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Cristina Muntean launches her newest project: an online Strategic Communications and Personal Development Academy

Eastern Europe is growing second-fastest in the world in terms of e-learning demand. Cristina’s e-book Strategic Communications in the Digital Age published by BookBoon.com was downloaded more than 50 000 times within a year of its publication. The online Academy is a tool that paves the way for Cristina’s advisory, training and coaching service expansion to Eastern Europe, including her motherland Romania.

Cristina Muntean, founder of the Prague-based PR agency Media Education CEE s.r.o. and chairwoman of the Marketing and Communications Committee of the American Chamber of Commerce in the Czech Republic (AmCham), announced the launch of her newest project: the online Strategic Communications and Personal Development Academy. The Academy was introduced together with the new design of Cristina’s personal website www.cristinamuntean.com.

Muntean, who is a former business journalist turned media relations and strategic communications advisor, trainer and coach in 2010, said that the Academy is her most cherished personal project up to date.

“This is a major milestone in my life. I started my media training practice five years ago with nothing but borrowed investments and a deep faith that I was doing the right thing. I was completely ignoring what it meant to start a communications business in a foreign language at the beginning of an economic crisis, with no financial reserves or entrepreneurial experience whatsoever. My journey was sprinkled with its share of confusion and loss. However, it was also blessed with people who believed in me, trusted me with their business and guided me in the right direction. This Academy is a tribute to all those who stood by me during these past five years,” she said.

E-learning market growing worldwide, catching up fast in Eastern Europe

Online education is slowly catching up in the Czech Republic and in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). According to a 2014 report by DOCEBO, there seems to be universal agreement that the worldwide e-learning market will show fast and significant growth over the next 10 years. While the aggregate growth rate is 7.6%, the highest growth rate in e-learning demand is in Asia at 17.3%, followed by Eastern Europe with 16.9%.

Muntean, originally from Romania, doesn’t hide her regional training and advisory ambitions. “I would love to share my experience with more companies beyond the borders of the Czech Republic. For the last five years I was driven by my clients to create wonderful, effective and highly inspiring corporate communications academies that gave my students more self-confidence and better tools to bring more of who they are to work. I strongly believe that conscious communication leads to better lives. For me, this is not work, it’s my life mission to help people free their potential and improve the quality of their lives through conscious communications.”

For the last five years Muntean provided advisory, training, coaching and mentoring services for major Czech and European companies such as Alior Bank, Avon Cosmetics, B.Braun, Česká spořitelna, Cream Finance / CreditOn, CSOB, GE Money Bank, Hay Group, IBM, IKEA, ING / NN, Katz Graduate School of Business – University of Pittsburgh in Prague, Komerční banka, Raiffeisenbank, RWE, Telefónica O2, TUV SUD Czech and Wrigley.

Reasons behind the Academy: availability, efficiency, care and trust

Muntean said that she would like to achieve four goals with the Academy:

1. Availability. “I am currently conducting only in-house corporate training and my know-how is not available to the wider public. This is a matter I’d like to fix.”
2. Added value and efficiency. “By providing training clients with the theory prior to the training, we make sure that clients spend the training time doing what matters most: skill training and personal development.”
3. Care. “I already have a few hundred alumni and we don’t communicate on a regular basis. I want to make sure they have access to tools that help them to stay focused on the topics we opened together during training.”
4. Last but not least, the Academy is a trust-builder. “I am not a Czech native speaker and it’s not easy to convince new clients that my communication training is the right thing for them. I want to make sure that my clients see and hear me before we meet, so they can gain trust that they are in the right hands.”

Currently Cristina is conducting roughly 75% of her coaching, training and advisory business in the Czech language. This is why the website is also fully bilingual, with training materials generated in both English and Czech:

Currently the Academy includes an e-book on strategic media relations, Get It First, But First Get It Right in Czech and English, a link to Cristina’s second e-book Strategic Communications in the Digital Age, which has been downloaded more than 50 000 times within a year of its publication by the publishing house BookBoon, two 1-minute media training videos in English and 2 interviews in Czech with women who make a difference in this world: Alena Čarvašová and Lenka Mrázová.

The Academy is available for review free of charge and registration-free until February 2016. New content is being gradually added to the Academy in both English and Czech. The content is being shared with Cristina’s community on a regular basis through her newsletter CrisCross or via social media.

People can also watch all Cristina’s free videos on YouTube in her personal channel.

The website digital conception, design and management belong to Intoit, a Prague-based creative agency focused on building digital experiences. “It’s a great feeling to work with a client with a clear vision, who allows us to work on building her digital strategy. The Academy that Cristina is launching is definitely a unique source of information on the Czech market and I strongly believe that the digital solutions that we chose will be a great experience for her customers. I am really happy with the outcome we achieved together,” said Pavel Šmejkal, founder and managing partner of Intoit. The videos in Cristina’s Academy are a creation of the video production studio TDT Studio. Cristina’s pictures were taken by Tereza Lukavská, a photographer with the studio Fotopromě.cz.

“Partnership is one of my core values across all my relationships. I honor my clients and business partners who make my work possible and who help me to accomplish my calling – raising the quality of people’s lives through conscious communication,” Cristina said.

For more information please contact:
Cristina Muntean +420 776 574 925
cm@cristinamuntean.com cm@mediaed.cz.