‘Our mission is the therapeutic treatment of pain and the restoration of the functionality and normal life for our patients.’ 

The ATHENA MAVROMATI PAIN CLINIC can be found on a leafy street in the Athenian suburb of Chalandri. The owners, Athena Mavromati and Ioannis Tornazakis, combine Athena’s medical expertise as an anesthesiologist and pain management specialist with Ioannis’s engineering and administrative skills to deliver top quality medical interventional services and treatments. Apart from being business partners, they are married and live in Athens, Greece, with their dog Ektoras.

Tell us a little about yourself.

Athena: I was born on the island of Thassos where I spent my preschool years. We then moved to the city of Kavala but always came back for the summer vacations. I received my Μedical Degree from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and specialised in Anesthesiology in Athens. I worked in Intensive Care Units for both adults and children in main hospitals of Athens. I then further specialized in the treatment of pain in Queens Medical Centre, Nottingham and Bradford Royal Infirmary at the UK. Upon my return to Greece, I worked at the Hygeia Hospital’s Pain Management Unit as a consultant, and at the University of Athens as an associate scientist. In 2001, I founded my own clinic and I’ve worked exclusively there ever since. I practice regenerative medicine and minimally invasive techniques such as prolotherapy, prp and stem cells. I have been continuing my scientific education in the US on the emerging field of regenerative medicine.

Ioannis: I was born and raised in Athens, Greece. I received my BSc in Aviation
Science and Wings from the Hellenic Air Force (HAF) Academy and got my MSc in
Electronic Warfare Systems Engineering from NPS in Monterey, California. As a fast
jet pilot I have logged more than 1,000 flight hours in jets including the Mirage 2000.
In the following years I served as an Electronic Warfare Systems Engineer at HAF
headquarters and was the Head of Delegation for Greece in key NATO groups
tasked with aircraft self-protection. In 2012, I decided to quit my career in the Air Force and join Athena in her practice. Since then, I have been designing and supporting our technical infrastructure, and constantly improving our medical imaging capabilities. I am also tasked with the administration of the practice and our day to day business needs.

What were the major difficulties you’ve faced in the last five years?

Athina: Well, they fall into two very different categories. On the one hand, there is our decision to move on from traditional pain management techniques to advanced regenerative medicine interventions under ultrasound guidance. This is a significant leap on an international scale that requires extensive medical training, and acquisition of new medical technologies and equipment; it also presents logistical challenges. On the other hand, as a medical practice here in Greece, we face a hostile environment to do business in, because of the destabilised and unpredictable tax, banking and healthcare policies.
It is a huge challenge to bring new and innovative technologies into a troubled market.
Ioannis: I’ve also had to face the difficulty of a major career change from defence to healthcare. After after 20 years in the Air Force and having adopted the lifestyle and habits of a well structured, disciplined and isolated work environment, I had to switch gears and adapt to a more open and flexible setting. This did not happen without trouble both for me and all others around me!
However, things eventually settled down thanks to Athena’s patience and determination.
At least healthcare and military operations have one thing in common: a mission-oriented approach.

Did anyone in particular inspire you or help you?

Ioannis: Our constant inspiration comes from our patients. We appreciate their trust and willingness to pay out of their pockets for our medical services. Greeks really value education and health and are still willing to invest in them despite their current economic status.
Athena: Other sources of inspiration include traveling abroad for education and
business. Following up on the latest medical advances fascinates me and is a powerful and constant source of inspiration.

What are your hopes/plans for the future?

Athina: Our plan is to keep going while being be able to incorporate
the latest advances in regenerative medicine into our everyday practice. In
order to achieve that, we are constantly investing in technology, training and
resources, and adapting our procedures as needed.
Ioannis: In addition to our mainstream business we have started to develop medical mobile applications, which will complement our daily practice and reflect our knowledge in the field. We have been researching and working on this for a while and hope to see it eventually coming to life in early spring this year.

What are your hopes for Greece? What changes do you hope to see happen?

We hope that our country will eventually achieve economic stability and growth, and maintain its geopolitical status and advantage in our region. More important, we hope that we Greeks will be able to restore our country’s name and place in Europe and the global community. Though we have been greatly underestimated and blamed for the last years, we believe that in the end our spirit will prevail and we will reclaim our lost pride.

Have you considered leaving? If so, where would you like to go, and why?

Yes, despite our growth we have considered leaving. In a scenario like that we would like to go to an English-speaking country outside Europe. This is because Europe is in the grips of a decline and has lost its competitive advantage in almost all areas in comparison to America and the East. Plus, it is always interesting to work and live in new places.

If you have already decided to leave, what would make you stay?

We are very well established in our business so it would be a pity to leave the country. Moreover, we have reached a balance between work and quality of life. At the end of the day, we love our country and would not be among the first to flee from it.

Are you actively doing anything to help with the situation? Is there something you would like to do?

We are actively helping with the situation by doing our part as a medical practice. We are bringing new technologies into the country and sustaining them. Despite being surrounded by a collapsing healthcare system, we offer advanced health services that make a difference. We save our patients having to face a situation where there is no place to go when their health is at stake. We strongly believe that if all of us do our part, we will, as a whole, harvest the benefits. It might seem a little hard at the beginning, but frankly, there is no other way.

How do you see Greece in 5, 10 years?

We cannot say how we see Greece for the next quarter let alone the next 5 to 10
year period. Our country’s economic and geopolitical instability, (not to mention warfare and associated problems in the wider region) does not allow for such predictions.
Instead, we find it more productive to focus on contingency planning and what to do if things get worse or take a new course. As for our expectations, we believe the pessimistic messages coming from the political and academic milieu are countered by the optimistim and hopes of active citizens.

How do you cope with obstacles and frustrations in your everyday life ?

We cope with obstacles by solving the problems one at a time and having a
plan for resources and supplies. We brainstorm a lot and have long conversations in order to analyse each issue that arises.
Frustrations are hard to manage because they are sudden and overwhelming in
nature. What we have found works for us is having a flexible plan, doing things in
small increments that eventually add up, and always having alternate paths and
options.

What are the positive sides of living in Greece? Have you had any good
experiences lately?

In our free time we like to hike with our dog in the nearby mountains and go sailing at every opportunity. Greece’s nature is one of a kind, from its limitless coastlines and countless islands to its mountains. We have the best scenery on this planet, with the sun a permanent resident, signs of the ancient Greeks everywhere, ruins of temples and historical sites all around. Add to that the openness of the people and the whole set up has no equal.
Ask sailors around the world from New Zealand to the Baltic which is the hardest
sea to master, and they will all come up with one answer: the Aegean! So, both of us being sailors worth our salt, our best experiences have to do with sailing around
in our yacht. Recently we sailed for a couple of hours from our harbour to the maintenance centre. There was a light breeze, no waves, and brilliant light
with scattered clouds. All that in the middle of winter!

Organic extra-virgin olive oil, wild herbs, cheeses from around Greece, Cretan honey, truffle salt. Artisanal breadsticks and ‘spoon’ sweets. Selected wines and pasta. All those things that are sometimes hard to find, even if you live in Greece, are now only a few clicks away.

In one of those coincidences that seem to occur occasionally, right after writing my post on Greek cuisine I chanced upon an article in the Sunday papers. It described an e-commerce site, Yoleni’s, which sells a wide range of top-grade products from all over Greece. Checking them out, I found myself on a virtual foodie journey: you navigate the site via the different regions of Greece, sourcing products lovingly described. They even have a large number of delicious recipes to temp you into experimenting. The site is in three languages – Greek, English and German – and they deliver to anywhere in the world.

I got in touch with Yannis Georgiadis, one of the co-founders of the enterprise.

Tell me, Yannis, how did Yoleni’s come into being?

Yoleni’s was started four and half years ago by five friends. The logic behind it was to combine traditional products with e-commerce. At the time this did not exist in Greece. Our ambition was to provide our customers with the best Greek products available on the market; to give shopping for food a new twist. Before going online, we spent a very long time working on our content. We imagined our customers travelling through Greece, finding specialities from different regions, accessing traditional recipes.

Can you give me some numbers?

We opened online in 2014, and in the last two years we have built up our range to include 2.000 products, sourced from 180 producers based throughout Greece. In 2015 we notched up 11.000 clients and sent out 6.000 corporate gifts around the world. We deliver to 47 countries, and that is excluding the US, which has its own site, yolenis.us, as well as its own warehouse and distribution network.

So you are getting quite well known.

What has helped is winning some awards, the most important of which was the Hellenic Entrepreneurship Award in 2015. This provides winning companies with interest-free funding, mentoring and a range of business support services. With their help, our aim is to open our first retail store in Athens in 2016, followed by stores in the USA. Then we hope to expand further through a franchise system.
Also in America we are the exclusive providers of all the products for The Cooking Odyssey, a TV show aiming to bring its audience the traditions, culture and recipes of the Mediterranean.

How do you source the products you sell?

In the beginning we travelled all over Greece, meeting the producers and striving to persuade them we were capable of selling their produce online. This was a totally new concept for them and they were dubious at the start. Then they saw how much we invested in each product, talking about it, photographing it, connecting it to specific recipes. Now it is they who call us, asking if we can sell their products.

How do you choose which products to take on?

First let me say that we buy the products outright. Then we have three main criteria: The products must be Greek. They have to be free of conservatives. They must have the necessary certification for export.

Have you been affected by the crisis?

PayPal going down because of the Capital Controls did not help. Of course there has been a positive side to the issue, since Greeks were forced to use plastic money, which they mostly avoided before. What worries us now is the possibility of the closing of the borders, if we are thrown out of Schengen. It is difficult to imagine how that would affect exports.

What are the main obstacles you faced?

In Greece, people are not used to shopping online, especially not for food. We think opening our flagship store in Athens will help, since customers will be able to taste foods before buying. At the moment we see that they look at things online again and again before deciding. Of course, once they’ve tried something they come back for more, so we must be doing something right!
People abroad don’t know about many of the products we sell, so they have to be educated – and that takes time.

Tell me a little about running the company

We started with 5 people and we are now 18. In that time there have been a lot of changes  because of the crisis, but not only. We invested a lot, both in time and money, on the content of our company, and we are now starting to reap the benefits of that. The idea to connect traditional organic products with an e-grocery did not exist before in Greece.
We run the company in a very relaxed, informal, family-style manner, focusing on teamwork.

What are your bestsellers?

Definitely honey, followed by refrigerated goods like cheeses and cold cuts, then corporate gifts; and extra-virgin olive oil, which we mostly sell abroad. Greeks usually have  their own source of olive oil, from relatives in the countryside!

After I said goodbye to Yannis, I went on the site and ordered some cheeses from Andros, truffle salt and some lovely buffalo sausages. There is a huge selection and each product is accompanied by short texts about its history, about the history of its place of origin, and about the producer. Each product is also linked to a couple of recipes to give ideas to cooks! My mouth was watering as I browsed.

If you have a couple of minutes to spare, click here. You will come upon a short video explaining Yoleni’s concept.

An online petition has been made by the grassroots campaign group, Avaaz, on behalf of the residents of the Greek islands who have been rescuing, feeding and sheltering hundreds of thousands of desperate migrants arriving at their shores.

This is the text of the petition: “Ordinary residents of Greek islands and other volunteers have been on the front lines of Europe’s refugee crisis for months, opening up their hearts and homes to save hundreds of thousands fleeing war and terror. For their compassion and courage, for treating those in danger with humanity, and for setting an example for the rest of the world to follow, we citizens around the world, nominate these brave women and men for a Nobel Peace Prize.”

Nearly 1 million migrants entered Europe in “irregular arrivals” last year, most fleeing conflict, persecution and poverty in the Middle East and Africa, according to the International Organization for Migration. These tidal waves of humanity have made the Mediterranean “the deadliest route for migrants on our planet,” the IOM’s Director General William Lacy Swing has said, with nearly 3,700 people drowning in its waters last year. And more are continuing to drown on a daily basis, especially in the last weeks, when the weather has turned to winter at last, and the sea is freezing cold.

According to an article in the Guardian (Sunday 24 January, 2016), “of the 900,000 refugees who entered Europe last year most were received – scared, soaked and travelling in rickety boats – by those who live on the Greek islands in the Aegean Sea.

The islanders, including fishermen who gave up their work to rescue people from the sea, are in line to be honoured with one of the world’s most esteemed awards. Eminent academics from the universities of Oxford, Princeton, Harvard, Cornell and Copenhagen are drafting a submission in favour of awarding the prize to the people of Lesbos, Kos, Chíos, Samos, Rhodes and Leros.”

The article goes on to say that “it must be noted that a people of a country already dealing with its own economic crisis responded to the unfolding tragedy of the refugee crisis with “empathy and self-sacrifice”, opening their homes to the dispossessed, risking their lives to save others and taking care of the sick and injured.”

At the time of posting, the petition had amassed 313,975 signatures

Continue reading “Nobel Prize nomination for Greek islanders?”

POLITICS

Kyriakos Mitsotakis won the New Democracy leadership election in a fairly tight vote on Sunday. This was seen by most as an upset (Mitsotakis was lagging in the first round) or a reversal.
I see it more as a correction. It has remained a source of astonishment for me how the old guard politicians, having failed dismally at everything they had promised, have the gall to continue promising things they almost certainly have no intention of delivering. At last, the voters saw reason. Whatever one may think of Mitsotakis, let’s give him a chance!

Reactions in the foreign press have also been positive, pointing out that now Tsipras will no longer be ‘the only game in town’. Continue reading “Quick news update”