🍨 The Inside Scoop — Zunaidi ‘Zoey’ Zainal Azmian 🇸🇬

Welcome to ADPList’s mentor interview series 🎉

My hope is that these interviews will serve as a useful resource for mentees who are looking and getting to know their mentors on our platform 💬

The amazing design mentor: Zunaidi ‘Zoey’ Zainal Azmian

• Favorite Emoji: 👀 — ‘oOoOoh show me show me’
• Plant lover: My mom always loved plants, we had so many greens in our garden. I naturally picked it up from her but it got a little out of control recently — oh well, a nice backdrop for my Zoom calls 😝.
• Current favorite song: Anything K-pop these days! I’m a Blink!
• Currently binge-watching: Just finished Kim’s Convenience.
• Current favorite movie(s): Big Fish (2003) — it’s kinda old!

👋 Hi, Zoey can you share a little bit about yourself?

I’m from KL, moved to Singapore 9 years ago. Before I got into UX, I was in advertising. Back then I spent a lot of time attending TV and magazine shoots and perfecting them through hours of post-production edits.

At the agency, I was working on a project with Hema (now my own personal mentor) who took a leap of faith and asked me to join her digital team in Singapore. I was fortunate to have a group of amazing, inspiring individuals in the team who helped me out.

2. Why did you want to become a mentor?

I think there is a philanthropic calling to share gathered experience, learnings, and challenges, with whoever may find it useful. Am also leveraging this to develop my leadership capabilities and build empathy.

Someone believed in me, it’s my turn to help people uncover their greatness, in my own way I guess.

Thanks, ADPList for this platform! And thanks to my bro/mentor / colleague Kevyn Leong for introducing me to ADPList!

3. Tell me something that would never come up in conversation

While most people find that I exude extraversion energy, those few who spend more time with me know well I’m most myself when I slow down and have quieter moments with my family and very few close friends.

I enjoy a lot of reflection time too, taking time to breathe and just be grateful 😊

4. What was the pandemic hobby that you picked up?

Taking care of my plant babies, adopting more plant babies, and oh I have a nanotank too!

5. What kind of impact are you making in the world using your design skills?

I think finding one’s greater purpose is so important. While we’re all on that journey, the least I can try doing is bridging one’s career aspirations with the project we get engaged to work on — set the shared expectations at the start, track along the way and have check-ins..

But.., if you’re asking about projects... Hmm, my team and I worked with the Ministry of Culture, Community & Youth (MCCY) (and other ministries too) to develop a nationwide volunteer platform.

The current project I’m working on is with SC Ventures where we’re partnering with Bukalapak (2nd largest e-commerce in Indonesia with over 100 million users) to launch a digital bank, seeking to provide financial empowerment to the underserved.

6. What kind of mentorship do you wish to provide and why?

1. I can be a bit long-winded in a way where I seek to understand the bigger picture and diagnose how to best help, beyond the initial request. If I’m being asked to simply review your case study, I’ll ask probe about where they are in their career journey, the purpose of developing the case study, find out what aspects of UX that bring them joy, and heck I’ll end up looking at the mentee’s entire portfolio and share my own experiences. I think it’s more helpful to look at the forest before zooming in unto the branches.

2. I want to help people believe in themselves.. Give them a nudge of confidence. Those who have reached out — they’re all awesome! At times a listening ear or someone to bounce ideas off with is all they need, just like I do!

3. I believe mentorship is best when it’s a substantial commitment than one-off sessions. So I always try to follow-up, and have actually met a mentee for coffee here in SG! Am hoping to do more of that.

7. Tell me about a time when you didn’t know if you would make it and how you overcame it

I was a scrum master once for a delivery project... There were over 40 people engaged, and I was a scrum master to 11 in my team.

So many intense, unnerving moments, all on top of the working weekends and long days that lasted for about a year.. What pulled us through was having such an amazing team. That really showed how having genuine, inclusive energy can be so empowering and served as a driving force for all of us.

Many in the team have now long moved on into other projects and career pathways, yet that same energy still reunites us from time to time.

8. What are the three most common questions you get as a mentor?

Hmmm top of mind;

1. Is my portfolio good enough?

2. What’s the difference between working in consulting, agency, or in-house?

3. Can you help me with an upcoming interview?

9. If there is one thing you could tell every single mentee you meet, what would that one piece of advice be?

Always believe in yourself, before having others believe in you.

Learn how to transition into UX and do your design skills with Zoey —

🤙 Feel free to book a call with Zoey on ADPList: Link here

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