Kristin LaRonca Parpel on Building a Career in Prague around Her Passion

It’s almost four o’clock on Tuesday. I get up from my desk and walk down the hall. “Still a good time?” I peek into Kristin LaRonca Parpel ‘s office. “Yes! Let me send one more email and I’m all yours.” I sit down in one of the comfy chairs, in which Kristin usually seats her clients. I’m excited to have this chat with her today because despite us sharing the same office, I don’t know any details about what brought her here. Why and how did she become an executive coach in Prague?

She joins me in a second. And I ask her to take it from the beginning. “I’m American, I grew up in New Jersey in an upper, middle-class family. I went to a very good school, but there wasn’t a lot of diversity where I grew up,” Kristin starts.

“That’s when I got this bug for international.”

The first time Kristin really discovered diversity was when she went away to university. “I met all these students from France and South America… I used to go to all those Spanish parties and danced merengue and salsa… They nick-named me LaBamba,” Kristin explains the play on her family name LaRonca and I throw my head back laughing. “I really, really loved it,” she laughs too, “That’s when I got this bug for international.”

Kristin spent her junior year studying in London. Excited by the experience she decided that she would return to Europe after finishing her senior year of university in the US. The plan was to go to Paris. Kristin got a job with Euro Disney, but in the end the French government didn’t grant her a visa. “That was in ‘92 and one of the only places in Europe where Americans could come for work without a visa was Czechoslovakia.”

A woman from an aerobic class that Kristin was teaching suggested that Kristin could stay in Prague with her aunt, who was Czech. “And literally, a week later, I flew by myself to Prague with a backpack.” Kristin laughs again. “I had flown from JFK, a huge international airport, and I landed in this one-room airport in Prague. A guy picked me up in a little Trabant and going down the hill at Evropska street, he turned off the engine to save the gas. I remember thinking, ‘OMG, we are gonna die!’ Everything was dark and grey and dirty because it was just after the revolution and I got in my room thinking, ‘What am I doing here?’” Kristin grins.

“I fell in love and that was my main impulse to stay.”

Despite the initial, near-death, experience, Kristin quickly made friends in the expat community in Prague. “I was out and about, partying a lot and within three weeks I met this Czech guy, Ondřej. I fell in love and that was my main impulse to stay.”

With a degree in psychology, and experience in and a love of working with children, Kristin dreamed of a job in an orphanage. “I didn’t want to work in business. But in the orphanage, they could offer 3,000 Czech crowns a month and my apartment was 5,000… So, I went to advertising where I started with a salary of 15,000 which was a ton of money at that time.” 

“Let’s try it out – we can always get rid of her.”

Kristin quickly progressed in her career in advertising thanks to her desire to fit in with the locals and the American can-do approach. “I don’t know if I can call it self-confidence because some of it is fake confidence but as an American, I was always taught growing up – you can do this.”

In 1996 she worked for an agency called Young & Rubicam. Its sister company Wunderman didn’t have representation in the Czech Republic and they needed someone to go and run the office in Prague. Kristin raised her hand. “I said I really wanted to do it. The company wouldn’t have normally chosen me – I didn’t have the experience to do it. But financially, it was a no-brainer for them. If you send someone from New York City to be a General Manager in a foreign country, it means to cover the whole expat package. But I was already here so they were like – well let’s try it out – we can always get rid of her.”

Kristin wound up establishing the company and becoming General Manager. “To my surprise, and everyone’s surprise, I was successful.” She made the company profitable, even in the very first year. “But it was my entire life,” Kristin’s grin disappears for a bit, “It was every day, every night, every weekend. Which was fine, I was in my twenties, I had no problem doing it. And my boyfriend was building his own company so we were both really focused on our own thing but looking back now… God, I made so many mistakes.” Kristin exhales.

“It’s now or never and we’re doing it!”

“So many of those late nights and so many of those weekends were ineffective and unnecessary but I didn’t know how else to do it. Had I had a coach, or probably even more specifically a mentor, it would have helped me so much. But in 1996, the idea of a coach or an official mentor didn’t exist. There were a few people in the company who I considered my mentors and who helped me, but very few.” This experience was the first stepping stone for Kristin’s later decision to become a coach.

At the end of the nineties, Kristin had a good job, a good salary, she had stock in the company… And… she decided to quit and travel around the world with her boyfriend. “They said, ‘Don’t leave, just go for three or four months and then you can come back.’ But I felt like – no, it’s now or never and we’re doing it!” 

“I had this vision that when I get to NYC everything will work differently”

After her big journey, Kristin returned to New York. “I had this vision that when I get to New York City everything will work differently. Because until then, everybody I worked with was men who were much older than me. So I had this vision of what it was gonna be like, to work beside other women. I thought we were all gonna be friends and we all will support each other and gonna go out for drinks and it will be like Sex and the City. And when I got to New York I was so disappointed that the female role models I was so longing for didn’t exist.”

Kristin realized that even the company’s divisions didn’t cooperate together. “I saw all of these missing pieces – no cross-functional teams, no support, no collaboration, no role models and I think that’s when it all started to come to me – maybe I shouldn’t be a business executive, maybe I should be advising these managers.”

Lack of cooperation in leadership positions, lack of support among women and other issues Kristin faced in the corporate world, further convinced her that that’s not a way a successful business can work and that she should do something about it. What? She didn’t know yet but after two years in NYC, Kristin decided to terminate her career there and come back to Prague to be with her boyfriend. “Ondřej owns a company here so he couldn’t come to New York.” And when she moved they got married and started a family. 

“Kristin, you should look into a coaching course.” And I’m like, “What is coaching?”

When the kids were in kindergarten, in 2009, Kristin started thinking about how to use her personal experience from the corporate world to help others. “I met with a consulting firm and I was thinking about becoming a business consultant. But the guy I met with said, ‘Kristin, you should look into a coaching course.’ and I’m like, ‘What’s coaching?’ She chuckles.

“It was interesting that this idea that I have had of being a consultant to tell people how to be better managers and better leaders and better colleagues…” Kristin pauses and lowers her voice. “It was the exact opposite of what coaching is… Coaching is about helping people to find their own way – ask them questions that help them realize what they are good at and what they are passionate about.”

Kristin went for it. She got certified and built her business and that was over ten years ago now. On top of that, she does pro bono work and she participates in a couple of mentoring programs for women, as a mentor. “Mentoring came into play because of my passion to support other women,” Kristin explains.

“Mentoring is a little different. You shouldn’t advise as in coaching but you can share. With clean coaching, you wouldn’t know anything about me. And I like the mentoring approach more because I feel it puts us on the same playing field because I can be a bit vulnerable, which means you will be more open and vulnerable with me… Sharing the challenges I had with my children and my career… Sometimes it helps to make others feel like – I’m not alone.”

“I never accept a client until we meet.”

“I only work with corporate clients because I do a lot of pro bono work and the only way to be able to do it is when I make money someplace else,” Kristin continues filling me in on her agenda. “I’m usually hired by HR, or someone in a corporation will get a reference for me. But I never accept a client until we meet.”

I raise my eyebrows, so Kristin elaborates, “We have a one or two-hour meeting, and we just talk and talk, so that I understand what the person might wanna work on. It doesn’t make sense to work with someone who says, ‘Yeah, my boss thinks that I need a coach but I don’t think so.’ And I, as a coach, have to make sure that they understand that I’m not going to tell them what to do and that in order to improve, they will have to do the work.”

“On the other hand, if I meet someone who wants to coach with me but can’t at their job, I often recommend them some of these mentoring programs that are free of charge and I write them a reference letter. I can’t promise them they will be paired with me but I wouldn’t just send them away.”

“From all the projects I run this is the one that I love the most.”

Part of Kristin’s job is to help with mentoring programs within companies – training mentors and mentees. “I think it’s extremely important. Mentoring programs are very popular now, and I think it’s irresponsible for any of these programs to put mentors and mentees in those roles without giving them at least a background of expectations of each role. We can’t expect that mentor and mentee will be paired up and will know what they are supposed to do.”

“From all the projects I do, this is the one that I love the most. I feel that mentoring is really the resource that could be tapped into by every company. It doesn’t cost much money and it helps people. It creates a better company atmosphere and people feel cared about. To me, it’s sort of a no-brainer. When I hear the stories at the end of the year… Two people who would maybe never have met otherwise, sharing such positive experiences… It’s like – wow, how easy was that!”

Stay tuned because in the second part of the interview Kristin shares everything you need to know about mentoring before making the decision to look for a mentor. 

Next week, she will answer:

• Who is mentoring for? 
• What are the benefits? 
• How to tell a good mentor from a bad one? 
• What do you need to invest in as a mentee?

-> Read the POST HERE

And if you’re curious about my mentoring story read THIS POST.