Evgenia Peeva – Kirova was recognized by EVRIKA Foundation for her valuable and sustainable contribution to education in Bulgaria.

Teach For Bulgaria’s Chief Executive Officer, Evgenia Peeva-Kirova, was awarded “Young Manager of the Year” for 2017 at the EVRIKA Foundation award ceremony on January 29, 2018. The annual EVRIKA awards are given in three categories – young manager, young inventor, and young farmer. The EVRIKA awards originated 28 years ago and this year, for the very first time, a manager from the NGO sector was recognized as “Young Manager of the Year”.

“This award is truly special to me, most of all because Teach For Bulgaria is generally recognized as an organization which motivates and recruits successful talented professionals to become teachers, however, we do have a bigger goal – to build successful managers and leaders who can contribute to a positive change in education,” stated Evgenia Peeva-Kirova during her acceptance speech.

“The jury asked me why they should give this award to a manager like me who is not in the business sector and how non-governmental organizations differ from corporate ones. The way I see it is that both have a similar management structure, strategic planning, goal setting, reporting, monitoring, and accountability, but the difference is that it is much more challenging to measure the results of our work in the NGO sector – we cannot measure it in revenues, so we measure it in a variety of other KPIs which often take longer to accomplish,” Evgenia added.

“The EVRIKA award means major recognition not just for me, but for the entire education sector and all professionals engaged in the NGO sector contributing to positive social changes in the name of our shared future,” she concluded.

What does it mean to be awarded by EVRIKA

The awards were given by Academician Kiril Boyanov, Chairman of the Council of EVRIKA Foundation. The jury made the decision to award Evgenia Peeva-Kirova because of her “meaningful, convincing, and sustainable results” leading to positive change in education in Bulgaria as well as “her leadership skills and vision for sustainable development”, her ability to motivate her team and to build successful partnerships.

The EVRIKA awards strive to recognize and celebrate the best achievements in a few sectors.
Prior to launching Teach For Bulgaria, Evgenia worked as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company where she advised companies in the technology, pharmaceuticals, industrial electronics, and non-profit sector on strategy, marketing, sales, and operations.
Evgenia graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Social Studies from Harvard College and with a Master’s Degree in Education Management from Plovdiv University.

The EVRIKA awards strive to recognize and celebrate the best achievements in a few sectors and to promote the most talented and capable young professionals, their work, and accomplishments.

At this year’s ceremony, Georgi Balev was given the award for young inventor and Raina Boneva was awarded best young farmer. Maya Hadzhieva was recognized for her achievements in science.