Ways in which we can work together

My Story

If I were to describe my life and career so far, the only constant is transitions and changes. Be it countries or careers, it has been far from a linear journey. Born in Serbia where I spent my childhood and teen years, I moved to the UK at 17 to finish high school and university. For a science student up in the pretty village of St Andrews in Scotland, who had no idea of Finance, arriving at Imperial College in London was quite a change. In 2011, the thing to do was to go work at an investment bank. For lack of a better idea, I did precisely that - some awareness I did have at the time was that should be a bank ´with an impact´, so I went for an agricultural investment bank.

One and half years into that job, at the age of 25, I decided it was time to fulfill a big dream: live in Latin America for some time. With the likeliness of being transferred by a bank being close to zero, I bought a one-way ticket to Sao Paulo, left my banking job in London, and focused on learning Portuguese. The beginnings in Brazil were rocky, the recession had just hit the country and positions were becoming frozen just as I was interviewing for them, but things eventually worked out. I stayed in the country for the next 3.5 years and somewhere along the way realized that ´working for others ´ was not why I moved there in the first place, I wanted to start something on my own. And I did - after (way too much) market research and a lot of trial and error - Sul Americano Naturals was born, specializing in bringing organic ingredients and superfoods to Europe. I bootstrapped the business for about 3 years, both in Brazil and Europe where I returned to. In the meantime, have made every possible mistake one could make in entrepreneurship, and encountered numerous problems typical for regulated industries such as the food one.

At one point, I was faced with the harsh truth that the business, besides having potential and being (sort of) profitable, simply was not scalable. Closing it was one of the hardest decisions I had to make, it took time and was quite a process, as I identified myself with it almost completely (as many first-time founders tend to do).

The next transition that followed was one into venture capital. Unplanned and accidental, I stumbled across a VC career and ended up in an agri&food VC fund in Paris as an entrepreneur in residence. Those months changed my view on investors, which I had previously considered ´evil people who give you the money and in return tell you what to do´. Personal circumstances took me to the Bavarian capital Munich, where I first had an attempt to work at a scaleup before ending up at another VC fund, this time focusing on healthtech investing. Next to a (very) steep learning curve, working with some great portfolio companies and founders, I found myself in a toxic environment in which I was taken out from not by my own will (classical blessing in disguise!). My first reaction was to try and find another job as quickly as possible.

Luckily (in retrospect), that plan has not worked out. What followed were months of self-reflection, working with a therapist and a coach, and trying to find out what it is I want and need. And just when I gave up on a venture capital job as such, a perfect, almost full-time role as a venture partner at a health tech fund appeared. Conveniently, I was already pregnant with my first child so the timing has worked out quite well. I faced many of the same questions once my self-defined maternity leave was nearing the end: do I go for another full-time investor role? Nature had another answer, as I was already pregnant with my second child (sometimes these things cannot exactly be planned), which is when I started thinking differently about my career and rather contemplating what it is that I and my growing family need, what my priorities are, instead of as previously would be the case thinking ´where it is that I can fit´. Once I had those things clear and had done ´the work´, it started to become obvious why in the past pretty much every position would stop fitting after a while, why trying to put myself in a box just never worked or has eventually always stopped working. I finally got the clarity that I need variety, value flexibility, options, and choice (and at this period of life with very young children more than ever), and that a permanent, employed role could never provide those. This is how and when my portfolio career was born, one that finally feels right and one that gives me a real chance of being a mother to my children that I wish to be while at the same time building my career in the way that works for me, doing types of things that I am good at and very much enjoy and that play to my strengths, as well as diversified sources of income along the way.