It gives me great pleasure to announce that 2021 marks StudySmart’s 15 years of educating and inspiring professionals to get certified, upskilled and stay employable. It has honestly been an extraordinary and rapid 15 years since the time my best friend Argiris Tragoutsis and I set up StudySmart. I still remember the day we sat in his living room trying to find the right name for the company and “StudySmart” got the most votes…
Initially the company, between 2006 – 2010 was more of a lead generator, educating parents, students and professionals on educational opportunities. At the time, we started publishing the first annual educational guide with top sponsors like HSBC & PwC, which – 14 years later in 2020 – became the integral part of our unique partnership with well known entrepreneur Sir Stelios Chatzi-ioannou as “www.easystudies.gr, powered by StudySmart”. Since 2010, the company became a professional training powerhouse slowly and gradually with the help of my brother Jimmy (Dr. Demetrios Kiritsis) who has always been the GM and the ‘rock’ behind previous ventures such as Globaltraining in 1999, PwC Academy in Greece, our partnership with the American College of Greece and others. StudySmart would not have the eventual success without him.
Unique partnerships continued with the likes of PwC (mainly for the amazing success of the Mini MBA which I developed and envisioned many years back), ICAP, ACG, Becker ATC and many others since 2010 and along with the success and recognition, StudySmart became international having trained – at this point – in close to 50 countries. Our unique trainers and advisors: Vasilis Damianos, Andreas Kyriakou, Christos Ragkavas, Spyros Kottoris, Dimitris Chatziapostolou, Bob Souster, Keith Rye, Steve Willis, Emilios Konstantinou, Panagiotis Lambroukos, Costas Chandrinos, Andreas Koutoupis, Stavros Papageorgakopoulos, Anthe Papageorgiou, Markos Daskalakis and others. I thank them all. The marketing and consulting support by Dr. Antony Michael was probably the boost that made us expose our work more in the media and started our advisory services as well. This was crucial for our progress. Our clients have been among the “A” list: CocaCola Hellenic, Groupama, Piraeus Bank, Eurobank, Mazars, Sunlight, Regency, Deloitte, EY, Accounting Solutions, Athex, Atradius, DaVinci and many many others.
Fast forward today and StudySmart has maintained probably the #1 position in professional qualifications and corporate training in our region having trained thousands of candidates and received (and maintained) partner status with SHRM, ICA, ACCA, CIMA, ADIT, FILS, DMI and many others; and we did all this within the most challenging period in Greece with a financial crisis, capital controls and a pandemic, all of which made us stronger. Thanks to all the partners abroad – I would need a huge list to mention them…!
Our recent awards in 2019 & 2020 solidified our position in the market and made us see the future in a positive way. Given the ongoing crisis, we cannot celebrate the way we had planned. We will however, l soon. At this point, we need to focus on our health and protect each other.
We intend to continue to be the “small big” organization offering tailored solutions through unique ideas, with honesty and integrity in whatever we do. I want to thank all of you for believing in us and my family for supporting our vision. Let’s stay healthy and try to BE the news, not just READ the news…
We invite you all to share a celebration message!
Thank you!
Dr. Constantine Kiritsis