Thinkers, creators, and doers who bring our campus and city to life. Each story reveals what it truly means to learn, grow, and lead in New York City: the greatest classroom on Earth.
In this edition, we meet Filomila Kyriaki Letsiou, a student from Greece studying the Master of Science in Management through the 3+1 program at IENYC. Hers is a story of deliberate choices, each one bigger than the last, from a small town on the Aegean coast to the heart of Manhattan.
Filomila’s journey didn’t start in New York. It started much earlier, at 15, when she made the decision to leave her hometown of Volos and move to Thessaloniki to study the International Baccalaureate at Anatolia College.
“Becoming independent at such a young age shaped my character and gave me the courage to step outside my comfort zone.”
That early leap set the pattern for everything that followed. From Thessaloniki she moved to Madrid to pursue her Bachelor’s in Business Administration at IE University. From Madrid she was admitted to an exchange semester at Singapore Management University, adding courses in Investor Relations, International Finance, and Family Business to her profile. And then, mid-exchange, the next opportunity arrived.
“I was doing my exchange semester in Singapore when all of a sudden this opportunity reached me and I could join the 3+1 program in New York instead of going back to Madrid, getting my master’s degree one year earlier than normal. It seemed like the best opportunity I could get and there was no chance I would decline.“
New York, she says, was always the dream. “I would have never imagined four years ago, when I started my bachelor’s in Madrid, that I would be finishing my degree and my master’s in New York City, while also traveling around Asia during my exchange. It is just such an extraordinary pleasure to be part of this cohort and meet people from all over the world.”
For someone from a small country with limited opportunities in international business, her trajectory is remarkable. But for Filomila, each step felt like the natural next one.
“I come from a quite small country like Greece where students don’t have a lot of opportunities. By leaving my country to study abroad I was already making a big step. I was very excited about what a new country, and especially New York, could offer me.”
At IENYC, what pushes you hardest isn’t always what you expect. For Filomila, one of the most surprising challenges has been the quality of the people teaching her.
“All of our professors are working individuals and experts in their field before they are professors. We get to really see the world through their experiences and knowledge. The challenge, which also motivates me to work even harder, is that they have high expectations from us.”
Those expectations show up in how the work is structured. Case studies, presentations, negotiations, group projects: all of it designed to simulate what comes after graduation, not just what is needed to pass.
One class stopped her in her tracks. In the value-based leadership course, students were asked to write weekly journal entries about their values and their vision of themselves as future leaders.
“This made me feel like I had to reflect on myself every week in a way that I started realizing things about myself that I didn’t pay attention to before.“
It’s the kind of self-knowledge that doesn’t show up on a CV but shapes everything about how you lead.
Another standout was an economics negotiation exercise where students represented countries at the table, arguing for policy positions that would benefit their assigned nation. “It felt very real. It was like we were actually representing specific countries and trying to negotiate for factors that would make them better off.“
The lesson wasn’t just economic. It was about how to hold a position under pressure, read the room, and find common ground without giving too much away. Through it all, one thing has become clear about how Filomila operates.
“The fact that we work a lot in group settings made me realize that I thrive in group projects. I like to take on responsibilities, and even when I’m not assigned to lead, people feel like they can trust me enough to lead the project.”
New York doesn’t ease you in. It moves at full speed from day one, and the question is whether you can keep up.
“It surprised me how fast-paced life here is. People are always rushing, they always have somewhere to be or something to do. You can easily fall behind if you don’t keep up with the market, your friend groups, and your everyday life in the city.“
The competitiveness is real too, and it runs deeper than hustle. “Everyone has a purpose and a goal. I find New Yorkers friendly, but you can feel the competition between them.” That tension, she has learned, isn’t something to avoid. It’s something to use.
Some of the sharpest lessons have come not in class but at networking events.
“You always try to meet as many people as you can, make sure you get their contacts, and reach out for help or referrals for job applications. You need to be confident enough to showcase your skills and attract the interest of the other person for them to even want to talk to you, which is quite difficult to do.”
It’s a skill that no course can fully teach. The city teaches it instead, one conversation at a time.
Filomila is clear-eyed about the challenge ahead. The US job market, and New York in particular, is competitive in a way that’s hard to prepare for from the outside.
“I naturally don’t like uncertainty, and the fact that the market in New York is so competitive makes me feel uncertain about finding a job here. I’m confident that I can do everything I put my mind to, but here I find it more challenging.”
That honesty isn’t doubt. It’s realism, and it’s exactly the kind of self-awareness that tends to lead to good decisions.
What keeps her moving is the support structure around her. “Apart from the academic part, which really helps me prepare my profile for the job market, all of our professors and administrators are here to make sure that we build a promising future for our careers.“ Speakers, investors, founders, and professionals come into class regularly, sharing the early steps of their own careers. It’s mentorship built into the curriculum.
And the 3+1 program itself gives her something concrete: through the STEM OPT pathway, international graduates can work in the US for up to three years after graduation, a significant advantage for anyone serious about building a career here.
Filomila describes her experience in three words: eye-opening, diverse, interpersonal. Each one earned.
“People are so mobile here, moving all the time, changing jobs. You need to be able to adapt and always stay open to new opportunities. It might seem like uncertainty, but it’s just an opportunity.”
That reframe is what separates the people who thrive in New York from the ones who get worn down by it. The city doesn’t slow down for anyone. But for the ones who learn to move with it rather than against it, it opens up in ways that nowhere else can.
Filomila’s path from Volos to Thessaloniki to Madrid to Singapore to Manhattan wasn’t mapped out in advance. It was built one bold decision at a time. And the next one is already forming.
“NYC is the dream, and I would suggest it to everyone.”
Filomila’s story is a reminder that the students shaping IENYC aren’t waiting for opportunity to find them. They’ve been chasing it since before they arrived.
Here, learning isn’t confined to four walls. It happens in negotiations, in networking rooms, in journal entries written at midnight, and in the decision to board a plane to a city where no one is waiting to hand you anything.
It happens in the greatest classroom on Earth.
The IENYC Hustle is a continuing series celebrating the people who make IE New York College extraordinary. Stay tuned for more stories of ambition, resilience, and inspiration, straight from the heart of the city that never sleeps.
The IENYC Hustle: Learning in the greatest classroom on Earth with Sali Alkaabi
The IENYC Hustle: Living fast and learning deep with Giovanni Coeli
The IENYC Hustle: Meet Milena Avagyan
The IENYC Hustle: Gilles Raynaud on building a global finance mindset in New York City
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