Leonidas - Senior Business Development Specialist

My name is Leonidas and I joined Lloyd's Register in September 1998 just after graduating from university.

My name is Leonidas and I joined Lloyd's Register in September 1998 just after graduating from university. Most of my career has been in marine operations starting as a trainee surveyor on the 2 year graduate training scheme working on different areas within the marine operations: plan approval, existing ship-repairs and new ships constructions surveying activities. After having completed the development period in LR’s office in Piraeus, I have been working as surveyor and Project Manager on new-constructions in Korea.

Since May 2008, I have been working in Korea’s Business Development team. A very challenging and multi tasking role that requires up-to date technical knowledge, interactions with clients, high degree of familiarisation and understanding of LR’s procedures, up to date information on new technologies and requirements and a high level of teamwork between all streams of the marine organisation and colleagues from offices around the world.

For the last few months, I have also been part of a global Product Development Management team where I am responsible for the Energy and climate change segment. This new Lloyd’s Register team which includes colleagues from LR offices in Copenhagen, Piraeus, London and Americas, is designed to promote Lloyd’s Register leadership and vision towards protecting our environment. The goal is to support the shipping industry we serve through all phases of ship’s life cycle aiming to improve the impact to the environment and achieve energy efficiency savings for ships.

Working in Lloyd’s Register has never felt like just a job.  I could better describe it as an attitude to life with opportunities for enhancing our technical skills and our professional behaviours. With LR’s structured assignments for working outside of the home country and the well organised scheme of formal and on the job training, one can develop one’s professional status interacting also with people of different cultural and professional backgrounds.
 
This is a continuous process and there are always opportunities to seek new challenges within the organisation. After having spent a good proportion of my time in new-construction activities in Korea both as surveyor and as a member of the Business Development Team, my next stop to this journey will find me in a country with increasing and newer new-building history where I can assist in overcoming issues that can improve their standard of shipbuilding. This would be my medium term plan until my family obligations lead me to settle back in my home country of Greece.

For a day at work to be constructive I need to feel that today is about learning something new and an opportunity to do something that matters for a colleague or a client.

This way my day is productive, especially when I receive some feedback like; a simple ‘thank you for your support’ or even better when is followed by a ‘let’s increase our business interaction with Lloyd’s Register’.