Dr Marianna Prokopi Demetriades, a scientist and biotechnology entrepreneur, began her speech at the closing ceremony of the Young Female Leaders educational programme on Sunday, January 19, 2025 in Limassol, with a… family story that, as she noted, was directly relevant to the event’s theme.
“A few months ago”, she said, “my 12-year-old daughter Irena came home with a school assignment: to create our family tree. We sat together and began… discovering our history. We talked about her father’s family in Limassol and how her great-great-great-grandfather Dimitros Demetriades ‘Dorian’ was one of Cyprus’s first newspaper publishers, how her great-grandfather Chrysses Demetriades, a lawyer, redefined the Cypriot shipping industry, and how her grandfather, ‘the painter of Limassol’ Spyros Demetriades, left his mark on the art world. And of course, her father Chrysses Demetriades, a successful lawyer.
“‘But what about the women in the family?’ was my daughter’s question. They were missing, not because they weren’t extraordinary, but because they never had the opportunity to shine. That moment became a turning point for both of us. Let me take you back to one of the most defining moments of my life, when I lost my mother at the age of nine. Her absence shaped my life in ways I didn’t fully understand at the time. However, it planted a seed – a desire to do something meaningful that would honour the stories of women like her, who didn’t get the chance to live out their lives, and who, while they lived, were restricted. For me, education became my way forward. The journey was long but incredible. I was the first woman from my mother’s family to attend university, and I soon realised that education wasn’t just about earning degrees – it was my ticket to independence and empowerment…”.
