Ideagen Radio
Ideagen Radio
2025 Global Impact Summit: Basilio Petkides
What does it take to lead through storms and build something that lasts? We sit down with Basilio Pekidis to explore how a childhood in Panama, years of volunteer leadership with AHEPA, and the gritty realities of energy infrastructure shaped a clear, actionable approach to leadership and impact. The conversation moves from hands-on philanthropy to the mechanics of LNG storage in Greece, linking human stories to the systems that keep a region warm, working, and resilient.
Basilio unpacks how AHEPA’s growth across Greece, Cyprus, and Europe turns values into measurable outcomes—funding reforestation, hospital burn units, and cardiology emergency rooms—while teaching the discipline of motivating volunteers and listening under pressure. Then we zoom into Mediterranean Gas: a storage project in the Pagasetic Gulf designed to strengthen regional energy security as the EU moves away from Russian gas. He explains why transmission upgrades, market integration, and price bundling across borders up to Ukraine are not abstract policy wins but practical steps that lower friction, expand capacity, and stabilize supply.
Threaded through it all is a leadership playbook forged by adversity: embrace failure, get comfortable being uncomfortable, and hold the room long enough to align government, industry, and community. From capital controls during the Panama embargo to the complexity of reaching FID on a geopolitically sensitive project, Basilio shows how hope, resilience, and family values translate into better decisions and stronger teams. If you care about energy security, cross-sector collaboration, or the real habits that turn talent into results, this conversation offers grounded insight you can use.
If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who leads under pressure, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway—what lesson will you act on first?
Welcome to the Idea Gen Global Summit here at ACS Athens live in Athens, Greece. I'm so honored to have with me today Basilio Petiris. Welcome. Honor to be here, George. What a pleasure. Especially a pleasure because of all that you're doing. And that you're an AHEPAN brother. Tell us a little bit about a HEPA as we start this interview. Wow.
SPEAKER_00:About a HEPA in Greece or in Europe. My experience. AHEPA is a very romantic issue for me growing up, because as you already know, I grew up in Panama. So we lived and saw a lot of the things that that happened to immigrants coming over from Greece. And I think that a HEPA has played a very important role in disseminating the or closing the gap between the US and Greece and helping promote Hellenism not only in the US, but also throughout Europe and sometimes even within Greece. Incredible. So yeah, I think AHEPA is doing an important job here in Greece and in Europe. We are doing a lot of work, a lot of philanthropy work. That's a card in value of various different projects from reforestation to uh burn unit in the Evagelismos hospital and now the emergency rooms for the cardiological department in the AHEPA hospital in Thessaloniki. And you've served also in leadership roles with AHEPA, right? Yes. Tell me about that a little bit. Well, uh leadership roles in a HEPA are have to do with uh being able to motivate volunteers, motivate people through what actually touches them in order to be able to get things done. That's right. And um in in a HEPA, one of the ways that we do things is through numbers. So we've had to grow. Yeah. So we've done that at a district level, which is uh throughout all of Greece. We've done that at a regional level by creating chapters with our uh the Greeks abroad that live in Germany, that live in France, that live in the UK, that live in um in Holland and so forth. And uh we've done that as well in Cyprus. Uh uh, we've had a lot of growth in Cyprus as well, especially with last year being the 50-year anniversary of the Turkish invasion into Cyprus. And uh AHEPA's done a lot of work to uh advocate a lot of the issues that uh Greece has been involved with.
SPEAKER_02:Well, see you, you know, you've had all of these experiences uh in leadership. Uh you were uh born in Panama, you were raised in Panama, an incredible experience in that in that you just alluded to. And that has really shaped who you are today, right? Um as the CEO of Mediterranean gas. And I'd like to talk a little bit more in depth about that. What is it like being the CEO of Mediterranean gas? I mean, what does that mean? What is that like every day for you?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, that's a good question. That's a very good question. I think uh what it means is that uh you have to be motivated to get every day up and to be able to push forward another step because Mediterranean Gas is a particular project, which is uh is a development project. It's uh a storage project for LNG in the Picassoidic Gulf. It is a project which is going to help improve the energy security not only of Greece but of the region. And we need infrastructure in order to be able to achieve that. So we see today that the transmission system operator in Greece thus far has been investing in upgrading and in growing the transmission system in order to be able to cover not only Greece's needs, but also the needs in the Balkans and southeastern Europe. Today, actually, uh these last few couple of weeks, we've had um a bundling of pricing of uh all the countries from here all the way to Ukraine in order to be able to provide gas. And that is the first step uh to improving and making uh gas transmission a lot more efficient. Sure. Until today, you had to go to every single country in order to be able to do that. So when you're looking at being the CEO of a of a project of this nature, uh you're looking at all these different facets and you're always trying to put that huge puzzle together. And obviously you can't do that alone. You have to have people that are supporting there, you have to people that you can lean on in order to be able to do that. That you can trust. That you can trust. So that's and I think that motivating these people to trust you to lead them is uh a key factor. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_02:Well, and I think your background has prepared you, you really uniquely prepared you. Your international background, your global perspective, all the things that you've done have led to this point. You know, it's rare that something and someone steps into a leadership role by accident. That's my my my take, based on the thousands of interviews I've conducted. It doesn't, you don't just step into a leadership role. So as we talk about that, I I'd like to get into your psyche about leadership. To ask you, what does a leadership mean to you? What is it, what is it, how do you define it?
SPEAKER_00:Leadership uh to me means um actually defines the success of specific objectives or a scope. Uh leadership can destroy an organization or it can make it grow. Leadership is the alpha and omega of making progress. You can have a lot of good people on a team, you can have the best, uh, you could have the all-stars on an NBA team. Yeah. But if you cannot lead them to work together, to combine all that talent to create one product, you're not gonna make it to the NBA finals and win that.
SPEAKER_02:You need the chemistry, you need the leader, you need all of that. Absolutely. You need that whole team setup. And and I think that's that's what I was alluding to is the fact that you've your varied experiences, your successes along the way. And your understanding of cross-sector collaboration. What you described is you have the bundling of the pricing for LNG, and it's creating stability and the ability to deliver consistently, right, across countries. Right. And so why would you say cross-sector collaboration is so important across government, across industry, across you know, all of the things that we see?
SPEAKER_00:Okay. Um let me take a step back. Yeah. Success comes also through failure. And we've seen failure many, many times. And we need to learn from that, whether it's our failure or the failure of our predecessors, or the failure of uh the world around us. So collaborating through cross-sectors helps us learn from these failures in order to avoid that and to be able to be successful.
SPEAKER_02:And so should someone, a future global leader, someone who's just starting their career, should they fear failure?
SPEAKER_00:No, on the contrary, you need to embrace failure. You need to embrace uh stress. You need to be uh, you need to embrace being uncomfortable. If you're not uncomfortable, then you're never gonna be a leader. The one of the most challenging parts, and one of the things that a HEPA helps us as members in the organization while we're growing with the organization, is we learn about leadership as well. Uh and um one of the lessons that I learned through this was uh when I was district governor, having to sit there listening to all my different VPs and all the members of that board either tell me what I did wrong, tell me what uh we did it all right. We needed you needed to hear what you did wrong, you needed to hear what you didn't do, you needed to hear what you needed to do, and to be silent and really listen and to have the empathy to understand where everybody's coming from, and then to be able to put all that together and give a response and give guidance and give direction. I hope I wasn't too long-winded.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, uh you could keep going. I mean, these are these are critical lessons, especially for future global leaders. As you're thinking about what is my career going to look like? You're a Florida State Seminole. Absolutely. Yeah, and and you are you proudly think back to those days, don't you? Oh, yeah, yeah. Right. Difficult times too. Right. But at that point, what would you tell your your younger self? You're you're just starting out. I mean, would you did anyone tell you you should embrace failure? You should try, because you're what you're saying is you should try. Don't be don't fear the potential failure. You at least have to try, you have to show up, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, my father was a shipping agent for more than 40 years in Panama with the Panama Canal. So we saw a lot of captains coming through, right? And uh these captains, they always came um with all these different stories. And the what they always said, and I remember as a kid listening to them growing up, is that they always said that, look, we're always gonna hit a storm. You're not gonna, there's no way throughout your career that you're not gonna hit a storm. The important things that you need to get through that storm and get back at it. Um when I was in college at Florida State, we had the US embargo to Panama because of uh Noriega, which meant that we had capital controls, but not like in Greece. In Greece, you were able to extract 60 euros a day. In Panama, if you put money in the bank, you couldn't get it out. Uh the airplanes were paying their landing fees in briefcases to the Panamanian government back then. And I was at Florida State, so I had no funds. So I had to get uh a job. Uh I was um allowed to work at the Florida State Law Library part-time. Wow. Amazing. And uh that's the way I made uh end meet. What a life lesson. No other way to do that. Right. But you just keep on pushing through. You figure it out. You had the storm, you have you have the storm, and you have to do what you have to do.
SPEAKER_02:You know, it's funny, there's a quote, and I can paraphrase it uh by Aristotle Anassis, who said something something to the effect of, and you've probably heard it, we must uh learn to accept that the sea will never rest and sail in high seas. You've probably heard that. Yeah, absolutely. And and and so it's a great analogy to what you just said because it's so incredibly inspiring. And so, what's next for you in Mediterranean gas? What do you see in the horizon? You're you're helping to create this incredible project. What what's next?
SPEAKER_00:Well, hopefully, well, we need to get to FID. So this is a this is a very complex project because it has to do with geopolitics, it has to do with what the EU is going to decide. We've seen the the policy, the policymakers in the EU have mandated that the Russian gas is going to stop flowing. So we need to understand the dynamics of the market, the capacity that's required. We believe that uh today we have Alexandropoli, a terminal. We have uh the FRU in Alexandropoli. We believe that there's a re there's a need for a third one, which is us. And um that is uh in the phase right now where the market dynamics are making that clear. So we believe that the demand is is going to be there, and uh we'll hopefully we'll be able to make that project move forward. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Incredible. If there's anyone that can do it, it's you with your leadership. I hope so. But so that that that's that's key, is your leadership and the resiliency and the leadership skills you've just shared with us today. No one in the position to be able to do it uh beyond you. In terms of um lessons, I'd like to close this interview to to really inspire your sharing with our global audience, the millions of people that will watch this interview. Um what are three key lessons you have learned in your incredible journey, your lifetime journey, that have the potential to change the world? Never give up on hope.
SPEAKER_00:Number one, as long as we are alive and breathing and kicking, we can always make a change. We can help the world change. Two, like I said earlier, we need to embrace our fears. We need to look at failure as learning experiences. I wish uh in academia there was a course on failure, because if we had that, I think a lot of young adults, a lot of young professionals would benefit so much from this. Because uh failure is something that entrepreneurs usually deal with. But there are doctors, there are uh accountants, there are all sorts of industries and professions out there that need that. And uh I think the third and most important part or lesson for me uh throughout the years is that is the the value of family. Because the value of family is the foundations uh on which your ethos is built on, and uh all I can hope is that I can pass that on to my daughters, uh, the way that my parents passed it on to me. Legacy, I guess.
SPEAKER_02:Basilio Pekidis. Leadership divine, my friend. You are leadership defined. Thank you so very much. Thank you, George.