Irina Filippova
speaker
226 appearances
3 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Apr 2025
Irina Filippova’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
So again, this change has to happen at absolutely every level.
I advise them to choose the area that fascinates them, that they have curiosity about, that interests them. Research it. Do as much as they can do to understand trends in a particular industry, in a particular company on their own. People who invest themselves.
in understanding how the world works and what challenges there are and how they can help address those challenges always land on their feet. I interview folks for roles here at Electrata all the time. We are constantly hiring for different types of roles. Hands down, I would always prefer a candidate who is invested
and who is willing to work hard with a self-starter than a candidate who feels entitled to have a role, have a title, because they have done this before at a different company. The world is becoming entrepreneurial. Even big companies are changing in that way. So I would say feed your passion, feed your interests, grab it with both hands and you will find your way.
The way in which you go about shaping and creating your career, even sometimes trying to do the impossible and You know, my own example can serve in this regard. There are a few very impossible twists and turns, bridges that have to be built. But your tenaciousness, your persistence, your interest in something, genuine interest in something, will differentiate you from others. Do not be entitled.
Just because you have an MBA and you worked hard to get it does not mean that now you have the right to go out there and feel entitled to a big salary and big title in a corner office. That is not what work is about. Work is about educating yourself every single day about what happens around you, why it happens, And if you have that attitude, you'll do well in any career.
And you'll bounce back from any challenge or any setback you might experience. If you have the Catalan attitude, that is going to be a very short, it's going to be a short lived path. for you.
Because again, it's all about continuing to grow, continuing to learn, and using every opportunity to bring what you know, skilled experiences you have, the knowledge you have, the insights to bear on what the world needs. Find it, create your own opportunities, call on other Yale alums or other MBA school alums that you went to,
call on your ecosystem to help you with contacts, to help you with connections, but nothing, no connection, no contact will replace what you invest in yourself and in your knowledge, in your tools, in your expertise. Continue to do that.
It's my absolute pleasure, Vince. Thank you for the opportunity.
Thanks for having me, Vince. It's a pleasure. I grew up in Moscow, as you know. My father was a nuclear scientist, so he was in energy. But I was not. I was interested in languages. And when the time came to choose a career, I truly wanted a career that would expose me to different cultures and the way the world works, worked as it were.
So I chose a career in diplomacy, which was a very tall task for, first of all, a female. typically career in diplomacy would be reserved to men. But I did succeed in entering the very exclusive Moscow State Institute for International Relations.
And I was studying international law when I had the opportunity to travel to the United States and see how, if you will, human rights practices worked in reality. And this is where my big journey began, as it were. So The career evolved. I went actually on to work for a UN think tank in peace and public resolution. I did that for about five years.
And while it was a very, very interesting time in world politics, being a young person living in New York City, surrounded by all the mystery of international relations, I was looking for something more challenging and potentially even more substantive as I was thinking about my future. So I decided to apply to a business school and of course a business school like Yale School of Management.
stands out, certainly stood out for me because of their mission and the focus on leadership for business and society. And that helped me articulate where I saw myself heading as an adult, as a mature professional. I truly wanted to make a difference for society, for global society, as it were. But I also was interested in the mechanic of the business in terms of solving problems
some of the challenges that we're facing, not only the mechanism of politics that I was exposed to before, So that's how the journey started as it were. That's when we met at Yale. And when I was enrolled as an MBA student, I did not necessarily have a very clear idea of a path. If you recall, there were tracks, a finance track, a consulting track, a marketing track, a nonprofit track.
I did not see myself fully on any of the tracks because somehow that definition seemed a bit limiting. So I went on a limb. I got an airplane ticket to London during my spring break in the first year, and I went and introduced myself to BP. That was then becoming a leader in not only energy, but energy writ large.
With its new branding campaign, Beyond Petroleum, looking at alternative sources of energy, that vision really appealed to me and the company culture very much appealed to me. So that's where my journey into energy, if you will, began with that summer internship. I then got a full-time job offer upon graduation.
spent some time in Chicago, moved to London, worked in upstream and downstream in a conventional energy space, but always with an eye out to that broader mandate to bring energy-aligned mobility to people in different ways, including using alternative and renewable sources. And my last project at BP before I decided to move on
actually had to do with relaunching brand and doing so in a renewable fashion. So we had this phenomenal project called Helios House in Los Angeles, where we've rebranded and revamped an old dirty gas station on the corner of Olympic and Robertson into an architectural marvel. But also it was an education project.
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