Vassiliki Adamidou: Emboldened Women Business Leaders in 2022

Vassiliki Adamidou
Head of Corporate Communications and Responsibility, Lidl Cyprus, and Hellas

‘Our common future involves both individual and collective effort through sustainable synergies. The better we all understand global challenges, the more successful we will emerge in empowering the generations to come. Responsibility comes with determination to set the bar higher, for old and new goals, and for my company and myself’

Vassiliki Adamidou is a staunch professional and devoted mother of two wonderful children. She considers herself a forward-looking and strongly motivated person, in a constant quest for perfection. Adamidou feels and performs as a citizen of the world, deeply inspired by multicultural ideas. Her core values are honesty, transparency, inclusivity, and diversity.

Tell us about your company.
“Since 2010, Lidl Cyprus has been a constant point of reference for the Cypriot food retail market. The company builds reputation on a responsibility chain model, involving all its stakeholders. Quality and entrepreneurial ethos are embedded in its DNA. As an international company with a strong national footprint, Lidl Cyprus keeps setting benchmarks by offering quality products to all consumers and working for a better and sustainable future for all.”

What do you think helped you the most to make a career as a woman?
“I personally feel lucky because I have evolved in a unique work environment. Lidl is a modern, multinational, responsible company, with its business culture focusing on the future. It opens options and perspectives on all levels. It inspires and regenerates its dynamics, by investing in the power of its own people. Gender equality, inclusivity and diversity are tested daily, in practice, relationships between partners, and communication with stakeholders. It often turns into a difficult exercise of reciprocity between different gender. However, at the end of the day it is usually a case of the best among equals. The biggest challenge I am often confronted with is how to bridge the personality of a determined working woman with that of the dedicated mother. I certainly feel a winner when I manage to meet both expectations with the less compromises possible.”

What is the biggest factor that helped you be successful?
“I suppose it all starts from our own inner world. One must be dedicated and feel love for what one does. It is a one-way option to study and understand thoroughly our subjects of authority, competence, and comparative advantage. The next critical step is to make choices that encourage our personal development. The most important thing, however, is to accept the responsibility that falls upon us on a personal and collective level. To feel and act responsibly towards our team, the society, and the environment. Responsibility comes with determination to set the bar higher, for old and new goals, and for my company and myself.”

Do or did you have a woman leader as a mentor or are there specific women who inspired you and why?
“I feel affinity for many women who managed to climb up the professional and personal ladder of achievements by staying true to their values and ideals. I deeply empathise with women – fighters who strive to overcome barriers, especially social ones. I always try to single out such values in a woman’s character, as originality, courage, persistence in fulfilling goals. I cannot say I aspire to the lifestyle of a particular woman leader. However, I often like to dwell on a saying of Maya Angelou, which expresses my own character: People will forget what you have said, they will forget what you have done, but they will never forget how you made them feel.”

What advice would you give to the next generation of women leaders?
“Each generation has its own set of core values and emerging challenges. Of course, some of these life features have a recurring character in modern societies. I would have thought that women leaders should be instrumental in rewriting the book of normalcy across the social spectrum, based on equality and justice. The next generations should have more patience, empathy, courage, individual drive, and collective spirit. To be more conscientious but also compassionate. Change, however, should have an impact on all of society. The Covid-19 pandemic brought the planet to a standstill. It also gave us, especially women in leadership, through new gender crises, time for a deep dive before the next step ahead.”