2023 - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

I write one LinkedIn article each year, and THIS is the one. To share with people I know and work with what we have achieved and where we failed. Why? To maintain our connections without becoming too distant and to build upon synergies for the future. In this article, I will strive to be as concise as possible, but it's challenging with so much happening. Additionally, at the end, I'll include ways you can assist us and share what I am most excited about.

2023 SHORT SUMMARY:

1. Tripled revenues,
2. 168 new partner companies signed in 2023 (600+ overall),
3. Newly established small-scale cooperations with the OECD and the Council of Europe ,
4. Students from 33 different countries joined us in the summer of 2023 (Coming from all four major continents - North and South America, Asia, Europe, and Africa),
5. For the first time completed programs for : 1) high school students, and 2) (standard) engineering and sustainability university students
6. Auspices received from the Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala, the Minister of Industry and Trade Jozef Sikela , and the Mayor of Prague Doc. MUDr. Bohuslav Svoboda, CSc. (My dream is now to also align more closely with the Czech president Petr Pavel whom I deeply admire! :)

SUCCESSES:

• UCLA: In a very short time, this partnership grew exponentially. We will run this year with 美国加州大学洛杉矶分校 already six programs, 4 in Prague (ECON, Public Affairs & Law, Marketing & Communication, and Sustainability) and 2 in Berlin (ECON and Public Affairs & Law). We have now over 100 students registered for this year (Growing this number from 57 students who joined us last year for ECON and Law programs). We aim to further build upon this experience with our other partners.

• SUMMER DIVERSITY: Having 33 nationalities this summer was great. It is easy to gather an initial few (such as students from major regions for us - the United States, China, India, and Turkey but it is always nice for us to welcome students also from such exotic locations like Panama, Costa Rica, Nepal, Nigeria, Honduras, Malesia, Kyrgyzstan, Kuwait, Israel, etc.). It is also a learning path for us because every country is unique and it is not easy to run marketing & and partnership campaigns globally. Quite honestly, I am thinking about how many companies established in Prague can present such nice global coverage (Overall we are already close to number 100 historically)

• 1st HIGH SCHOOL PROGRAM DONE: We have delivered our first program for high school students. We had a group of 35 students join us from Italy, and through this experience, we have learned what needs to be done in the future. Specifically for high school students, we believe it is important for us to conduct the interview process ourselves, rather than relying on our partners who may not have sufficient experience with industry expectations. The initial themes were hospitality, sustainability, and agriculture.
• MENTORSHIP: We believe that accessibility to education is as much important as its quality. Hence, we have launched a new mentorship program allowing students to find mentors who can help them with their long-term plans or also individual issues they face right now. This (online) program is open for our alumni but also for students who cannot afford our programs and come from our partner institutions. We have already over 50 registered mentors from our partner companies. During the testing period, 25 students applied for this program, and currently, 11 of them are still participating in it. While this is a trial run, I believe it is a way for us to provide long-term value to our alumni and support talented individuals who may not have the financial resources to travel.

FAILURES:

• REVENUE GROWTH: We did not multiply our revenues by 5 times as I expected. Instead, we "only" managed to triple them. I understand that this may not seem like a significant growth, but I am still very proud to see our post-pandemic recovery gradually taking place. It means a lot because planning in the education sector is everything and especially the launch of new programs always takes 1-3 years before they are fully operational and "healthy".
• U.S. VISIT: I spent at the end of last year (2022) one month traveling and visiting various U.S. universities. I visited 17 of them and those meetings so far did not bring anything concrete. This showed me even more how important it is to value long-term relationships. Ultimately, I strongly believe that results will appear but it will take a couple of years (Those close to me know that I always strive for efficient implementations and quick, small gains that contribute to long-term stability).

• ROMANIA: We were about to launch a new business/IT program for our Indian partner in Bucharest. Unfortunately, it was canceled at the last minute because students could not secure visas on time. Our partner was credible, covered all cancellation fees, etc. but we had everything more/less ready and had to apologize to our partners there. Luckily, they were very understanding. I just hate undelivered promises and felt bad about this. On the bright side, it brought us 20 new partner companies in Romania :)

• EXPO 2025: I had my hopes high when I signed a contract with Ondrej Soska to build part of the program (education and sustainability themes) for our national pavilion in Japan. After a few months when this project was not moving anywhere, I decided to give up and leave it to officials who could do it "the usual way" :) I wish Ondrej only the best to navigate the ship through the public sector bureaucracy but my expectations at this stage for this event are extremely low.

NEW INITIATIVES:

• LATAM: I was asked to help our partnership team by moving to LATAM for 6 months (Latin America) and work with Tereza V. , Lucie Kubová , Michaela Kla?ková , Sarah O'Sullivan , and Lívia Prado on our expansion to this region. I am now in the middle of this journey, met so far with the leadership of over 150 universities and I must admit that every meeting was special and unique (The fact how much I value them is represented by the fact that I am scared of heights and I traveled by plane hundreds of kilometers sometimes just for one or two meetings). My biggest concern right now is to make sure that we will deliver on every promise I made! Anyway, I am happy that my initial response to my partnership team proposal was "Why not?" :)

• OECD/COUNCIL OF EUROPE: Both organizations got in touch with us and invited us to be part of their focused groups on practical skills/experience-based learning. Together with them, we have been working on best practices for the industry. It is nothing large but I am just proud to see that even these traditional and conservative institutions are interested in working with us.

• NEW COMMUNITY (FREE OF CHARGE) EVENT: For years, we have been organising invitation-only Leaders Voice for founders and board members in Prague to exchange authentically their experience (We did six of them in 2023). This year, we are introducing a new format called "THE TALK" as part of our vision to connect the younger generation with professionals. The first edition will be for 10 legal professionals - law firm partners (Of top tier law firms) and 10 young and promising students. The next one, we will see. We believe that this private setup will allow students to learn about their sector and our partner to form relationships with the talent. I won't be even mentioning other more standard meetups and community events we did for our partners.

• NEW PROGRAMS: In 2024, we have initiated new programs for individual students in many new locations and also designed new fields, such as art, new technology entrepreneurship, or hospitality (For our predesigned programs for individual students). Aside from medicine, we basically cover everything in almost all fields and areas one can think about. This will allow us to provide universities/students with even more flexibility to personalize their experience

How you can HELP us (if you like):

• If you know of any credible companies that might be passionate about our cause of experience sharing - especially in Berlin - please let me know! Our expansion project with UCLA relies heavily on collaborating with the right people. However, this applies globally. While the UCLA project in Berlin is our flagship, we are already discussing programs to be launched from Japan to Brazil,
• If you know universities you can connect us with, every contact would help tremendously. You cannot imagine how subtly all of our key cooperations began ( Eva ?vejdarová knows :) Universities are not easy partners to establish relationships with but believe me those relationships last,
• If you just like what we do, let me know. There is almost always something... :) And I will at least know that what we do makes sense!

....which FINALLY brings me to what I promised at the beginning. What makes me happiest?

I am extremely proud of my team and the entire European Centre for Career Education . It is less and less my doing and more and more credit goes to my team members. We successfully structured ourselves into independent four teams led by team leaders. It allows us to be very flexible and efficient (And extremely rely on our individual responsibilities):

Jana Vodickova (Partnership team - Responsible for partnerships with all of our partner universities and recruitment agencies - over 150 of them),

Milada Soliman Mack? (Operations team - Responsible for implementation of all of our programs and office management),

Jan Koflák (Marketing - Everything related to our external communication - social media, materials, website etc.),

and me :) - Tomá? Hulle (Community and BD team - Responsible for onboarding of all new partner companies)

But it is not only about us four but every single team member grew A LOT! Guys, THANK you a million times! Monika Zizkova Vodickova , Binnur Yaman , Pavla Vybíhalová , Zhor Adjmi , Yaroslava Hopaniuk , Amélie Carmichael , Iva Kaiserova , Vít Masare , Beata Zapletalová , Markéta Zapletalová , Jan Klee Liana Jindra and Ji?í Mucha (Plus also many of our external team members on part-time contracts globally! - #respect )

btw: You can see here our "pre-Christmas" very reduced team by "travelers", COVID positive and international colleagues -

I know that this last part might sound boring for everyone who does not "live" with us every day but it is the most important part for me!! :) As I grow older and older, I know how rare is to have around you coworkers you basically love to be with (aside from working with). Yes, we want to kill each other often (which, to be honest, can be energizing for me, along with hundreds of emails dispatched by me daily). But more importantly, to leave my company for 6 months to the opposite side of the world requires a wonderful team to rely on. And I feel that I have that!

And that is IT! Wish us luck because there is already much news ahead of us. This year, I decided not to make predictions because I would love to have fewer failures to read about one year from now :)