Aquicore is a company that creates global impact by connecting people to buildings.

This impact would not be possible without the employees of this company; which is why one of our core values is unity. We believe as a team we can accomplish anything. This month we would like to highlight an employee who has had a major influence on the culture of unity at Aquicore, Cyrus Movaghari. 

Cy is Aquicore’s Director of People. If you know Cy you know how much he loves interacting with people, this quality is where his interest in this field sparked. In the past, multiple sales executives have tried to convince him to join the sales world, but he realized that his passion is more for selling a vision rather than selling a product. Although coming out of school “People” or “HR” was not his primary focus, his first job was at an e-commerce coupon shop as a recruiter. Cy along with a dozen other people were selected to help recruit, staff, and onboard over 100 people for the company’s satellite office. Recruiting was his first taste in the world of talent. 

Before joining the team, Cy had never heard of Aquicore. He was presented with the opportunity when he was approached by his predecessor at Aquicore over LinkedIn. Cy took the call as a chance to hear more about another growing DC tech company. He quickly fell in love with the vision of the organization and the team that he would inherit. “I’ve been very lucky here at Aquicore, we’ve had a lot of wins over the past two years and a lot of that comes down to the foundation that was placed before I got here. I’d like to think that I've either kept or exceeded the bar that was set before me and elevated AQ to the next level.” 

This year a  pandemic emerged and employees had to work from home. Cy was instrumental in the strategy to make sure everyone was equipped to work as efficiently as possible. Like most organizations, we were in an awkward position of “wait and see” as the future was unknown. Cy emphasized that while large organizations out west have the luxury or infrastructure to work remotely at the flick of a switch, we had to build out many of our practices as a company. To the credit of our Product and Engineering teams at Aquicore, we had examples of best practices we could expand upon. This period of time was a major culture shift for Aquicore as we have always been a company of helping the person next to you, but with ZOOM and other forms of technology it wasn’t long before we were back on track. 

Employee engagement has always been a top priority at Aquicore. It has been especially important during this crazy time of chaos in the world that our employees feel supported and are provided engagement opportunities as the company all works from home.  When asked about employee engagement strategies during this period of time, Cy stated that a lot of the credit has to go to the core values the company has in place. He said that from the get-go we hire people that want to do right by the company and their colleagues. So from a productivity perspective Cy only felt there was a short adjustment period and then the company found its way back to the swing of things. 

It was the company’s priority to  also focus on holistic wellbeing for our team. With that in mind, consultants and speakers were brought in to guide us through difficult conversations, meditated breathing, and cooking classes driven by the employees. 

Over the past few quarters, we’ve taken a harder look at our internal best practices around diversity and inclusion which includes recruiting, empowerment and highlighting existing resources for underrepresented minorities. We created our first Employee Resource Group and acknowledged there is more work to be done. We’re not perfect but we’ve got an incredible employee base that keeps us honest and helps drive the changes we need to make. 

Fireside chats with our CEO was also recently started to give employees an opportunity to hear where we are in the world, how we want to grow, and share how they believe we can get there. Cy believes that these fireside chats are unique to Aquicore as the size of our organization allows the opportunity for our CEO to understand the pulse of the organization and hopefully gives our employees a space to give direct feedback to the CEO. 

At Aquicore, Cy doesn’t necessarily solve problems, but helps to create solutions. He believes his job should not be to fix an issue but to help create a solution and drive scaleable change. There is no question that Cy absolutely fights fires on an hourly basis, but his hope overtime is to enable the growth of the company so the “machine” can take care of itself over time. Cy is inspired by the people around him. “I’m in awe of the new hires we bring into the organization who want to drive the business forward. These are folks that have been here less than a year that have really made a difference.” He is also inspired by some of our leaders. “People always think it's fun/easy to be at the table but I’d like to highlight a lot of the sleepless nights our leaders have gone through to help get us to the level we’re at today.” Cy believes that our team genuinely lives by the core value of Unity and that is what keeps him coming in everyday!

Interested in joining our team? Check out our careers page.