Maryam Rezaei
Chrissoula Manolakaki
Panos Chreppas
Stamatis Tsagias
Asimeni TountaIrini Rigopoulou
I am always so honored and extra happy when I come across educators doing the job they signed up for, as they should and even better! To inspire, motivate and develop their students to find their true goals and path in being the best at what THEY want! Sometimes just by listening to them with an open heart and a wide smile like Irini Rigopoulou’s can do just that! When I met Irini for our planned interview, I found her talking to a lovely young girl, handing out some leaflets. And most of us would have imagined that she probably knew her… but no… in the few minutes that she was waiting for me, she made a young girls life a bit more beautiful! By giving her attention and kindness while working at a difficult job and in the cold! And I will finish this paragraph by just saying that when I past the girl after the interview, she greeted me in such warmth and a huge smile! And there it is… it’s as simple as that, to make a small but so significant positive change!
This non-stop smiling woman, spreading love and kindness all around, is (or was… keep reading) an Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Athens University of Economics and Business! But let me introduce her properly and from the beginning… Irini Rigopoulou remembers herself from a young child to answer to the classic question “What do you want to be when you grow up” as: a tourist! Truly unique! Little did she know then that, that would actually happen at a certain extent! Maybe not as its meaning of visiting, but as in loving and embracing change! And she is all about change… trying new careers to develop herself each time a step further. Irini Rigopoulou started her career working for multinational companies in their marketing department, and travelled to cologne, Germany, through her job to get extra courses… and she met her husband and travelled back to start their company producing Bio and natural products. They were among the first to introduce to the market bio products through large supermarkets. Due to some of the shareholders they had to move on and Irini, started a new career; as a lecturer in different Universities and colleges. And from 2003 she joined the Athens University of Economics and Business as a lecturer and later as the assistant professor. But here is a twist; a few months ago, she decided to change her path again! After 13 years as a professor she took the almost impossible, and resigned as a fulltime professor and now she is a stand-in for the Masters and MBA course.
Through her time as a professor, she strongly believed in the well-being of her students and for them to achieve their goals she believed that they had to be “healthy” themselves first. So, she also besides the curriculum, coached them as well! And thus, started extra coaching and self-development program for the Master’s graduate students after taking courses herself through distance learning from the Cambridge University! Today she is making a positive change by helping other universities to follow this example.
Irini Rigopoulou is about well-being and development! When you meet her, you think she is a yoga teacher… so calm and kind with a constant smile on her face… and when get to know her you understand that she is a strategist and consultant with strong hands-on knowledge and experience in many fields! Stay tuned as she is about to change the game by introducing innovative services, mixing wellbeing and self-development with hard core strategy and consulting in business!
