Interview with Albana Vrioni, CEO of Vrioni Consulting & Founder of “Women On Boards Albania”. From Monitor Magazine.
Albana Vrioni is known for transformative changes and generative growth in the business world. With a rich career spanning international relations, marketing, project management, and business administration, she has helped many companies and leaders achieve measurable positive results.
Ms. Vrioni has a holistic approach to business performance, including profit, employee well-being, organizational culture, and ecosystem impact.
She founded “Women On Boards Albania” to empower women in the business world and increase their representation on boards, bringing sustainable and profound change to Albanian society.
As she emphasizes,
“The path to success requires a continuous commitment to innovation and adaptation.”
She also highlights the importance of the role of women in business, saying that “women bring a unique and essential perspective to the decision-making table.”
Can you tell us something about yourself and your professional journey so far?
I am a mechanical engineer by core education, and I have furthered my education and development in the field of international relations and European lobbying, international marketing and strategy, as well as in business administration.
I have continuously enriched this foundational knowledge with specialized knowledge in transformative business changes, digital strategies for business performance improvement, and those of growth and expression of human and leadership potential.
From working with state leaders in 1994-1996, I moved into management consulting and the direction of business process digitization projects, initially at “Unisys,” one of the top five in the IT industry. Combining my investment in exploring new fields and knowledge and taking on responsibilities even when I wasn’t fully ready for them, I had rapid professional advancement.
When I joined the executive team of an IT services company that had just been acquired by another company and had to transition from “start-up” to “scale-up,” I had a wonderful challenge that not only allowed me to lead a very creative team but also to enable the growth of the portfolio of innovative products and, with it, the business and the team by 300%.
This gave me the confidence to create Vrioni Consulting in 2010, a consulting company that offers innovative solutions and integrates advancements in neuroscience, quantum consciousness, the “mind-brain-body” connection, and holistic growth into work models.
Since 2005, I have been engaged in organizations that support the advancement of women in their careers and women entrepreneurs. European Women On Boards Albania, European Women Management Development, Femmes Chefs D’Entreprise, and Femme d’Europe are some of them.
How do you balance your professional and personal life? Do you have any secrets for time and stress management?
I don’t hide that my day has a tight schedule. Having broad interests, being curious by nature, and being entrepreneurial, I tend to embrace a lot.
What helps me is clarity in activities that matter and clarity in what I aim to achieve. Whenever I have achieved something, it has proven to me that the alignment of these two elements has been at the foundation of the achievement. Do I lose focus or balance? Plenty of times, but I pay attention to regain it quickly.
In moments of difficult choices, I return to advice that matters to me.
My father’s words:
“People who achieve something have valuable goals; others have wishes”
help me prioritize what serves the primary goal. I have a selection of mantras from the practice of “mindfulness.” “This too shall pass,” is one of them. I have also realized that stress is often an expression of the tension between ambitions and possibilities, between solutions that align with my values and those that don’t.
Taking time to assess this tension helps me restore balance and calm. When one day I read Churchill’s phrase, “I have eaten many of my words and I have found the diet nourishing,” I felt in it an articulation of what often helps me to stay grounded, take a step back, and learn from experience so as to take another step forward.
What motivated you to create “Women On Boards Albania” and what was the decisive moment that made you take this step?
There have been several catalyzing evolutions that came to a meeting point.
An internal long-held desire steamed from engagement with several well-known organizations dedicated to empowering women in leading roles and a suitable context related to our preparatory efforts to become members of the European Community while experiencing rapid population aging and significant intellectual and labor migration.
A favorable moment also in terms of connection with three exceptional women committed to joining forces and starting a joint journey and an emotional push from understanding the untapped potential of the impactful contribution of women on the Boards of Albanian businesses. Through coaching, I have had contact with Albanian women in business and corporate leadership roles. This has updated me on real challenges, which in some directions are much more acute and penalizing to progress in general and to the well-being of women in particular.
Above all, there was an intuitive rationale to support a cause that I believe is at the heart of transformations for a more civilized society and a more performant and humane corporation.
What are some of the main challenges women face in the business world today?
Growing in the absence of a functional support system is the main challenge. The support system is primary. Behind a successful woman, there is a support system:
- The law, its enforcement mechanisms, and their recognition;
- The relational system with an enabling mindset, starting from parents, siblings, social circle, and especially the spouse;
- The service system that enables work-family balance.
The development of a support system should serve the creation of new fields of employment and business, the automation of processes, and digitization of services, but also the humanization of work, time, and the mental, emotional, and physical intensity we invest in it.
This is a real challenge, requiring new mindsets in leadership roles and a supportive legislative system to address it. Furthermore, for leaders who are mothers with children in delicate growth periods, I see the challenge of self-development in parallel to the growth of the child. Today’s world presents developments that are increasingly problematic for the child’s health, both psychological and physical.
What more needs to be done in society and in the business world to empower women and increase their representation on boards?
Empowering women in general and increasing their representation on boards, in particular, is a multidimensional issue, with many interconnected aspects.
In society, the unfolding of women’s potential is linked to changing mentalities and prejudices, as well as legislative mechanisms that enable it. An aspect we don’t talk enough about at leadership levels is that this change in mentality is linked to the dynamics of relationships within the family.
This is beautifully described by author Paule Salomon in her work “Solar Woman” where she argues among other things that:
“A conflictual dynamic carries a rebellious woman and a man tyrant; an intellectual dynamic carries an intellectual woman and man who have a critical spirit; a lunatic dynamic carries a cyclical woman and a passive man, while an androgynous dynamic carries a conscious sun woman and a conscious active and empathetic man, where gender prejudices are overcome by both parties.”
The adoption of supportive legislation and its enforcement mechanisms are a non-negotiable criterion in breaking barriers and increasing women’s representation in leadership.
Selection criteria that create parity in the recruitment for the executives and Board roles, the ESG criteria on governance, and the European directive on gender balance on business boards are among the effective mechanisms that can help progress..
Policies and criteria for the allocation of state funds and of other institutions contributing to the country’s economic growth should also be linked to gender balance. EIF, EBRD, EIB, etc., should adopt, communicate, and clearly apply these criteria in their grants.
Tactical solutions like “microfinance” and increasing knowledge in the use and exploitation of financial solutions are other powerful mechanisms that have already shown their value.
Furthermore, the creation of services that enable women’s dedication to professional growth is another underutilized space, yet important and effective. Women entrepreneurs can create these services in support of this common goal.
How can women entrepreneurs be supported, and what are some resources or networks they can use to grow their businesses?
The most effective network for business growth is one that connects you with the ecosystem of the industry in which you operate. This depends on the industry one operates.
The dynamics of a woman entrepreneur’s activity are different from that of an executive woman or one on board. Even the executive woman has a different dynamic from the women on boards. But, depending on the structure of the business and its size, the executive woman who is also the creator of the business is closer to the dynamics of the woman entrepreneur.
As an entrepreneur, a woman needs to network with networks that have an interest in their product/service and networks that offer support to create their product or service. It is important to pay attention to both sides of the coin.
Furthermore, it is important to be part of networks with which you have commonalities and continuity of contact but also to be part of different networks, especially networks where you can make new connections.
The value of the network is not in the number of shared contacts you have with your competitors but in the number of new and diverse contacts these networks offer you and how enabling they are for business growth, as well as for the germination of new ideas and innovation.
Clearly, WOB-AL is a network we would encourage them to join.
What are some of your plans and goals for the future of “Women On Boards Albania”?
Our aim is for WOB-AL to remain an organization that enables new mindsets, support systems, and leadership competencies – enabling the vital, modern, conscious, solar woman to play an active role in decision-making and leading powerful, successful, and innovative businesses, inside and outside Albania.
The growth of women in leadership and achieving gender balance on boards is a global, worldwide effort – as women’s growth marks the growth of civilization.
Joining forces with other organizations active in women’s empowerment and expanding WOB-AL network in the region is one aspect of this future. Increasing the active participation of leading women in adopting the ESG agenda and digital transformation are also aspects we aim to deepen year after year.
How do you see your organization’s role in changing corporate culture in Albania and beyond?
WOB-AL has embarked on a journey where we aim to play a catalytic role in the growth and active participation of women in leadership roles, in expanding and enriching their support and professional network, and in amplifying their positive impact on business performance and social innovation.
More directly, WOB-AL aims to assist organizations through advisory services, studies, networking, mentoring, and capacity building that enable effective governance. This helps corporations prepare to perform at their best in today’s workforce situations and for entry into Europe.
Lobbying for the adoption of gender balance quotas on executive and non-executive boards is a significant part of our mission, the achievement of which will be a catalyst for positive changes in Albanian corporate culture.
What advice would you give to young women who want to enter the business world and achieve leadership positions?
Challenges are not your enemy – your enemy is the failure to take control of your mindset in addressing challenges or learning from them. Every challenge holds the seed of the next achievement; every limitation is an invitation or an opening to think creatively about a new solution and to strengthen your will to realize it.
Embracing challenges or accepting failure is the essence of transforming challenges into creative achievements.
Women are genetically vital, in life and business – challenges stem from prejudices and the positioning/mentality we choose to address them.
Women are the first who need to reassess the challenges of patriarchal and conflictual mindsets that hinder the true capacity and efficiency of women as entrepreneurs overall.
Take control of your personal image (personal brand or self-image). You are the product of the image you hold of yourself.
Certainly, the environment in which you live and operate defines the field of references. But you can expand and enrich that field. If you don’t take control of your image, it’s the image others create of you that will take control.
When you have a clear idea of your image, your brain changes its chemistry and, as you act by that image, it increasingly motivates you towards actions that reinforce that image.
You get what you give. You receive back in equal value to what you give towards achieving your goal in quality, quantity, and mindset. You will enjoy prosperity in equal measure to the amount and quality of your efforts and the mindset you have towards prosperity. You will be magnetic in equal measure to the amount, quality, and mindset you have toward manifesting a magnetic personality. You will be successful in equal measure to the efforts you make to enable others to be successful.
