Based out of Hill’s Athens office, Kalypso Kyriakopoulou is vice president of our operations in Europe. For the past 12 years, she has been leading major projects in Greece, and today, as leader on our European operations team, Kalypso helps shape Hill’s future across the continent. “At Hill, I’ve had the opportunity to develop my technical and leadership skills at multiple levels within our organization, to lead incredible projects and project teams, and to help clients deliver critical infrastructure that benefits communities and stakeholders throughout Greece,” says Kalypso. “I look forward to continued growth with my colleagues and our clients.”

Greek Foundations

Hill has had a presence in Greece since we began growing our project and construction management business in Europe around the turn of the millennium. Originally, we maintained an office in Athens because it provided a convenient location to serve as an administrative headquarters for project and construction management operations in the Balkans, North Africa, and the Middle East. It wasn’t until 2011, amidst the country’s debt crisis, that Hill began managing projects in Greece. Just a few years later, in 2014, Kalypso joined Hill.

“Hill drew my attention as an international company with regional presence, building its roots with boots on the ground in Greece,” she says. “I saw an opportunity to work with both junior as well as experienced professionals eager to become catalysts for project success. At the time, Hill had only a handful of assignments in Greece, but the team in Athens was supporting business development efforts regionally and, as would be proven in the coming years, was setting the building blocks for unprecedented growth locally.”

With a background in field/office engineering and several years of cost estimating experience, Kalypso initially worked as a proposals writer at Hill. In this role, Kalypso collaborated with her colleagues to develop project understandings, align project teams with client requirements, and write winning project management approaches. Leveraging strong critical thinking and leadership skills, together with her knowledge of construction management and organizational principles, she excelled in this role.

In 2016, interested in the construction process and motivated to overcome challenges with hands-on solutions across the project life cycle, Kalypso started working in operations in a project controls role. Kalypso describes the move as a natural progression from the assessment, analysis, and planning of a successful project during bidding, to the evaluation of progress and proactive troubleshooting of challenges during implementation.

Kalypso’s project portfolio spans multiple market sectors and includes some of Hill’s most impressive construction projects in Greece and Southeastern Europe. She helped manage the reconstruction of Four Seasons Astir Palace along the Athenian Riviera, worked on a technical assistance assignment with the Albanian Ministry of Transportation, and led Hill’s framework agreement with Fraport Greece for their European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) compliance program.

Currently, Kalypso leads a team of more than 50 colleagues on the landmark Ellinikon development south of Athens. Europe’s largest urban regeneration project and one of the most ambitious developments of its kind worldwide, the Ellinikon development aims to set a new global standard for sustainable living, innovation, and long-term social value. “The challenges being overcome daily by the project team are as great as the program’s vision,” adds Kalypso. “Hill is working alongside our client, the project’s developer, to manage the challenges and the project’s many interfaces and to deliver the works as planned.”

Like Kalypso, Hill’s operations in Greece have evolved over the last 12 years. Hill is now a major partner for public and private clients operating in a range of market sectors across the country, and Kalypso and her colleagues provide a variety of program, project, and construction management and technical advisory services to help keep Greece’s projects moving forward.

Greece itself has also evolved from the time when Kalypso joined. “When I started at Hill, the country was in the midst of a severe debt crisis, the effects of which can still be felt today,” she says. However, Kalypso adds that significant infrastructure projects of national importance are currently underway that have the potential to fuel economic growth, including the Ellinikon, the expansion of Athens International Airport, work at the Ports of Piraeus and Thessaloniki, Line 4 of the Athens Metro, the New International Airport of Heraklion in Crete, the Northern Road Axis of Crete, and more projects spanning the infrastructure, buildings, energy, and technology sectors. Innovative partnerships and private initiative in healthcare and higher education, such as the Stavros Niarchos Foundation’s three new hospitals in Greece and the University of Nicosia’s new Athens Campus, are also beacons of growth for the country.

“The construction industry has surged compared to the past decade,” Kalypso says. “Funding is in place, impactful projects have been planned—in fact, some of the most significant challenges today involve finding the resources to deliver all of the work. But Hill is working closely with our clients to mitigate these capacity constraints and identify and reduce other project delivery risks to support Greece’s continued growth through infrastructure development for many years to come.”

Continental Outlooks

In addition to her work on the Ellinikon, Kalypso is responsible for leading Hill’s European operational “control tower.” She monitors project team performance and facilitates operational excellence across all of Hill’s European and Indian operations, encompassing work in Greece, Spain, Poland, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Netherlands, Cyprus, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania, Romania, Türkiye, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and India. By maintaining the high quality of Hill’s services, Kalypso promotes our continued sustainable growth in these regions.

While the drivers and challenges in each country are different, Kalypso says that governments throughout the European Union (EU) and EU candidate states are undertaking infrastructure projects in alignment with pan-EU priorities, including digitalization, the energy transition, economic resiliency and independence, and defense. As in Greece, clients throughout Europe are also contending with resource constraints and geopolitical uncertainty. Because of the similar opportunities and challenges across Europe, Kalypso is focused on identifying and promoting synergies between Hill’s operational groups throughout the continent. Kalypso explains that, by enabling each local team to tap into Hill’s global network for best practices and lessons learned, she aims enhance project delivery across Hill’s European operations. “For example, if we have a data center client in Poland, I want to connect our Polish team with our experts who have experience on data center projects in Spain, Italy, and Greece,” she goes on. “Connections like that at scale, seamless knowledge sharing, and the cooperation of teams throughout our region will help Hill continue to provide the exceptional project management services for which we are known and continue to grow in Europe.”

Hill’s European Future

As Hill International celebrates our 50th anniversary, we look forward to our future in each of the markets we serve. Discussing Hill’s future in Europe, President, Europe Manolis Sigalas recognizes the importance of talented and driven operational leaders like Kalypso, who understand Hill’s history and have a vision for our next half century of success.

“Kalypso has been with Hill in Greece nearly from the start of our operations here,” says Manolis. “Over the past 12 years, she’s contributed to the growth of Hill’s business and the success of our client’s projects throughout the country. With her technical and leadership skills, as well as her understanding of our company, our clients, our partners, our projects, and our markets, she exemplifies the operational excellence mindset and capabilities that we aspire to nurture on our teams and in the next generation of professionals across Europe and beyond. She is poised to help unite our teams and define the quality of Hill’s operations in Europe as we embark on our next 50 years. Thank you, Kalypso, and all our colleagues across Europe and India, for all that you do!”