Advisory Committee

The Advisory Committee, created in the academic year 2016-2017, is a new initiative of our postgraduate program.

The mission of the Advisory Committee will be to advise and support the Director and the Special Interdepartmental Committee of the program, on issues such as the strategy of the program, its relations with the labour market and the HR field in Greece and abroad, etc. In this way we believe that the Advisory Committee will decisively contribute to the further future development and evolution of our postgraduate program.

The Members of the Committee, who are program’s graduates and experienced HR Directors/ Managers in greek and multinational companies, are specifically as follows (alphabetically):

Maria Alexiou, Chair of the B.o.D of CSR Hellas and ESG Senior Advisor at TITAN Group

Maria Alexiou studied Law in Athens, Greece and specialized in human rights and civil liberties in international and European law in Leicester University, U.K. She is member of the Athens Law Bar and Chair of the Board of Directors of CSR Hellas, a non- profit-making business association representing 140 companies (2012, www.csrhellas.org), as well as member of the Board of Directors of CSR Europe (2018, www.csrweurope.org), member of the Board of Directors of Global Compact Network Hellas (2021, www.ungcnh.org) and currently member of the experts group of the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG Lab, www.efrag.org) Project Task Force on Sustainability related to Risks and Opportunities. Maria currently serves as Environmental, Social and Governance Advisor TITAN Cement International (2020, www.titan-cement.com) at Group and regional level supporting management in embedding sustainability and social responsibility in strategy and decision-making, while she was responsible for  almost two decades TITAN Group CSR Department (2003 to October 2020). She also sits at the Advisory Board of HIGGS (2017, www.higgs.org) supporting programs to empower civil society and social entrepreneurs in Greece.

Giannis Aretakis (graduate), Country Head People & Organizations - HR Head, Novartis Czech Republic

Lefki Avdi, Chief Transformation Officer, PwC

Costas Vavaroutas, HR Director, Cenergy Holdings

Costas Vavaroutas joined Hellenic Cables in 2018 as the Head of HR for its Offshore Business Unit and he currently holds the position of HR Director of Cenergy Holdings, overseeing all HR aspects of its portfolio, which consists of Hellenic Cables and Corinth Pipeworks, two companies that are positioned at the forefront of high growth sectors. He also acts as Senior HR Advisor for Steel Group companies of Viohalco.

Costas has more than twenty-five years of experience in major companies and organizations, such as Creta Farms Group, and the Royal Bank of Scotland where he worked as Head of Human Resources and Member of the Executive Committee of Greece. He previously held senior HR roles, such as Human Resources & Administration Director of Greek Yellow Pages, Human Resources Manager of Proton/Omega Bank and Head of Manpower Planning and Development of Bank of Cyprus. He holds an MBA and an M.Sc. in HRM, as well as FCMI certification of the UK Chartered Management Institute. He actively supports the HR community by being a full member of the Greek HR Management Association, a member of the Executive HRM Advisory Board of Athens University of Economics & Business and a member of the Executive Advisory Board of Job Pairs Mentoring NGO.


Dimitris Vasalakis (graduate), HR Manager, Intrasoft


Theofilos Vasileiadis, Founder Socital & Kariera.gr

Peggy Velliotou, Partner, Consulting, KPMG

Peggy, Partner since 2008, is responsible for the Executive Search and Selection, BOD services and Executive on Boarding. She has carried out more than 14.000 interviews and successfully placed 2.500 executives at various positions in Greece and abroad. Her team is made up of colleagues with valuable sectoral experience and deep knowledge of the market. In addition, since 2020 she has taken on the role of Head of People (HoP), internally for KPMG Greece.

Peggy’s training delivery experience at KPMG spans a variety of fields and is targeted to executives from different sectors. She has participated in Assessment/Development Centres in assessing Directors and C-Level excecutives.

She started her professional career in 1991 with GOOD YEAR HELLAS in the Finance Department. In 1995 she joined SHELL HELLAS as Business Analyst in the Retail Department. In 1997, she participated in the Greek team that became the nucleus to implement Shell’s global transformation process in the particular conditions of the country. As a result of this programme she has gained valuable experience in company transformation and culture change issues.

Education

Graduate of the Economic Science at the Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB); Diploma in Advanced Negotiations & Decision Making Skills from Harvard Business School (USA); Executive Training in Motivating People for High Performance from Cornell University -Johnson Graduate School of Management;

Other Participations

  • Elected member of the Alumni BoD  - Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB);
  • Member of the Women in Business (WIB) Committee - American-Hellenic Chamber of Commerce; 
  • Volunteer for employment information campaign actions for young & experienced professionals in the Greek and international market;
  • Voluntary participation in coaching / mentoring sessions in collaboration with Greek Universities;
  • Certified instructor of the Sandler Sales Institute.
Marina Vergou

Marina Vergou, HR DIRECTOR, Groupama Insurance

Marina Vergou is currently the HR Director at Groupama Insurance.

With over 25 years’ dedicated experience of working in the Human Resources with leading international companies, Marina started her career at Geniki Bank, with Societe General as a parent company, and got involved in “Training and Human Resources Development” as Head of Professional Career Management. She then moved to Giannidis Group (VITEX, HERMES) Chemical Industry as an HR Director, where she was responsible for the entire workforce of four factories and its subsidiaries.  

She is a renowned expert in transformation projects, change management, employees’ engagement & cultural shift and restructuring. 

Marina holds a BA in Sociology and later on, she completed the Executive Management Program at AUEB.


Alexandra Eleftheriou, Regional HR SEE, Turkey & Brazil and Group Employee Engagement Director, TITAN

Alexandra Eleftheriou joined Printec Group in 2013 as the Chief People Officer and has overall responsibility for the Group's people strategy, programs and initiatives, including organization design and development, leadership and talent development, employee engagement, rewards and recognition. Her multinational career in HR consulting and management includes companies such as Hay Group in SEE and Inbucon in the UK. She joined Printec from Aon Hewitt, where she set up and led the Talent & Organization Consulting business.

Alexandra is President of the Hellenic Institute of Human Resources Management (EIMAD) and Member of the Board of the Hellenic Management Association (EEDE). She is also a Professional Certified Coach – PCC, by the International Coach Federation, and served as the founding president (2010-2104) of the Hellenic Coaching Association, HCA/ EMCC Greece. Alexandra holds a BA Joint Honours in Administration & Psychology from the University of Strathclyde and an MSc in Organizational Psychology from the University of Manchester.


Nikitas Konstantellos, President & Chief Executive Officer, ICAP CRIF

Nikitas is the President & CEO of ICAP CRIF. From 2007 till 2021 was the President & Group CEO of ICAP, the largest Credit Risk, Business Information, Consulting, HR and other Business Services Group in Greece. During this period, he has led ICAP to overquadruple its size and establish fast growing subsidiaries in Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Cyprus. Today, ICAP Group has 1,200 employees and Revenues of 96 M euros.

Before joining ICAP, he was the Managing Partner of KPMG’s Business Advisory Practice (16 years), Senior Consultant in Hay Group (3 years), HR Manager in Investment Bank (3 years) and Purchasing Officer in Papastratos-Philip Morris (2 years).

He holds a BSc in Business Administration, Athens University of Economics and Business and an MBA in Management and HRM, Loyola University, USA. Moreover, he is possessing a diploma in Training and Development from the Thames Valley University and the Institute of Personnel & Development, UK.

He is a Honorary Member of ACEO, the Hellenic Association of Chief Executive Officers (he was the President for 6 years up to 3/2018). He is also Member of the General Board of SEV and the Presidents’ Club.

He envisages and is committed to contribute in creating a better corporate world, with successful companies, where ESG matters and the employees are healthy, happy, fit and high performing.

Anastasia Makarigaki, Executive Board Member, Further Up-HR
Anna Mamalaki, Organizational Development & Human Resources Consulting Director, The HR Business & Partner for Change & Founding Member, Curated Culture

Anna Mamalaki was born in Athens of Greece. She has received a BSc in Business Administration, after completing her studies in DEREE, The American College of Greece and afterwards attained her MA degree in Human Resource Management, graduating from the De Montfort University, in Leicester, UK.

She has an inclusive experience background of 20 years in all different industries; lately in the heavy industry, while before this in the services’ sector, as well as in retail and FMCG industry companies.

Her main areas of expertise are linked to leveraging organizational capabilities and reinforcing people engagement in order to achieve the organizational goals.  Therefore, her know-how is focused on successful employee relations and human resources practices of talent management, leadership development programs design and effective recruitment, so that a productive & enjoyable working environment is achieved.

During her career years she had the chance of  a cross cultural experience through being involved in global operations in USA, Egypt and European countries (mainly UK & Eastern Europe), from different perspectives of her Human Resources Management roles.

Fragkiski Melissa

Fragkiski Melissa, Chief Human Resources Officer, Alpha Bank

Fragkiski Melissa studied Psychology at the National Kapodistrian University of Athens and has obtained a Master’s Degree in Industrial/Organizational Studies from Columbia University, as well as a Master’s Degree in Social Studies from the New School for Social Research. She has 25 years of experience in the area of human resources and recently joined Alpha Bank after spending 8 years as Human Resources Director at Vodafone Greece and Romania. Previous positions throughout her career include that of Regional Human Resources Director for Southeastern Europe at Colgate Palmolive, as well as positions of responsibility at Makro Cash & Carry and KPMG.

Iro Melliou, Human Resources Director, Vodafone

Anthi Papaiakovou (alumni) HR Director Greece, Procter & Gamble 

Anthi Papaiakovou is currently the HR Director of P&G for Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria. In her 16 years of experience in HR in Greece and Switzerland, she has assumed different and challenging positions in Human Resources Management. She started her career in the HR department of Beiersdorf and since 2006 she has been working for P&G. She has specialized in Attraction & Selection, Performance Appraisal, Employee Relations as well as Learning & Development. She obtained her Bachelor Degree in Business Administration in 2004 and graduated in 2008, from the postgraduate program in Human Resources Management in Athens University of Economics and Business.


Valia Perivolari (graduate) Director Human Resources Commercial Sector, PPC S.A.


Maria Savaki Payroll Regional Advisor Europe, Mondelez International & President, HR AUEB Alumni Association HR Society


Sotiris Stamatiou, Human Resources Director, Onassis Group | President of the Board, GPMA