The recently-launched 30 Under 30 awards are inviting us to recognise an emerging generation of leaders and trailblazers.
The flagship campaign and event is being presented by digital platform Gef and the island’s largest media and marketing organisation, Media Isle of Man, the publisher of the Isle of Man Examiner.
Amber Gaming is the headline sponsor and managing director, Jade Zorab, told us why she is so keen to promote the event.
She said: ‘We genuinely celebrate our people: that is so important to us and it’s at the heart of what we do. The recognition of talent is absolutely what we’re all about here.’
Amber Gaming, which provides compliance solutions for a worldwide list of gaming operators, has developed an impressive corporate culture where young people can thrive.
An impressive 37% of the company’s employees are under the age of 30 and this year 57% of promotions went to this cohort.
Jade explained why encouraging young talent is so important to the company.
She said: ‘We need to inspire people, because we are operating in a competitive marketplace for talent and there are lots of brilliant employers in the Isle of Man.
‘For us, it’s about being honest, and leading by example, really articulating what our culture is and then identifying talent within individuals and supporting their development here.
‘We like to consider people who are collaborative, who are creative, who are intelligent, who are hardworking: these kinds of core competencies are really important. Then obviously we consider the academia, what they’ve studied or what their experience is.
‘For us, it’s about putting them on a pathway to shape and mould their career. When we speak to prospective candidates that we are interviewing, it’s very much a two-way street: they need to get to know us and we’ve got to get to know them. They’ve got to believe in us and we do the same with them.
‘I always make the commitment that we will absolutely enhance their CV. We seek to really upskill them and develop them within the team which of course makes our business stronger and also, should they eventually leave us one day, their CV will be better than when they joined. That’s our promise to them and that’s something we absolutely live by.’
Amber Gaming is based in the Isle of Man with a presence in Malta and Guernsey and clients who are based globally including in Africa, Asia, Europe and the US.
ICE London, the world’s biggest gaming conference, which is held in February each year, provides the team with an opportunity for some of their younger employees to meet their clients face to face.
Jade said: ‘Every year we host an event in the Shard in London the night before the conference which probably just shows how our approach to these things is a little bit different. It’s really to celebrate together with our clients. We invite the regulators to attend, we have government representation there, and it’s a wonderful way to get to see everyone as our client base is so international. Because we’re a relationship business it’s so important to us.’
She went on: ‘We like to give our team an opportunity to travel, both from a connection point of view, to come and meet the people they interact with regularly, and also to broaden their own horizons - the ICE conference is a great place to learn on the job.’
The services Amber Gaming provides fall under three categories: consultancy, which encompasses a broad array of skill sets around regulatory compliance and licensing expertise; managed services, which provides corporate administration for the companies they look after, and their training division which provides a remote training platform to gaming operators featuring largely compliance-related subject matter.
Jade said: ‘We effectively are a gaming compliance division, supporting the gaming industry with compliance controls needed to comply with regulatory requirements. Through our group of companies, we also incorporate and deal with the administration of those gaming businesses, providing experienced directors and officers to them in addition.
‘We are pragmatic in that we help to keep operators and individuals involved in the businesses safe from a compliance perspective: that’s our role. We are honest with people, including our clients and we won’t just tell them what they want to hear. We’re all about balancing pragmatism with responsibility and that’s really key.’
Jade has some advice for ambitious young people with a vision for their future: ‘I’d say to work hard and believe in yourselves. You have to have the self-belief and you have to work really hard - if it was easy everyone would do it.
‘And I would also tell them just to collaborate and be kind. I think in our business that goes a really long way and it’s what I always look for when we recruit people. When interviewing, we always look for candidates with qualities of a team player because that element of collaboration is so important to us as a business and our culture.’