\nPlease see the interview with Elene Dgvepadze – Senior Investment Officer at the Asian Development Bank (ADB).<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Please tell us about your success story, what stages have you gone through, what difficulties have you faced and what stage are you at now?<\/strong><\/p>\n
The main reason for my success is my passion for my profession.\u00a0I always embrace challenges in my business life, I am always ready to learn something new and overcome difficulties. As a mathematician, crunching and analyzing numbers was a natural choice for me. After many years of experience in a commercial bank, I moved to the National Bank of Georgia, where my professional taste was enriched and shaped towards banking risks. In addition, I have always been attracted to the international experience in order to find out what is happening in the financial markets and in the economies of other countries.<\/p>\n
After the National Bank, I worked as a banking consultant for a German financial firm and for KPMG as a financial risk advisor. Today, I am a senior investment officer at the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in the Central and West Asia region in private sector financial institutions department. Difficulties arise at all stages of career development, but my biggest success is that I am surrounded by people with shared values, and I work in an organization where there are many possibilities to realize these values.<\/p>\n
How do you deal with challenges in your career? Can you think of the biggest challenge that you successfully overcame?<\/strong><\/p>\n
Working with the professional team at the National Bank of Georgia was a big challenge for me. It is one thing to deal with a specific business process of a bank, and quite another – to systematically analyze, measure and mitigate the financial risks of the banking sector. Professional challenges require constant self-improvement, which allows us to see more from a broader perspective. Because of that, I enrolled in a professional MBA at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, and simultaneously worked on the FRM (Financial Risk Management) international certification. Studying, traveling once a month for lectures and exams, working in parallel and being a mother of teenage boys was very stressful. For 3 years there were no weekends and holidays in my life, but I finally achieved what I aimed for.\u00a0\u00a0Education helped me to develop professional confidence and taste and experience – to develop intuition. These two things are natural and reliable basis for career advancement.<\/p>\n
What is your main motivation to keep moving forward?<\/strong><\/p>\n
First of all I\u2019m a mother\u00a0 and my children are my driving forces. Also, there is something else, which I would call professional curiosity or taste, something that does not give you a rest. The more you develop, the more novelties unfold in front of you and\u00a0engage you. This is a very interesting\u00a0process. For many years I lived with the guilt of not spending adequate time with my children and working and studying overtime. But the day my sons\u00a0looked into my eyes and said they were proud of their\u00a0successful mom,\u00a0all the guilt I was feeling vanished.\u00a0It was a turning point in my life.\u00a0\u00a0From now on, without feeling guilty, I can focus on my work with professional pleasure.<\/p>\n
When I face any difficulties in my career, I draw my strength from the support I have from my children, I like to think of myself as a role model for them. But, not only for my children, for women who want to break stereotypes and not stop their professional development, regardless of age or any other circumstances.<\/p>\n
As we know you are currently working with ADB (Asian Development Bank). Tell us about your current activities there, what position and direction you work in.<\/strong><\/p>\n
ADB, as you know, has two main arms, sovereign and private sector. I work for the private sector arm in Georgia Resident Mission. The banking sector in Georgia is quite developed, the shares of systemic banks are traded on the London Stock Exchange and banking system complies with the advanced Basel III capital adequacy and liquidity framework. Many regional countries are only now going through the challenges that the Georgian banking sector went years ago. Therefore, often, Georgian experience helps me a lot to better understand processes in other regional countries.<\/p>\n
ADB is a development bank with a mission to help financial institutions to fill gaps in inclusive finance, encourage women in business, enhance environmental protection and sustainable finance. Often, both arms of ADB work together on various development projects: the sovereign side helps build and strengthen the overall capacity of governmental institutions, while the private sector wing intervenes with providing funding to financial sector players. Participation in this type of project is even more interesting because it is more innovative and requires creative participation.<\/p>\n
Tell us a few words about your future plans, is there any initiative or project that you are planning to launch?<\/strong><\/p>\n
As I mentioned, ADB is a place where initiatives and innovations are encouraged to support green transformation, access to finance, and financial inclusion. Technology and digitalization are one of the powerful mechanisms to achieve these goals. Knowing the trends is the key to making the right funding decisions which develops countries\u2019 financial sectors. The plan is to expand my capacity and use it more effectively for various funding projects in the region.<\/p>\n
Finally, we will ask you our traditional question, what advice would you give to aspiring professionals and young people who are now taking their first career steps?<\/strong><\/p>\n
Build your career on the constant search for innovations and trust your professional intuition. Find what is “yours”, what you really like, what excites you and this will give you strength in the difficult period of your career advancement. Salary and promotion are not always a parallel process of professional advancement, but you should not let anything affect your inner world. Build your career on internal motivation, respect your colleagues, and appreciate their achievements. Enjoy the process, spend as much time as possible with more experienced colleagues to learn from their experience, and in turn always help others whenever and however you can. Find an environment that is in harmony with your values and dedicate yourself to the service of these values.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>