The Fort Issue 05 Feb 2020 | Page 44

Alumni Speak

VIS Alumni - Where Are They Now?

Hello everyone! My name is Giannella Gauci, and I am currently the Financial Controller of the retail giant Zara and Zara Home (Malta Outlets). After graduating from Verdala in 2009, I went to study a degree in Business Management at the University of Manchester till 2012. This was an easy choice of subject for me as I was always interested in Business given my family background, which is extremely business oriented. I can safely say that the IB diploma really prepared me for the hardships of university, and to be honest, University was a breeze compared to the IB!

Leaving Verdala was very hard for me because the teachers and students alike became family! I was even named the “Nanna” of Verdala since I was a student for almost 15 years!

GIANNELLA GAUCI

Finance Manager

My name is Valeria and I graduated VIS in May of 2019.

I currently live in Japan and attend intensive Japanese language courses at a Language school to hopefully get accepted to Tokyo University of the Arts.

Because VIS is an international school, throughout my 6 years at the school I have met a lot of students from different countries with different cultural backgrounds. VIS taught me to appreciate and be respectful towards other cultures which I constantly think about in Japan which is really culturally different if compared to Europe. "

In Manchester I continued to confirm my passion for Business Management and Accounting, and went on to focus on Finance related topics. Apart from this during my time at Verdala I also trained as a competitive swimmer, which gave me that discipline and competitive edge in and out of the pool. I took this quality all the way to Manchester where I got involved in the University swim team, where we competed against world class swimmers from all over the country. Verdala and University were the best years of my life so far, so cherish these moments and memories!

Following this chapter in my life, I came back to Malta and enrolled myself in the ACA programme at Pricewaterhouse Coopers where I started to work along side study to become a fully qualified accountant. During my 4 years at PwC I worked within the audit department and was exposed to auditing many local and foreign companies. Once I qualified in 2016 I was given the opportunity to become the financial controller at a large Maltese public company PG Group Plc which houses many companies including Zara and Zara Home which is my main focus.

Valeria Jermakova

Tokyo University