Krish Raja is Managing Director at Captify AU. With a digital career spanning over a decade, with previous roles at companies including Amobee, Nine and Microsoft. We asked who his digital hero is.
Who is your digital hero?
My first ever manager, Liz Adeniji who hired me as a grad into the Microsoft team (a team that was at the bleeding edge of data driven advertising back in 2008 and had what is now some of the industry’s most tenured talent).
She won’t ever let me forget that I told her I had been a standup comedian in my first interview. She asked me to tell a joke on the spot, and I practically hid under the table!
What has she done to win hero status in your eyes?
Aside from hiring me in to Microsoft which was an incredible start to my career, Liz taught me the most valuable leadership lesson of my career to date (even 15 years later) – that a great leader does not use the hard work of their direct reports to make themselves look good, they instead work hard to spotlight and celebrate the great work done by their direct reports.
Rising with the tide of your talent by being generous to your team is the right way to lead, instead of leaning on others to get to the top. Only secure leaders can do this. To be specific, Liz really championed me in my first years and made sure everyone knew who I was and what I was known for. It’s something that had a huge amount of knock on effects for my career in a positive way due to the reputation she built me.
How has her heroism helped drive digital?
Liz has been an absolute force every single minute of every one of my interactions with her. She’s always been very principled, straightforward, strong and non-political while championing those around her.
Those values and principles would be enough alone but her career trajectory speaks for itself, with tenure at Salesforce, Yahoo, Twilio with promotions in all businesses and participation in multiple startups to boot.
That kind of track record requires you to add a lot of value consistently within your role, be a great negotiator, communicator and respected leader. As I mentioned above, that first Microsoft team was like the ‘Digital All Stars’ team and Liz is one amongst many in that team who are Digital Heroes that still lead the way today across the UK, USA and Australia.
What the biggest challenges in digital we need another hero to solve?
It’s easy to look at the last few years and be tempted to think ‘finally, things can get back to normal after a pandemic and recession soon’. Think again.
With AI, we’re about to experience the most intense revolution to all businesses, teams, economic structures and workflows we’ve ever seen within the coming five years, and not that many people are prepared. Even a lot of people that work in digital or adtech businesses are barely prepared for what’s coming, let alone those working in non-digital businesses or those who are non digital natives.
The next heroes of digital will work relentlessly to not just embrace AI, but shepherd as many people as they possibly can into the new world of AI driven business safely without getting left behind.
5What is your most heroic personal achievement so far in digital?
My proudest personal achievements are usually either to leave businesses in such a strong position that they succeed even more after I leave, or to be instrumental in the design & GTM of a digital product and then hear it spoken about years later in the industry.
I feel as though I’ve managed to accomplish this in most of my roles to date, whether that be at Microsoft, Nine, Singtel or Captify. But to be honest, I sincerely hope my best digital achievements are yet to come!
