I was born in a small city in northeastern Bulgaria called Razgrad in 1972. When I was a child I started studying Russian and English, later in High school I learned German. I graduated Master of arts in Hungarian philology at the University of Sofia and got additional 2 year degree in Management.
My first job was as a reporter in the Bulgarian National TV. At the age of 23 I was an anchor of business program. My career as a journalist lasted for 9 years- after TV I moved to a weekly newspaper and later to a news web site. At the end I spend 2 months as host of a radio program.
After that I moved to the corporate world taking responsibility for communications, corporate responsibility, sales, marketing and governmental affairs in several companies.
I was in charge of communications in Bulgarian telecommunications company (BTC) after the privatization of the incumbent. During my tenure the company was owned by a consortium led by the American investment fund Advent International and later the majority stake was acquired by a businessman from Iceland- Thor Bjorgolfsson.
The telecom went through headcount reduction ( a voluntary program led to the leaving of 8000 employees out of 25 500) start of ADSL, investments in new national fiber ring and start of GSM operator.
It was also very interesting to lead communication for the Czech energy company CEZ in Bulgaria where the team had to manage challenging regulatory and political environment. For a short period of time I worked also for the biggest construction equipment company in Bulgaria Euromarket Group.
But my longest spell was again in the telecom sector where I spent almost 7 years as a head of communications, corporate responsibility, governmental affairs and for a short time regulatory affairs in a company that was first owned by the Greek incumbent OTE and later was sold to the Norwegian operator Telenor.
The operator was at first called GloBul and I had to put together several teams- External communication and Corporate responsibility were part of Marketing and Internal communications was part of HR. The expectation toward me was also to focus on governmental affairs and achieve significant positive effect for the company.
Working with people in OTE, Deutsche Telekom (majority owner of OTE) and Telenor gave me valuble insight in the way big companies operate and what it takes to get the job done.
