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Sweet success

Igor Saveliev ’94MBA
Vice President and Managing Director, Central & Eastern Europe
The Wrigley Company
Moscow, Russia

From the Moscow headquarters of the Wrigley Company, Igor Saveliev ’94MBA oversees a growing marketplace that spans thirty countries in Central and Eastern Europe. As the vice president and managing director for the confectionary giant in the region, he directs efforts at the company’s hubs in Prague, Poznan, and Kiev, and subregional offices in an area reaching from Poland and Slovenia in the West through Mongolia in the East. Today, he says, “Russia is the third largest volume market in the company after the U.S. and China.” Saveliev routinely handles such well-known brands as Orbit sugar-free gum, Wrigley’s Spearmint, Doublemint, Juicy Fruit, and Hubba Bubba for the thriving Russian marketplace.

The Moscow native came to the business world after a stint in international relations. Upon graduation from Moscow Linguistics University in 1983 with a BA in English/French, he joined a yearlong United Nations training course in Moscow. Saveliev spent the next five years working for the U.N. Secretariat in Geneva. Once his U.N. contract expired in 1989, he returned to Moscow and joined the Foreign Ministry of Russia as an attaché. “I had the privilege of participating in a few summits, including President Bush’s visit to Moscow in 1991,” he says.

But, with his country in a state of flux, Saveliev sensed it was time for a career change. “I became interested in business, and I saw an opportunity in the newspaper in 1991 for a Ben Franklin scholarship (to support graduate study in the United States, now called the Muskie Fellowship) announced for the first time in Russia under the auspices of the Freedom Support Act.” His GMAT scores qualified him for a spot at Goizueta. After graduation in 1994, Saveliev returned to his homeland and accepted a spot in the management-training program in Moscow at The Coca-Cola Company.

When a choice opportunity with Nabisco opened the following year, Saveliev accepted the position as their country manager in Russia. But after strategic disagreements with the food company, he moved on to the post of general manager at Wrigley in 1995. Now, as an officer of the Wrigley Company, he also leads their developing geographies platform—a cross-functional global group pushing Wrigley’s growth in developing countries.

Saveliev visited the Goizueta campus in April 2005 and sat down with a handful of students to discuss career opportunities and the ever-changing international marketplace. He reflects favorably on Goizueta’s emphasis on global enterprise, noting, “Graduates need an ability to work across cultural spectrums. The world is so interdependent that even if a company is focused on the domestic marketplace, the suppliers, customers, and financial and media agency partners are likely to be international.”

—Myra A. Thomas

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