Anna Sagalova
Since the start of my career when I was 18, I lived several professional lives. Throughout my 14 years in international finance industry, I switched between two very different domains in banking – from an executive role in risk management to a front line role in IB equity capital markets. Giving up my established leadership position and authority to explore, in fact, a new banking profession. That resulted in the creation of a new working identity for myself and remarkable deals and results delivered with a new team.
And that led me to the next professional frontier – entrepreneurship and professional reinvention as a coach and organisational change consultant.
My corporate career was fulfilling and successful yet at some point, I discovered talents that I was not consciously aware of until then. I knew I could make an ever more meaningful impact by developing and applying them.
I went out of the corporate world and ‘back to school’ to get my MS in psychology and to study organisational change and coaching at Oxford Said and HEC France. In parallel, working as a freelance executive coach.
In 2011 I co-founded with my business Partner a leadership advisory company APiC Partners in Change that has grown from a tiny 2 people office in Moscow to a company present in Zürich, London, Moscow, with clients and partners all over the world.
That was a long, rocky, and fascinating journey of creating myself as an entrepreneur and a helper to people and organisations. And it still is.
What energises me the most today is the opportunity to make the world of work a better place by contributing to organisations development and by guiding individual clients through change in their lives and careers to feel more fulfilled and in tune with oneself and other people.
Today I am living simultaneously several professional lives as a leadership, career and team coach, change consultant, mentor, university lecturer besides being a parent, partner, and many more as we all are!