“Love what you do and the rest will follow,” says Sirma Boshnakova, summing up her outlook on life and the driving force behind her career. The  recently appointed Allianz SE Board Member is already well known in Allianz as the champion of customer centricity and a leader with a strong strategic vision and an inclusive and straightforward leadership style.

Upon meeting Sirma, one instantly picks up on her positivity and a sense of humor, but also her groundedness and a strong set of values rooted in integrity and authenticity, something she attributes to her parents and her upbringing. Roots are important, says Sirma, because they anchor you and provide a foundation for what’s to come. 

Her first career steps quickly unveiled her natural propensity toward strategic thinking and outcomes-based performance that focuses on building strong teams who can propel the business forward. 

Through the years, her career path in the pharmaceutical and insurance industry took her from Moscow to Munich to Paris and taught her how to strengthen and reinvent businesses by restructuring operations and finance, modernizing sales and marketing, and setting up new distribution channels.

In 2015, an opportunity to join Allianz presented itself and she joined the company as the Head of Business Division for Western and Southern Europe, where she led the regions’ transformational efforts. 

Then, in 2019, she became the CEO of Allianz Partners, where she joined a community of more than 21,000 employees located across 75 countries. This position was set to mark a whole new chapter in her career.

She understood that the business was facing a crucial need for transformation, or better yet, reinvention. A deep cultural, operational, and strategic change was required to secure sustainable growth.

For Sirma, the best way to go about this change journey was to transform the challenges into opportunities. Soon, a new vision was created for Allianz Partners, one rooted in the idea of simplicity: a digital combination of products and services designed to make people’s lives easier, simpler, and safer. 

The road to success also meant creating a development program that recognizes new talents and sets them on a journey of becoming the next generation of leaders. Faithful to her vision, she put a strong emphasis on simplicity and mutual team support. Open and direct conversations, commonly called FeelGood Chats,  became her signature format in connecting with the employees. Looking back, she refers to this chapter of her career as the most lively, but also the most challenging.  

Support goes in many directions, but it also comes from many directions. Parallel to her career, Sirma built her own family and raised two children. She keeps her children and her parents close, making it a three-generational family that relies on each other.

Always seeking balance in everything she does, she took a year off to take care of her family, which was the right thing to do at the right time, she says. She strongly believes that no parent should be punished for the time spent with their children.

As for work-life balance, she practices yoga daily because it gives her a sense of calm, balance, concentration, and a peace of mind. 

When asked about her Board position at Allianz SE, she mentions how humbled and excited she is about participating in Allianz’s next chapter because “despite its scale, Allianz never loses its heart.”