Connecting Greeks Podcast

We welcome Stella to the show! Stella is a proud mother of 2 boys, a wife, and a mom to her puppy Chloé! She is a banking executive, with over 30 years of experience, where her passion is to inspire the will to win & reach new heights!

Leading by example & embracing a diversity of ideas is key! She's extremely passionate about the employee experience, business development, optimizing partner relations & brand presence! She's a mentor & coach both on a professional & personal front! More specifically, how to effectively network, build & strengthen your personal brand, knowing how to strategically achieve success in the corporate environment, how to reach new levels in all roles & helping to develop leadership skills - laterally and upwards.

As a forward thinker, she knows how we can all achieve bigger and greater things on a larger level - both in business & in life! All while optimizing a work life balance! She takes tremendous pride in community involvement - supporting an array of causes throughout the years. Most recently, in her very own Hellenic community of Montreal. Hence, her passion behind being the founder of @stellinides_united!

As founder of Stellinides United, she wants to create a Greek Female Led Empowerment Sisterhood! A sisterhood that welcomes all Greek women of all ages and walks of life - a first of its kind for the Greek Females in the Montreal community! A sisterhood that also embraces women from all ethnicities & backgrounds!

Learn more at stellinidesunited.com

More Connecting Greeks

We sat down with acclaimed photographer Nick Bourdo to discuss his life, his work, and what the Hellenic culture means to him. Through his amazing artistic photographic eye, Nick is one of the great promoters of Hellenism and we were happy to discuss all things Greek with him. Join us!

See & hear more on the GreekAF app.

We welcome the very funny Peter Kypri to the show. Peter, also known as Cypriot Smurf, has a unique background and upbringing have had a profound influence on his perspective and creative endeavors. Born in London to a Greek Cypriot father and an Italian mother, he grew up in a multicultural household that was steeped in a rich tapestry of traditions, languages, and idiosyncrasies. However, it was at the age of 11 that his life took a significant turn as he moved to Cyprus, a move that would shape his sense of humor and artistic expression.

In addition to his unique upbringing and the cultural influences from his time in Cyprus, Peter has taken his creative endeavors across the globe. He has performed his stand-up comedy in three continents, namely Australia, South Africa, United Kingdom & Cyprus. This global exposure has allowed him to further refine his comedic style and share his insights and humor with diverse audiences around the world, adding an international dimension to his already rich tapestry of experiences and inspirations.

YouTube: /cypriotsmurf

Facebook: /cypriotsmurf

Instagram: /cypriotsmurf

Twitter/X: /cypriotsmurf

Website: https://cypriotsmurf.com

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We welcome the super cool Peter Nikkos to the show! Peter currently resides in Los Angeles with his lovely wife, RID Certified American Sign Language (ASL) Interpreter, Eva Tingley. Born in the small village of Karyes, near Sparta, Greece, he immigrated with family to Chicago and was educated in the Windy City's public school system attending Lane Technical High School and James Monroe Elementary School. The first in a family of five to graduate from college, he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from North Park University while receiving professional consideration following an exemplary college soccer career. Strong theatre, improv and on-camera training brought him to the west coast, where significant onscreen work includes DESERT DAWN (Al Bravo Films), RUTHLESS (Premiere), FIRE BORN (Independent), BLACK WARRANT (Premiere), BLOWBACK (Premiere), ENCOUNTER (Amazon), AMERICAN CRIME STORY: VERSACE (FX), THE LAST SHIP (TNT) and TIME TRAVELING BONG (Comedy Central). Los Angeles stages have seen him inhabit roles for WOMEN OF ZALONGO, IN THE BALANCE, THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, THE CHERRY ORCHARD, as well as THE REAL HOUSEKEEPERS OF STUDIO CITY (2013 Best-of-Fringe). An avid animal lover and change advocate, he lends his heart, time and support to several charities including Women's March LA, The Special Olympics, March for Our Lives, Penny Lane Centers, Star Paws Animal Rescue and Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children. The personal mantra of "Living a life so good, it can hurt!" demands that one must risk well to live truly. He is managed by BAC Talent and represented theatrically and commercially by the AQUA Talent Agency.

Learn more: http://www.peternikkos.com

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Zafirios Georgilas is a writer, musician, voiceover artist, and content creator born in Vancouver, Canada, who spent part of his childhood in his father’s northern Greek village. He later moved to London, England, but returned to Vancouver in between sojourns in New York and Montreal. Georgilas has a BA in English Literature (with additional studies in Classical Greek and Latin) from the University of British Columbia and an MA in Publishing from the University of the Arts London.

Georgilas is also the singer, songwriter, and guitarist of the Vancouver band Zafirios. Their debut album, Summer Sand, was released in 2022 and the band regularly performs live at venues around Vancouver.

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We welcome Instagram superstar Yannis Dimoulis to the podcast. Yanni was born and raised in Chicago as a first generation Greek American.He studied Mechanical Engineering and went to grad school for Product Design / Design Research. While his 54thirty profile was started as a novelty t-shirt side hustle, he started making memes as a way to advertise the novelty shirts and eventually the comedy began to overtake the merchandise. He says, "I didn't really feel like the Greek comedy scene on the internet really reflected my experience as a Greek American and so I started to try to fill that void from early on. I love 54thirty as a tool for connecting to people (both personally, and helping others connect to one another). I also love to elevate talented Greeks who don't get the shine I feel they deserve."

Check out his Instagram >

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We hung out with the wonderful & talented Arianna Papalexopoulos. A San Francisco native of Greek and Italian descent, Arianna currently resides in West Hollywood, California. Arianna trained at the American Conservatory Theater (ACT) in San Francisco and then made her move to Los Angeles where she graduated from UCLA's School of Theater, Film, and Television. After graduation, she studied with Groundlings, Lesly Kahn, and Tess Kirsch. She has performed at SF Sketchfest with San Francisco's comedy troupe, Killing My Lobster, and her latest voice over booking was for Uber Safety.

instagram.com/ariannapapalexopoulos

Welcome Jenny and Eleonora of Grandpa J's Seasoning! Jenny Siormanolakis is long tenured in the food industry, with her family owned and operated one of the “longest running single family owned & operated establishments from 1973-2014. Her first job was standing on milk crates working in the dish pit. Working all through school and college, she always helped the family business. She is always to be relied on to come up with an extremely clever solution to difficult problems.

In 2004, an opportunity arose to buy her recently deceased uncles business Grandpa J’s Seasoning Inc, and with the support of her parents, her and her sister Eleonora were suddenly business partners. At that time, food manufacturing was undergoing industry changes in supply chain advancements. The small business suddenly needed things they knew nothing about i.e.: Nutritional Fact Tables and barcodes which were all mandatory to operate. It was an extremely tedious learning curve and with zero mentoring from their uncle, everything was based on trial and errors. Unfortunately, she suffered a workplace career ending traumatic brain injury in early 2018, and she embarked on a long and solo recovery, filled with self-renewal, and where she discovered her talent for sales.

As she neared the end of her healing process, the start of the pandemic was commencing. Taking initiative, she took their only product and started pitching it into many small local grocers and shops around Vancouver. Their Grandpa J’s seasoning went from 8 locations to 20 in just a few months, and by the summer of 2022 would be in 90 locations all by sticking to the basics of working the pavement, building relationships and helping small business be successful at selling out of their product with the use of social media and engagement.

Jenny is a social maven and a connector within her community. She is extremely passionate about food security for children and seniors. Obviously, she is a strong advocate for mental health given her own journey. Her fun social media channels will always have loud cheerleading and mentoring for women businesses and show off her cooking or food experiments. Most describe her as strong, energetic, extremely empathetic and honest. Travelling to Greece, cooking or eating out and enjoying food with friends fills her spare time. Her favorite quote is “if you don’t ask, you won’t know”. She has a teenage daughter and a husband who eat the delicious food she is always cooking and may have had to be unofficial taste testers on a few occasions for the research and development of new seasonings and food concepts.

Immersed in small business her entire life, Eleonora Iliakis is passionate, hard-working and creative. Her small business background come from decades of working for her family-owned Greek and Italian restaurant. Starting at the young age of 5, she remembers rolling and pressing dough and saucing thousands of pizzas. Most of her youth and young adult life was spent in a commercial kitchen, working alongside chefs, cooks and prepping Greek cuisine, while learning the ins and outs of the restaurant business. This experience taught her the importance of quality, consistency and the need for outstanding products.

In 2004, Eleonora and her sister Jenny purchased a small business named Grandpa J’s Seasonings Inc. The brand came from their late great uncle Jim’s legacy, who was well known for his MSG free products across BC and Alberta. At the time of purchasing the business, the product line was a local food industry and chefs ‘best kept secret.’ This was a great opportunity for Eleonora to use her skills and background in the food industry to take Grandpa J's to the next level. Eleonora’s roles and experience has varied tremendously, in an ever-changing industry.

Embracing all of the work along the way from admin duties, managing the inventory, production, receivables/payables, any day-to-day operations.

https://www.grandpajs.com/

We welcome a titan of media, the incomparable George Veras. A former Chief Operating Officer, Chief of Staff & Executive Producer of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, among many other achievements. Prior to joining the Pro Football Hall of Fame, his production company Veras Commuications Inc produced and managed world-renown musician Yanni. He produced and directed the PBS record breaking television specials, “Yanni Live at the Acropolis” and then for the first and only time in history, “Yanni Live at the Taj Mahal” and “Yanni Live at the Forbidden City”, the first time ever a Western artist performed at both venues. He managed and promoted Yanni worldwide, including “Live at the Taj Mahal” and “Live at the Forbidden City”, which launched a 100-city, two-year tour “Tribute” grossing more than $150 million. He produced for NBC Sports 2 Winter Olympics and the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, awarded two National Sports Emmys. VCI produced and marketed over 100 hours of entertainment, sports and documentary programming for seven networks.

Veras is also an Adjunct Professor of Sports Business at Case Western Reserve University, a judge for play by play and studio analysts for the National Sports Emmys, an Archon of the Ecumenical Patriarchate Order of Saint Andrew (https://www.archons.org/, a member of St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church, Rocky River, Ohio and an Ellis Island Gold Medalist Recipient. Past associations include member of 1996 Athens Olympic Bid Committee for Broadcasting and Television, Board membership for the Cleveland Pops Orchestra and Anatolia College, Thessaloniki. He has been honored four times as Man of the Year by the Greek-American community. The Hellenic Spirit Foundation 1994 (https://hellenicspiritfoundationstl.org/) the Elios Society 1999 (https://elios.org/) , the American Hellenic Institute 2005 (https://www.ahiworld.org/) and Leadership 100 (http://www.l100.org/) 2018.

We could go on and on, but instead please watch our amazing interview with this amazing human!

Winning 10 Emmys to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

We welcome entrepreneur, investor, consultant, and board member Irina Kapetanakis to the show! Irina possesses a unique skill set having helped Fortune 500 businesses drive top-line sales and revenue growth. She has a keen understanding of not only the sales process but what is needed to create an environment that fosters high growth by optimizing processes to achieve results. As a fan of Simon Sinek, she believes that to be a great leader, one needs to continuously define the “why” for every single individual on the team. When people work with purpose, they feel empowered, motivated, and satisfied.

Irina most recently invested in a boutique franchise fitness brand, Rumble, and is expanding their popular NYC based experience into the New Jersey area with 3 studios. The Hoboken NJ studio is opening February 2023.

As an angel investor, mentor and advisor that inspires entrepreneurs, Irina launched corben & lane, a consulting business to help fashion companies scale and diversify their production needs. She also is responsible for representing many international brands looking to enter the US market. She and her team create business value by identifying and executing upon market opportunities.

While Vice President of Marketing at Suuchi Inc, a venture backed, supply chain management software company, she redesigned the marketing organization to improve lead generation efforts by 360% resulting in 90% of the company’s pipeline. In addition to laying the groundwork to create a sales engine, she rebranded the company from a manufacturing business to position it as a tech driven SaaS platform working with enterprise fashion brands worldwide. Within six months the team was exceeding its goals. She also hosted the company’s widely viewed podcast focusing on timely supply chain issues.

Prior to joining Suuchi, Irina was a Director, National Accounts at Legg Mason Global Asset Management. She was promoted several times while at the company before being appointed to the national sales role in which she managed the relationships with the companies two biggest distribution partners — Morgan Stanley and UBS. She expanded the relationship with UBS from $25 million a year in 2006 to $2 billion in under 3 years.

Irina is an investor in several companies including Suuchi Inc. in which she is an angel investor. In 2020, she invested in KLEOS Mastiha Spirit, a woman-owned, luxury spirit brand and sits on their Board of Advisors. She also invested in Mammogen, a biotech company that seeks to radically improve the detection, diagnosis, and treatment of breast cancer. She continues to seek investments in women-led, female-focused companies with strong and passionate leadership that are disrupting the status quo.

She is a board member at the Fashion Institute of Technology’s School of International Trade and Marketing and President of the Hellenic Professional Women Organization. She is mother to her 9 year old son, Lucio, who is her wingman in all her ventures.

Check out Hellenic Professional Women Inc.