Q&A with Parisa Sadrzadeh, Director of Delivery Service Partners

Parisa joined Amazon over 10 years ago, progressing through a number of very impactful teams we've all interacted with in some capacity. I had the opportunity to connect with her recently on how she's managed build an effective and diverse team:

Which accomplishments at Amazon are you most proud of?

I feel lucky to have worked in a few different parts of Amazon over my past 10 years here, and the theme that I’ve really taken out of the various roles I’ve had is that my work has been laser-focused on reducing barriers for people to accomplish their life goals. From my first role in Amazon working in Kindle Direct Publishing, my team was focused on how we enable authors who may never have had the chance to professionally publish their work and reach a mass audience of readers to be able to do so within 24 hours, leveraging easy-to-use technology. When I transitioned to Operations seven year ago, I was able to help lead the launch of Amazon Flex, where we built technology and processes that enabled interested individuals to perform deliveries for Amazon in their spare time—even if they’d had no experience doing so before. Hearing the stories of how those drivers were able to accomplish personal goals with the earnings they were making in the program really made me proud of my team. And finally, in the role I’m in now, as we launched the Delivery Service Partner [DSP] program June of 2018, we were able to build an opportunity for entrepreneurs to launch successful delivery companies in partnership with Amazon—and the incredible reach of this program to not only the entrepreneurs themselves but to their local communities has been tremendous. I still get inspired nearly every day by the stories I hear from our partners around the world!

What do you miss most about working onsite at Amazon?

I simply miss just running into my coworkers, having hallway conversations and office drive-bys, and HAPPY HOURS! I’ve really appreciated people embracing an inclusive remote working environment with video conferencing, as I think that will last for a long time in our work space, but engaging with team members in person is definitely different—and I’m excited at the outlook of getting back to that a few days a week in the future.

What new skills or hobbies have you developed since we’ve been working remotely?

I was a fitness instructor (both spin and boot camp-style classes) in my “free time” before the pandemic, but sadly, my gym had to permanently close due to the constrained circumstances. I immediately got a Peloton once we started WFH, and have become quite obsessed with it! While working remotely, I’ve also evolved my work hours slightly to help me accommodate more family time than I’ve ever had before—particularly with my 18-month son at home, pretty much since he was born—and to enable me to block out consistent workout time to hop on the bike a few days of the week. Separate from that, we now have time for daily family walks, which has been an awesome new break in the day. Not really new skills or hobbies, but new perks of my day that I’ve really enjoyed!

What brings you passion/excitement to your role and team?

First, I love my team—they’re a group of passionate and talented leaders, coming from a diverse set of backgrounds, and I learn from them every day! It makes my job really fun to work with this crew, and the work we do enables us to wear many different hats—from solving hard technical problems, to building creative solutions to really human problems like safe driving, to enabling a growing group of partners around the world to build healthy teams of drivers and grow Last Mile coverage for customers. Second, I really love the work we do—I’ve been in Last Mile for 7 years now, and every year our challenges drastically evolve and continue to get more interesting. The pace in which we operate, the scale in which the operation grows, and the impact we have on drivers, partners, and customers around the world continues to be bar-raising for the industry—and I’m incredibly proud to be a part of it. Seeing the path ahead continues to just fuel my passion and excitement for this space.

How do you balance demands of work and personal goals?

I mentioned some of this in how I’ve managed working remotely, as I really cherish ensuring that the priorities in your life—whatever they may be, like working out, taking walks with your family, having family breakfasts, etc.—are truly built into your work days as much as possible. I stress to most of my team that balancing the demands of work and personal life are in the hands of each employee—from learning where to draw the right boundaries to your work hours (and some people’s work hours may be different from others, and that’s ok), to ruthlessly prioritizing your workload to ensure that you get the most out of every day. Study where you’re spending your time—do you need to be in those meetings or can you delegate to other team members; do you need to respond to all of the emails in your inbox, or can you delegate/assign decision-making to other more appropriate team members; at Amazon we really try to work smarter, not harder. When you balance prioritizing your headspace with ensuring you hold a hard line on maintaining the personal goals you want to accomplish, you can have a really healthy harmony between work and non-work life.

For more details on the Last Mile team and how you could help Parisa and her team, check out their jobs page or contact me for more info. The DSP team is hiring for SDEs, Product/Program Managers, Marketing experts and much more!