How women can \"look faster\"

"Many Hungarians work in international positions, and many also live abroad. The Monday morning flight to London is just like the fast one from Berettyóújfalu that I used to take to university: I always met the same people going to the City, the family stayed at home and we nodded to each other," said Dr. Anita Orbán, Vodafone's Head of Global Government Relations and ESG Portfolio, was the first prize winner of the Global Leadership Award Special Prize, a joint award of the National Association of Managers and IoD Hungary. Outlining the behind-the-scenes of the international managerial scene, the manager added: "many of them are not visible in the domestic public eye, so it is great that the award draws attention to them, as it is easier to be visible in a domestic position."

Anita Orbán earned her master's and PhD degrees in Boston, the bastion of diplomatic education. Her book Power, Energy and the New Russian Imperialism was published in the United States and is now in university libraries around the world. "Writing the PhD was a collaborative project in which my partners were the Dean of the Fletcher School (one of the top diplomatic training universities in the US - ed.), a director of NATO, and the head of the NATO Strategy Department. I am now a member of Fletcher's European Advisory Board, and I meet regularly in Brussels with my former NATO colleagues, as well as with the Dean of the School," said Anita Orbán. She started her career in the energy sector, writing her PhD thesis on the activities of energy companies in the post-Soviet space in 2001. From there it was a straight road to the energy sector. "I've been through the academic part of it, the corporate part of it and the government part of it, it's been a 360-degree circle," said Anita Orbán, who became Hungary's travelling ambassador for energy security in 2010 and then worked at the London headquarters of one of the world's leading LNG companies.

Shifting gears for the challenges ahead

But from 2021, he will work as Deputy CEO of Vodafone Hungary, and is currently Head of Global Government Relations and ESG Portfolio at the London headquarters. "I've noticed that I'm starting to fall behind technologically compared to my teenage and young adult children. For me, the best way was always to learn by doing, learning by doing. As I was becoming quite routine in my job at the time, I created another deep water for myself where I could grow," the Deputy CEO said of his shift at the time.

Orbán Anita

"In 2021 I changed everything: From London to Budapest, I changed industries and functions, as I used to run sales, and here I run government relations," said Anita Orbán, who gave the audience the details of her career change. She is a board member of Draslovka and Globsec, founded the Women Leaders Council, co-founded the Women in Energy and Women in Technology communities. For five years she has been listed in Forbes as one of the most influential Hungarian business decision makers - but her greatest pride is her three children.

Ladies are seen earlier

"Not every woman has to be a leader, but neither does every man, you have to do what makes you happy. But women who want to achieve more should be supported to have a chance," said Éva Hegedüs, CEO of Granite Bank, at a roundtable discussion at the IoD association, who, EY Business Person of the Year 2024, the first woman to represent Hungary at the EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year 2025, one of the world's most prestigious business awards.

"You have to bring a lot of things from home, you have to work very hard and be persistent. And it doesn't matter what you do. If you put the work into something, it will come back to you sooner or later," said S Zsófia Beck, partner at Boston Consulting Group, who received the Manager of the Year Special Award for the Green Economy at the Manager of the Year Awards Gala at the Opera House in Budapest, during the panel discussion. Many people stop investing in energy just before the work starts to bear fruit, before the process is turned around. "In the last few years, just being a woman helps to turn your efforts into success more quickly: in the energy industry or in consulting, where I work, there are far fewer women, these industries are not used to the presence of women, so we are seen earlier," adds Zsófia Beck.

Woman in Energie is made up only of women executives working in the energy industry. In recent years, they have carried out several surveys "Young people are being drawn into the profession by role models such as Anita Simon, Anita Orbán, Magdolna Tokai and many others internationally. There is a correlation between the number of women working at senior management level as role models in this sector and the number of young girls choosing this industry. "More and more people are looking for us, not only from the press, but they are inviting us to different events, and we should use this to give voice to the issues that are important to us and for which we have received these awards," said Mónika Pais, CEO of Diageo Zrt.

Eva Hegedüs and Györgyi Kristóf, host of the event and President of the IoD

It is important to seize the opportunities

"No one can whistle a symphony alone, it takes a whole orchestra. Friendships, human relationships and the power of community are very important, because they are what keep us moving forward and push us through deadlocks," said Anita Simon, Deputy CEO of Alteo Group. She added: "As women in the energy industry, we can do well by remaining women. We must not lose our identity, who we are and we must understand that playing football together with men on this field is a very important key to success. We were interviewed on the roof of a wind farm in Bábolna the other day - wearing helmets and tied up, I spoke to a state secretary about the importance of wind energy. I'm from there, my dad taught me to drive on the road along which this wind farm is located. Up there, interview after interview, thinking about where I came from and how I got here was a time travel. It was a will to not become what I brought from my environment. And a lot of that was the failures and opportunities that I had suffered. It is very important to see the latter and live with them. To this day, I believe that there are many opportunities ahead of us that we have to seize," said Anita Simon.

"It's important that in a leadership-focused organisation there is no distinction between men and women, it's about symbiosis, how we can help and lift each other up regardless of age or gender. I have spent the last 20 years working for international corporations, so it is a matter of my heart how to transfer those good practices to Hungarian companies and how to channel fantastic Hungarian professionals to international corporations" - said Julianna Kulczycki, Senior Director of OKG Technology and IoD Board Member. "Procter