Traveling abroad is a challenge but also an opportunity. This is how Elona Lopari saw her stay in New York, where she has built her career based on supporting women in their careers. This initiative gives her an important role in the development and support of the diaspora.
Who is Elona Lopari? What is your journey so far?
Business strategy for career and leadership is my passion. I am an ambitious business executive, dedicated to helping professional women find the right career, grow as a leader and start the business they want. My specialty is training the mind and self-confidence because I believe that success in every area of our lives begins and ends with our thoughts as well as our self-confidence. Mind empowerment and spiritual intelligence are two key points of my training that help us use our inner intelligence and power to create the outer life we desire. My clients say I'm that pushing, encouraging blow. But, to be fair, I am a success mentor who trains for results. My straightforward approach, combined with simple communication skills to clearly explain difficult concepts in emotional intelligence and mind training make me unique and are my strong weapon to help my clients create professional and personal fulfillment. I offer personalized, individual guidance for Albanian professional women, whether in their careers or in business, and also for women executives of various companies.
Shortly after graduating from college with a degree in Business-Management-Finance, I started working for a Drug and Beauty Retail company called Walgreens Boots Alliance as a management trainer. Strong determination, cognitive business skills, and the ability to lead and influence others promoted me to human resource roles and eventually to leadership roles within the company.
My 13 years of experience in the company was abundant and varied to develop professionally in working with people of different backgrounds and personalities. There was a critical and changing moment in my 13-year career where I started to feel unhappy and unfulfilled with so many years of experience. I felt like I was missing something. Feeling this way I started looking for answers in other areas in order to recreate myself at another stage in my life.
Thus I found myself on a long journey of my personal development in search of discovering a new path and phase. It would complement me and help me use my professional experience and my passion as a coach as well as intertwine them harmoniously together with the start of my private business. This is what I encountered: the introduction of coaching or counseling as an industry or field, and specifically personal and professional coaching. Since then I have managed to help many professional women and women in various leadership positions find themselves in a new career or business. They feel fulfilled to develop the skills as leaders as well as to build the business they have always thought of. Meanwhile, pursue their passion and lifestyle that coincides with the realization of the best version of themselves.
I believe that the world is in the moment of a "significant change": Women must lead that change by empowering themselves first personally and then professionally, thus holding more leadership positions and striving to reach their full potential, to realize themselves first, in their families afterward and consequently in society as a whole and beyond. The time has come for women to develop other roles in parallel with motherhood and the traditional roles that culture has imposed on them.
You are focused on the woman in terms of development. What is your goal? Why the woman and not the man as a whole?
Being a woman myself, I am very aware of the problems and difficulties that a woman may encounter in family and society. From my personal and professional experience, I have noticed that the woman carries many roles simultaneously in society and is the nucleus of the family. When a woman fulfills herself, she can very well influence the family and the wider circle.
What are the challenges of Albanians outside Albania?
I believe that in the country where I live, New York, for more than 22 years, since the age of 15, the biggest challenge has been the difficulties of my parents to navigate a place as big as New York and the integration of language and a better job. They had to recreate themselves and a new life from the beginning. So seeing the difficulties of my parents, the development of the Albanian woman in a big country like America is something more personal for me to help a little bit with the easier integration into this culture.
What are your plans for the future?
I have a vision of creating global platforms for all Albanian women everywhere to evolve in their personal and professional development. I think that in this way, Albanian women will be empowered to help our society and country to move forward.
Do you see Albania as an opportunity for investment or work in the future?
Yes! I see Albania as a developing country and I think that the increase of prosperity in this country will come precisely from the personal development of the people living inside and outside it.
What is your message to Albanians and Albanian women these days?
My message is that Albanians in general and Albanian women, in particular, should invest in self-discovery and learn how to empower their minds and souls towards a purposeful life and fulfillment so that they reach their potential towards a contribution bigger than themselves!
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