Celebrating female leadership in FX: Eva Antoniou (Trading Central)

Ultra-modern, highly technologically advanced, and at the cutting edge of the world of financial services and technology, the FX industry heralds executives who are ambitious, enthusiastic and upwardly mobile.

In its relative infancy compared to the hierarchical, wood-paneled institutions of traditional banking, FX represents all that is urbane and fast moving, hence the lack of a metaphorical ‘glass ceiling’. With this dynamism comes the rise to success of several ladies whose prominence in senior management positions across the entire FX industry, from social trading, to interactive educational systems, to signal provision, platform engineering, events, and brokerage.

As FinanceFeeds celebrates the success of women in the FX industry, FinanceFeeds’ Ricardo Esteves spoke to Eva Antoniou, Sales Manager, Southern Europe at TradingCentral, a world-renowned and awarded market research house, famous for its technical analysis, based in Paris since its foundation in 1999.

How did you get into the industry and where did it all start?

It was a complete accident. I was fresh back from Florence where I studied languages and literature in Italian. I was debating going to England to do an MA and I went for a chance job interview.

Have you faced any challenges and how did you overcome them?

The challenge has always been to get men in the industry to treat you as an equal. It’s not much of a challenge though, when you start outperforming them they change their tune pretty quickly.

Any interesting anecdotes from your own background and how this helped you succeed?

Languages have been my secret weapon in this job and not for the obvious reasons. Learning a language requires you to be highly adaptable and at home in situations where you’re at an informational disadvantage.

Any views on the role of women within the financial services?

I’ve never accepted that there’s a disparity between us. If there is it doesn’t exist in my world.

Any additional thoughts or information that you would like to share?

Listen more and don’t forget to breathe!

 

Starting out as a customer support representative at K-Pax Marketing for a brief period in 2011, Eva Antoniou quickly climbed the Forex ladder: first at XForex 2011, then as Sales Officer at FXPro in 2012, promoted to Sales Supervisor in the same year. FXPro acknowledged Ms. Antoniou’s skills and kept her as the Sales Supervisor of the European and Latin American Desk in 2013, and then Global Sales Manager in the same year. In January 2014, Trading Central hired her as a B2B Sales Manager for Southern Europe.