Daiva Kirkilaite-Chetcuti

IWC ZAGREB

A welcome to husbands

- When the nomination committee contacted me the first thing I thought of was how nice of them to contact me by mail, and not personally. This gave me some time to think about it, otherwise my answer might have been no. However, the committee was very thoughtful in choosing their argumentation, saying that they wanted a business person who can lead the Club and, as a manager take care of the organizational aspect as well – says Mrs. Kirkilaite-Chetcuti.

Masters in financing and infrastructural management

A manager from Lithuania, with two Masters' degrees - MBA and Master in Infrastructure Management, a full-employed mother in Zagreb, has taken a new challenge. She has been living in Zagreb for six years, and has been a member of IWC for the same period. She studied Economics in her hometown Vilnius and thanks to the USAID program, Finance and Banking in New York for a year. Her first job was 15 years ago in L’Oreal in Lithuania, where she worked as a Distribution Manager. She soon got a chance to work for the Ministry of Finance.
- Those were very interesting years, for me and for Lithuania. After Lithuania declared her independence from the USSR, the country had an outstanding economic growth. As a matter of fact, at the time I worked at the Ministry of Finance, Lithuania was hit by the Russian crisis. But we made a very fast turn toward western countries' markets and in just one year’s time we had become one the fastest growing economies of the region. That crisis did not cause as big of damage as the current one, because we could turn towards the rest of the world that enjoyed prosperity, while today the industrialized world grapples with a terrible financial crises. In 1998 I was the Director of an International Department that worked with the IMF and the World Bank, I was in a negotiating team for a stand-by agreement with the IMF, and I participated in establishing the financial system in order to receive and manage the EU funds - Mrs. Kirkilaite-Chetcuti recalls.
Since the ISPA program marked the beginning of large infrastructure projects and construction, she decided to deepen her knowledge in Infrastructure Management. She spent two years in Japan in an educational program for senior civil servants, and also worked for a Japanese Telecommunication company and the World Bank, researching the level of state interventions required for telecommunication market regulation.
At that time, me and my husband, we lived on two separate continents. You have to make sacrifices for your life as a couple, so I decided that from Japan I would not go back to Lithuania, and that we would live in Paris, where he had his established business. I was planning to resume my career in France, but after six months my husband happily announced that we were moving to Zagreb. I was really shocked, but soon I was in a city that reminded me of Vilnius and where I found IWC – says Mrs. Kirkilaite-Chetcuti.

Career and motherhood in Croatia

Soon after she came to Zagreb, she started to search for job opportunities, and six months later, she was presented with an offer to work as an advisor at the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, on a project of implementation of Financial Management and Control System. Various EU project have already begun in Croatia and in Croatian Ministry of Finance she actively participated in the preparation and accreditation process for EU funds management from PHARE, ISPA and SAPARD Programs. After the birth of her first son she took another challenge to work as consultant at the Adratica.net Group. Upon the arrival of Daiva’s second son, she decided to devote herself not only to motherhood but also to charity actions to help those in need.
She is preparing some changes concerning the IWC's activities, first of all the promotional activities, which she will stimulate, foremost towards the Consulates and Embassies, in order to have more women join the Club and thus increase the membership.
- IWC should have an image of a Club that welcomes every woman who has came to live in Croatia from a foreign county. We do not discriminate anyone. Amongst our members there are working women and housewives. We are here to socialize, find friends, learn from our differences and support and help each other - says Mrs. Daiva Kirkilaite-Chetcuti as an invitation to new members.

One of the new ideas is to include spouses into the Club's activities, for example, the new president announced that she will organize a general meeting they will participate in, and once a month she plans a round table for husbands and wives to discuss different subjects and socialize as a couple.
This year all events of the Club will take place, the only question remaining is whether the Club will organize the autumn charity ball by itself or join another ball. Organizing Committee of the Christmas bazaar, headed by Jane Hunter, previous president of the Club, has already started working – they are now deciding on the place of the event and the donation beneficiary.

Written by Snježana Ivić
Date of publishing: October 11, 2009