The MAS awarded the Artemida 2022 Award to Tanja Blatnik, general manager of the Romanian company Euroins Asigurare, and dr. Babett Stapel, managing director of Fraport Slovenia. The Artemida award, which was received on January 25 at the January Gathering, is awarded by the MAS Section of Female Managers to those managers who have broken through the glass ceiling and assumed the highest management position in the organization for the first time.

The MAS has recognized Tanja Blatnik and dr. Babett Stapel as two managers who successfully broke through the glass ceiling and reached for their business dreams. Today, Euroins Asigurare has the largest market share in Romania and employs 570 people, and Fraport Slovenia, despite the challenging pandemic years for the aviation industry, has exceeded the set goals and is moving into the coming years with determined sustainable goals.

Breakthrough year 2021: new challenges despite the pandemic

In March 2021, Tanja Blatnik took over the position of general director of the Romanian insurance company Euroins Asigurare; neither the new business environment, new people nor the pandemic in full swing deterred her from the new business challenge. When she took over management, the company was in 4th place in Romania in terms of market share, and they closed the year 2021 with a turnover of 452 million euros and a profit of 43 million euros. In 2022, they recorded a 22% increase in revenue until November. Today, Euroins Asigurare - part of the largest international insurance-energy group in the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region, Eurohold - with 570 employees, achieves the largest market share in Romania.

Prior to that, Blatnik devoted herself to advising administrations and managing strategic projects. She grew up in the Slovenian insurance industry, where she started her career in 2006 as director of back-office services in Adriatic. She performed this role until 2013, when she became the executive director of Adriatic Slovenica, and remained there until 2019, when she took over the position of director at Generali zavarovalnica.

Successfully transferred goal orientation from professional sports to business

In her career, Blatnik achieved excellent results with innovative projects in the areas of optimization, automation and digitization of service processes, both from the perspective of the experience of employees and customers. Her biggest passion is change management in the field of planning strategic activities and reorganization of companies, namely with the aim of increasing the efficiency of processes and the flexibility of management and management. For her, the most important thing in management is that the manager is able to create the vision of the company, has good communication skills, is always making decisions and is also responsible for them. She also has 20 years of professional swimming behind her - as a former top athlete, she is focused on goals and, in the constant search for new and better solutions, bets on employee empowerment.

A lawyer who embarked on the path of strategy and marketing

Dr. Babett Stapel took over the position of managing director of Fraport Slovenia in July 2021. She joined the largest Slovenian airport as director of finance, commercial and administrative affairs and procurator in 2016.

Stapel has 22 years of experience in managing airports, including 10 years in executive management positions - in addition to the parent company in Frankfurt, she also worked at the airports in Varna, Bulgaria, and Lima, Peru. Moving to the latter, where she held the position of executive director for organization and communications, was one of the biggest turning points in her life. The most important, according to Stapel, is that she turned from legal to strategic and marketing areas.

Under her leadership, despite the pandemic year, they flew high

Today, Stapel leads more than 400 employees in Fraport Slovenia, for whom the past three years have been extremely demanding. At the end of 2019, the company faced the bankruptcy of a Slovenian airline that represented 51% of its air traffic. At the same time, this year was the last 'normal' in the aviation industry before the pandemic paralyzed the world. Despite the negative factors, traffic at the airport doubled in 2022 compared to the previous year under her leadership, and the company achieved a positive result even without taking into account state aid.

Such results are not surprising, since dr. Babett Stapel is convinced that the most important elements of management are cooperation, setting and achieving goals, motivation and a sense of mission. At the same time, it bets on reliability, integrity, trust and sustainable behavior. Their goals for the coming years are also aligned in this way, as they plan to become carbon neutral by 2045. Stapel believes in Slovenia and is a great promoter of it, and at the same time cultivates trust in the professionalism of the people. Her great passion lies precisely in relations with employees.

About the Artemida Award

The Artemida Award is awarded by the MAS Section of Female to female individuals who have broken through the glass ceiling and for the first time assumed the highest management position (the position of director, general director or chairwoman of the board) in an economic or important non-economic company with more than 50 employees. The company, whose managerial position must be held for at least 12 months, must be doing business positively. With the recognition, the MAS wants to encourage women to decide to accept managerial challenges in the economy and public administration and to take a leading position in the organization. At the same time, it is one of the steps with which the association has been striving for years for a more balanced representation of the genders in the highest positions in the economy.

Previous recipient of the award

• The recipient of the award for 2021 was Anita Stojčevska, CEO of SKB banka. All previous recipients of the award (link).

• The commission that chose the recipient of the award for 2022 consists of mag. Sarah Jezernik Konovšek, Melanie Seier Larsen, Aleš Muhič, Enej Kirn, Mojca Randl, dr. Maja Fesel Kamenik, and Diana Jecič.