativity. An idea that we were only able to have in our minds can now be set free and come to life in the physical world through technology.

Those are all very wonderful and optimistic views of tech — thanks for sharing them. It sounds like Zipline is an example of everything that can be good about tech.

Really great interview. Thank you so much!

Do you know someone who has had an unconventional path to where they are now? We’d love to chat with them — email Cam at haystacks@beapplied.com