Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Mapping how projects,
people, and systems
connect.

Business Adoption Coordinator and PMO professional with 4+ years leading digitalization, cybersecurity, and process-optimization projects — currently applying to PhD programmes in business studies.

M.Sc. Business Administration, Goethe University Frankfurt English C2 · German C1 · 3 native languages

Use the switch above — Recruiter or Researcher — to bring what matters to you to the front.

See the work → Get in touch
01 · About

A connector by training and by nature.

I'm a Business Adoption Coordinator at CMS Legal, where I run global projects end-to-end — from cybersecurity audits across 26 member firms to AI-driven automation. Before that, I helped a factoring company in Baku digitize its lending, sales, and ERP systems.

What ties it together is a habit of noticing how things depend on each other — teams, budgets, vendors, industries. It's why my Bachelor's thesis studied agile transformation, my Master's studied how markets react to corporate controversy, and why I spend time outside work on side projects, independent reading, and training around these same questions. I'm currently applying to PhD programmes to take that habit further.

5+ yrsEnd-to-end project delivery
26 firmsProjects delivered across global firms
60–70%Manual effort cut via AI-assisted PMO workflows
5 langsNative/professional across EN · DE · TR · AZ · RU
02 · Experience

Work history

Each project expands for detail. Tags marked BOTH matter under either lens.

The nature of the work

Every project below is one of a small set of fundamental project-management archetypes. Click a category to see exactly where it shows up.

Where the work has taken me

Home base in Frankfurt — with onboarding work across four countries, programme reach across 24 CMS member-firm jurisdictions, and a year and a half rooted in Baku.

Home base CMS member firm / onboarding
CMS Legal

Business Adoption Coordinator

Frankfurt am Main, Germany · 2025 – Present
Global Cybersecurity Audits 2024/25 + 2026
  • Led end-to-end project management (RFP through closure) of a cybersecurity audit initiative spanning 26 CMS global member firms, coordinating external vendors on penetration testing and controls audits, remediation tracking, and reporting.
  • 2024/25 cycle: nearing closure — 22 of 26 firms fully remediated, 4 remaining in active remediation for major findings.
  • 2026 cycle: scaled into a full programme with two independently managed workstreams (pentesting, controls audits) under separate vendors; owned RFP process plus governance, reporting cadence, scheduling, and resource management.
Global Cybersecurity Insurance
  • Supported initiation, definition, and early execution phases of establishing global cybersecurity insurance coverage, alongside the audit programme work; later handed over to a vendor project manager for contractual matters.
Member Firm Onboarding
  • Led end-to-end onboarding of India as a new CMS member firm; provided onboarding assistance for Mauritius, Sweden, and Mozambique.
Personalization Module
  • Took over the Personalization Module initiative at proof-of-concept stage and led it through Phase 2 — a module designed to sit above the client portal and related digital portals, letting any user manage their own personalized environment: what they see, and how they see it. Delivered flawlessly through Phase 2 before being deprioritized at an organizational level due to reprioritization, unrelated to project delivery.
Client Due Diligence (CDD/KYC) Digitalization
  • Led end-to-end project management of a firm-wide Client Due Diligence digitalization initiative, digitizing the entire CDD process across CMS — delivered flawlessly through the execution phase before being deprioritized at an organizational level due to controversy over project need, unrelated to project delivery.
PMO Governance & Budget Monitoring
  • Own budget forecasting and expenditure reporting (~€1M total budget, up to 20 budget lines, monthly reporting cadence), while contributing to evolving PMO governance frameworks as the function matures.
Global Client Reporting
  • Helped establish and launch a global client reporting initiative consolidating client data across all 26 CMS member firms; ongoing monitoring now owned by the lead PM.
AI/ML-Driven PMO Process Automations
  • Designed and implemented AI-assisted workflows enabling project managers to maintain accurate, up-to-date logs with minimal manual effort — cutting manual log-update time by roughly 60–70%.
CMS Legal

Working Student

Frankfurt am Main, Germany · 2023 – 2025
OMNI 2025 Strategic Programme
  • Provided cross-functional support across the OMNI 2025 digital strategy programme — including digital presence/website renewal, CDD/KYC, and client terms — involved in most stages of delivery: planning, coordination, and deliverable preparation.
Change Advisory Board — Secretary until 2024
  • Served as secretary and point of contact for the Change Advisory Board, the governing body overseeing organizational changes above a defined impact/risk threshold.
PMO Governance & Budget Monitoring — Assistance
  • Supported budget and expenditure reporting to assist PMO governance oversight during this earlier phase of the role.
Global Partners Summit 24/25 — PMO Prep
  • Project-managed the PMO's preparation for the Global Partners Summit — an international gathering of CMS partners — coordinating readiness for a PMO presentation and a dedicated product promotion booth.
Finance Module Replacement "Yooz"
  • Supported business analysis for a project digitizing invoice management and expenditure reporting within the finance department using the "Yooz" system, replacing manual processes; strategically implemented in 2025.
Ferrum Capital CJSC

Project Manager

Baku, Azerbaijan · 01/2022 – 09/2022
CityFinance — Gold-Secured Loan Platform
  • Led development of an internal system to manage loans secured by gold deposits for CityFinance (Ferrum Capital's lending subsidiary), replacing a manual, unoptimized process. Served around a dozen internal users and supported roughly 5M AZN in annual loan transactions.
B2B Sales Management Process Optimization
  • Following successful delivery of the loan platform, assigned to map current B2B sales processes and prepare optimization proposals.
Partner Portal
  • Led an initiative to build a customized partner-facing portal giving partners self-service access to their own data analytics and pending case status.
Website Re-Branding & CMS Development
  • Engineered and developed the content management system underpinning the company's re-branded website (rebranding/design led independently by others).
ERP: Monolith → Microservices
  • Ran definition and initiation phases of an ERP transformation from monolithic to microservice architecture, handing off to a vendor for execution.
Start-Up Evaluations & Innovative Product Research
  • Participated in a cross-functional team evaluating feasibility of start-up and alternative-business ideas aligned with the firm's expertise and partnership interests.
Task Management System Migration first project
  • Designed and rolled out a unified task management system on Notion, enabling cross-departmental collaboration on project and operational work. Adopted by around 150 users across 6 departments.
Waterfall → Agile Transformation
  • Supported the organization's transition from waterfall to agile practices — directly informed by, and informing, Bachelor's thesis research on the same topic.
Ferrum Capital CJSC

Junior Marketing Specialist

Baku, Azerbaijan · 09/2021 – 01/2022
Customer Data Cleaning & Analysis
  • Supported the data analysis team in cleaning and structuring B2B and B2C customer data, enabling more complete customer/partner profiling; helped define which reports were needed for marketing use cases.
Content Creation & Campaign Promotion
  • Used the resulting customer data to help design and execute marketing and promotional campaigns.
Partner Interviews & Video Production
  • Led a promotional campaign involving interviews with existing partners, producing video content from the material.
Ferrum Capital CJSC

Intern Product Owner

Baku, Azerbaijan · 08/2021 – 09/2021
Mobile Wallet Application Product Development
  • Led definition and initiation phases of a mobile wallet product from the outset; project halted during execution due to inability to secure licensing for required underlying infrastructure.
Industry Best-Practices Research
  • Conducted both as standalone, on-request research and as direct input feeding into the mobile wallet product effort.
03 · Skills

Toolkit

Technical & Data

PythonRSQL & Data Architecture Power BIExcel VBAHTML/CSS/JS React · Vue · Next.jsBloomberg Terminal

AI & Automation

AI Prompt EngineeringAI Cost OptimizationAI Workflow / Agent Config Power AutomatePower AppsDevice Automation

PM & Collaboration Platforms

MS PlannerJira / ConfluenceWellingtone Accelerator+ NotionSlackMS 365Google WorkspaceMS Dynamics

Programme Management — Frameworks

Scrum · Kanban · XP · DSDMRisk / Criticality Frameworks Project Planning & WBSRFP LeadVendor Management Process OptimizationERP Transformation

Business & Analysis

Business AnalysisChange Management Stakeholder ManagementRequirements Gathering

Marketing & Content

Content CreationVideo ProductionGoogle/Meta Ads & Analytics

Domain Knowledge

Cybersecurity FundamentalsMITMSQL/HTML Injection PhishingHardware InjectionSecurity Controls
04 · Education & Research

Academic background

Application in progress
Multiple universities

PhD, Business Studies

Direction to be finalized — organizational change, technology adoption, innovation, strategic management, data-driven decision-making, and firm–market–institution interaction.
10/2022 – 04/2026

M.Sc. Business Administration

Goethe University Frankfurt

Thesis: "Market Cost of Controversy: Stock Price Reactions to Consumer Boycotts"

GPA: 2.7 (German scale, 1.0 = highest) — equivalent to a strong "good" / upper-second-class result.

09/2018 – 07/2022

B.Sc. Business Administration

Azerbaijan State University of Economics (UNEC), Baku

Thesis: "Analysis of the Impact of Agile Methodology on Organizational Performance: In the Case of a Chosen Company"

GPA: 93.7 / 100.0

09/2007 – 07/2018

High School

School Nr. 249, Khatai Region, Baku

Final grade: 5/5 (top grade, Azerbaijani scale)

05 · Personal Projects

What I build when no one's asking.

Paused — compute-limited

Global Industrial Inter-dependency Mapping

A network mapping ~150,000 nodes of global products and services against UNSPSC standards, marking interdependencies by criticality, dependency type, and substitutability. Planned extensions: broaden classification beyond UNSPSC and enrich dependency attributes.

Live export from the working graph database — a real neighborhood within the larger dataset, built in Neo4j.

Neo4j Bloom graph visualization of a neighborhood within the global industrial inter-dependency dataset
MVP built

Financial Portfolio Management Tool

A Python MVP built on the premise that concentration risk is underweighted in conventional portfolio management — not just through volatility/beta, but through regional and market-level dependencies of the underlying businesses. Adjusts portfolio weighting logic to account for these overlooked factors.

Active

NFC Chip Functionality Exploration

Ongoing exploration of novel application and app-layer use cases for existing NFC chip capabilities — no hardware modification, focused on identifying new functional possibilities.

06 · Certificates & Languages

Credentials

Certificates

TestDaF4,4,4,4 (TDN 16)
Google IT Support SpecializationGoogle
PMI PMPOngoing

Languages

EnglishC2
TurkishNative
AzerbaijaniNative
GermanC1 (TDN 16)
RussianB1

Let's talk about what connects next.

najmisafarzade@gmail.com +49 015510373852 Frankfurt am Main, Germany