Riccardo Leonardo
Supply chain lead in Zurich. Volleyball coach. Builder of small useful things.
Bienne
Video introduction
Gallery
Values
Straight talk
I would rather say the uncomfortable thing early than let a problem grow quietly. That means telling a client when a deadline is unrealistic, and telling a colleague when their idea is better than mine.
Finish what I start
Ideas are cheap and abundant. I care about the unglamorous middle part, the week when the project stops being exciting and still needs to be delivered properly.
Curiosity before judgement
When something surprises me, my first question is what I am missing, not who got it wrong. Most of what I have learned came from people whose reasoning I did not understand at first.
Leave people better equipped
Every role I have held, I have measured partly by what the person after me inherited: cleaner processes, documented decisions, someone I trained who can now do it without me.
Protect the time that matters
I train four evenings a week and I am home for dinner. Those limits make me sharper at work, and I have never seen the version of me that skips them produce better results.
Proud moments
Coaching a team nobody expected to finish the season
2023, Community I took over the under 15 team in November, after two coaches had already left. Half the squad had stopped showing up. We did not win much, but every single player finished the season, and three of them are now assistant coaches themselves. That mattered more to me than the table.
Learning German at 34, badly and in public
2021, Learning I moved without the language and spent a year being the slowest person in every room. I made mistakes in meetings, asked people to repeat themselves constantly, and kept going. I am still not fluent, but I now run client calls in German, and I lost the fear of looking incompetent while learning something.
Saying no to a promotion
2019, Personal I was offered a role I would have been good at and would have hated. Turning it down cost me two years of progression and probably some goodwill. It also kept me in the work I actually care about, and it is the decision I would make again fastest.
Achievements
- 2012
Finished the Jungfrau Marathon after two failed attempts
SportTwo thousand metres of climbing and a fifteen minute margin on the cut off. I had abandoned it twice before. What I actually learned was how to train for something eighteen months out without losing interest in month four.
- 2016
Completed a part time master's while working full tim
EducationThree years of Saturdays. My thesis on supply chain resilience was not brilliant, but I wrote it during a period when quitting would have been entirely reasonable, and I did not.
- 2018
Built and sold a small booking tool for local sports clubs
EntrepreneurialStarted because my own club was managing registrations on paper. It reached forty clubs before I sold it to a competitor for a modest amount. My first real lesson in how much of a product is support, not code.
- 2921
Led the team through a merger without losing a single person
WorkEighteen months of uncertainty, two reorganisations, and eleven people who all chose to stay. I spent more time on individual conversations that year than on anything measurable, and it was the right allocation.
- 2024
Set up a monthly repair café in my neighbourhood
CommunityTwelve volunteers, a room borrowed from the church, and around four hundred objects fixed instead of thrown away. It runs now without me, which was the point.
Beyond work
Volleyball coach, U16 girls
Volleyball coach, U16 girls · TV Wollishofen · 2019 to today
Two training sessions a week plus weekend matches. I took the group when they were eleven and most of them are still there. The technical part is the easy half; the rest is teaching fifteen year olds how to lose a match without turning on each other.
Volunteer
French conversation table for newcomers · Rotes Kreuz Zürich · 2021 to today
Ninety minutes every second Tuesday, sitting with six or seven people who have just arrived and want to practise. I mostly listen and correct gently. It made me a considerably more patient colleague.
Board member
treasurer · Quartierverein Enge · 2022 to 2025
Responsible for a budget of around forty thousand francs, the annual accounts and the funding requests to the city. Unglamorous work that taught me how much of community life depends on someone doing the paperwork properly.
Guest lecturer
Introduction to logistics · HWZ Zurich · 2023 to today
Two sessions per semester for bachelor students. Preparing to explain something to twenty two year olds is the fastest way I know to find out whether I actually understand it.
Projects
Bergfex Notes
Founder and sole developer
A trail journal app for hikers who want more than a GPS track: a photo, a note and a weather snapshot per outing, then an automatic year in review. Around four thousand users, roughly two hundred paying. Built evenings and Sunday mornings since 2022. The hardest part has never been the code, it is answering support emails at eleven at night in three languages.
Znüni
Co-founder
A pooled ordering tool for office snack deliveries, built with a friend in 2020. We got eleven Zurich offices using it before the pandemic emptied every one of them. We paused it rather than pretend, and I keep it here because the two months of customer interviews taught me more than the two years of building that followed.
Social links