A couple of weeks ago, we started our “Coffee with Alumni” webinar series. Our first guest this fall was Alisa Paivina, LCC Class of 2007. She has achieved great success as a female leader, working for DFDS since 2014, in a traditionally male-dominant industry. She started in sales, and now she is the Commercial Director of the Baltic’s freight agencies in Klaipeda and Riga.

At LCC, she studied International Business Administration. After graduation, she started her first job at a Russian fishing company as an office administrator. She took this job, keeping in mind a piece of advice that her professor had said, to work and gain experience in her field for a couple of years and then go into master’s studies. She then would have a better understanding of what she likes, what she is good at, and which areas she would like to improve.

After two years, Alisa started studying Coastal Marine Resource Management at a university in the U.K. During her studies, she learned that company profit should not be the main goal or the only focus. Sustainability should also be an essential factor for fishing companies.

After her studies in the U.K., she went to Brussels and worked in the European Commission for a while. However, soon she realized that politics was not the right path for her. Led by her desire to live in a warm climate where she could learn a new language, she wound up in Portugal, where she stayed for seven years. There she started her own business related to the fishing industry.

She moved back to Lithuania and unexpectedly landed a new job at DFDS. She started as a Sales Manager, but not long after, started working as the General Manager and then as a Commercial Director. Among six managers at her job, Alisa is the only female.

Alisa treasures her experiences and studies at LCC in her heart. Looking back to her years here, she states,

“Now I see how this university truly transforms people. I can see it right away when I go somewhere, and I know that when I am talking with people. ‘Okay, this person seems like they have graduated from LCC.’ They have this DNA, which is totally different.”

She adds, “It is definitely this personality transformation that is something more important to me than knowledge. You can build up knowledge… but if the person has knowledge but no character behind it or has no ethics whatsoever… well, LCC is really good at bringing all of it.”

Click here to listen to the complete webinar to hear more about Alisa’s career development and success and what LCC means to her.