Episode
#170 | From Startup Garage to Microsoft MVP: How Continuous Learning Builds Unbreakable Tech Leaders w/ Amit Chandak, @ex-Oracle, @Kinerika
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- Jun 18, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3031
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Summary
▶︎ #170 | From Startup Garage to Microsoft MVP: How Continuous Learning Builds Unbreakable Tech Leaders w/ Amit Chandak, @ex-Oracle, @Kinerika In this episode of the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast, Aleksandra sits down with Amit Chandak, CTO and Data & AI Lead at Kinerika, a Microsoft Fabric Featured Partner operating at the forefront of cloud data engineering. Amit's career spans three distinct environments: a 10-year co-founder journey building a BI tool from a two-person apartment startup to a 50-person product company, senior engineering leadership at Oracle, and now heading data and AI strategy at a fast-scaling services organization. In 2022, he became a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for his exceptional contributions to the Power BI community - a recognition earned through over 17,000 community solutions and years of relentless self-directed learning. The episode opens with a question that shapes the entire conversation: what actually separates the leaders who compound their impact over time from those who plateau? Amit and Aleksandra dig deep into the IC-to-leader transition - one of the most structurally underestimated challenges in tech organizations. Amit is precise about what gets lost in that shift: the identity of being the best individual performer becomes a liability when your actual job is to build an environment where the team outperforms what you ever could alone. For anyone navigating the tension between lifelong learning and burnout, building a tech team from scratch, or making the mental shift from individual contributor to people leader - this episode delivers the kind of practical clarity that only comes from someone who has lived every stage of that journey. ✉︎ FOLLOW AMIT ON: ⤵︎ LinkedIn: @amitchandak YouTube: Amit Chandak ✉︎ FO…