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She’s Next Talks is a podcast spotlighting bold women who are reshaping the future—on their own terms.
These are not polished success stories. They’re real, honest conversations about the courage it takes to start, the resilience needed to continue, and the reinvention that happens along the way.
In each episode, we speak with entrepreneurs, creators, and changemakers who’ve chosen to do things differently. We explore how they navigate uncertainty, build with intention, and define success for themselves.
Whether you’re building something new, questioning the path you’re on, or simply looking
These are not polished success stories. They’re real, honest conversations about the courage it takes to start, the resilience needed to continue, and the reinvention that happens along the way.
In each episode, we speak with entrepreneurs, creators, and changemakers who’ve chosen to do things differently. We explore how they navigate uncertainty, build with intention, and define success for themselves.
Whether you’re building something new, questioning the path you’re on, or simply looking
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Family businesses are at the very heart of emerging Europe’s economies. Set up within the last three-four decades, they now contribute meaningfully to the region’s economic growth, development, and employment — accounting for 40–50 per cent of all jobs in the private sector.
Despite the current challenging economic conditions, family businesses in the region have seen strong performance over the last financial year, with 83 per cent experiencing growth and only five per cent seeing a reduction in sales. That is more positive than the global picture – across the world, 71 per cent of family businesses grew while eight per cent saw a reduction.
Piotr Michalczyk, Poland-based partner at PwC leading the private business practice in Central and Eastern Europe, speaks with Andrew Wrobel about why family businesses in the region are doing better and are more optimistic about the future, as seen in the Family Business Survey, PwC’s global market survey among key decision makers in family businesses.
They also talk about how these companies perceive innovation and digitalisation and how they are embracing sustainability and environmental, social, governance (ESG) and how aware they are of the importance of proper succession planning.
According to Google, 97 per cent of all internet users search for local businesses.
A strong online presence is therefore a critical component to marketing — regardless of the size of business and the sector.
Social media contributes to that presence significantly by generating additional revenue and building customer loyalty. And there is a large audience to cater to. DataReportal says there are 4.33 billion social media users around the globe.
Katerina Sukhenko, the founder and chief business development officer at PostoPlan, a fast-growing automated marketing platform for small and medium businesses, speaks with Andrew Wrobel about the importance of building that online presence and offers some advice about how to optimise the process.
In the early 1990s, after years of underdevelopment, the banking sector in emerging Europe had to start from scratch, playing catch-up with its peers elsewhere.
Now, in many areas, it leads. The development of mobile banking applications has progressed further and faster in terms of their innovation, functions and consumer adoption. Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, retail customers have adopted digital banking services en masse, as high street branches remained closed and cash transactions have plummeted.
In 2019, the Bank of Lithuania launched a fintech sandbox, a fintech-conducive regulatory and supervisory environment designed to foster innovation in the financial sector. So did the National Bank of Ukraine. A healthy environment for fintech start-ups has emerged in recent years which, coupled with strong digital infrastructure and talent, has resulted in a new wave of investment within the region.
Michael Rogalskiy, co-founder of Monobank and Koto, speaks with Andrew Wrobel about the development of fintech in Ukraine and across the region, and the opportunities the sector offers.
The podcast highlights some of the opportunities that will be discussed during the UK-Ukraine Fintech Summit, which will be held in London and Kyiv on July 15. Click here for more info.
Web 3 is the next generation of the internet that aims at shifting power from big tech companies to individual users. What this means is that, rather than availing themselves of free tech platforms in exchange for their data, users can participate in the governance and operation of the protocols themselves. As a result, they become participants and shareholders, not just customers or products. In Web 3, these shares are called tokens or cryptocurrencies, and they represent ownership of decentralised networks known as blockchains.
MVP Workshop is a Serbian venture builder company focused on Web3, instrumental in creating over 50 blockchain products, including 2 unicorn companies, Celsius Network and Polygon. The company works on several blockchain projects focused on FinTech, Supply Chain, Asset Management and Healthcare.
Ivan Bjelajac, a serial entrepreneur, one of the founders and the CEO of MVP Workshop, speaks with Andrew Wrobel about the future of blockchain technology. They also speak about his earlier experience in building Devana Technologies – one of the most successful Serbian tech companies whose solutions were acquired by GoDaddy, as well as his other successes and failures.
Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the largest disruptions to work — growing supply chains and new technologies — have been joined by the physical dimension of work, or remote work, all of which has had an impact on productivity.
Readdle, the company behind several productivity apps such as Scanner Pro, Calendars 5, Spark email, Documents and PDF Expert, which have been downloaded over 180 million times worldwide, has set its mission to improve people’s lives with technology that focuses on productivity.
Denys Zhadanov, a board member and previously the vice president of marketing at Readdle, speaks with Andrew Wrobel about how the company defines productivity and uses science and disruptive technologies to increase personal productivity. He also talks about the company’s successes and failures related to both marketing and products, and gives advice how to build a committed team.
In 2022, the global hotel sector is expected to hit just over one trillion US dollars, according to IBIS World. The industry might still take time to return to pre-pandemic levels — in 2020 the market declined by 39 per cent and then by another 22 per cent in 2021.
It is estimated that there are 17.5 million hotel rooms across the globe. In the first ten months of 2021, 665 new hotels opened in the United States alone, 21 in New Your City, 21 in Atlanta and 19 in Orlando.
The US is the next destination for Ligna Group, an interior design studio, procurement and project management firm in the hospitality sector, employing 2,500 people in Bulgaria and the United Kingdom with a portfolio of clients representing the leading hotel brands, restaurants and office spaces.
Genoveva Christova, one of the founders and owners (alongside Anelia Kassabova) and managing director of Ligna Group, speaks with Andrew Wrobel about the company’s origins, successes, and challenges, and its further global expansion.
The world online language learning market is expected to grow at an annual rate of 18.7 per cent from 2020 to 2027, reaching 21.2 billion US dollars by 2027, according to Meticulous Research.
Established in 2014, Mondly, a globally-acclaimed language learning platform with a daring mission to break language barriers between people developed in Romania, now helps over 100 million users from 190 countries to learn 41 languages using virtual and augmented reality technologies.
Alexandru Iliescu, one of the founders alongside his brother Tudor and the CEO of Mondly, speaks with Andrew Wrobel about the edutech app and the future of learning languages. They also talk about the company’s successes and challenges in developing a solution used around the globe.
From home delivery shopping to ordering a meal without even having to speak to someone, the digital world is transforming the human experience and e-commerce makes it all possible. But what if we could speak with someone and they could learn what we actually need and want?
edrone is a global company offering ready-to-go marketing automation scripts and CRM features adjusted to eCommerce processes with the largest pools of customers in the CEE region but more importantly in Latin America.
It has a vision for the voice-based future of eCommerce and runs a project that aims to create its own technology, allowing it to develop the AVA platform and assemble Autonomous Voice Assistants. AVA will increase the precision of search results and make them far more accessible than any current option.
Michał Blak, one of the founders and the CEO of edrone, an artist turned into a tech entrepreneur, speaks with Andrew Wrobel about his company’s plans but also about his success of building a global company, and lessons he has learnt from his mistakes.
Earlier this year, Sigma Software Group, a Swedish-Ukrainian company, acquired a Kharkiv-based IT firm specialised in fintech, blockchain and telecommunication.
It has grown the number of IT engineers by over 30 per cent since the acquisition. It’s another step in the development of the company, established 19 years ago by five young IT developers and now providing software development solutions and IT-consulting to almost 200 customers all over the globe and ranking in the World’s Top 100 Outsourcing Firms by IAOP.
Valery Krasovsky, one of the founders and CEO of Sigma Software Group, speaks with Andrew Wrobel about the company’s growth over the last two decades and the support Sigma Software provides start-ups in both Ukraine, the rest of Europe and the United States.
Valery also shares the mistakes the company that have contributed to the company’s success and tips for young entrepreneurs that are embarking on the journey.
Grammy award-winning Ed Sheeran has sold more than 150 million albums worldwide, making him one of the world's best-selling music artists in history. In December 2019, the UK Official Charts Company named him the artist of the decade. Globally, Spotify named him the second most-streamed artist of the decade.
The lead single from his most recent studio album = ("equals"), Bad Habits is the UK's longest-running number-one hit in two years, topping the charts for 11 weeks.
But did you know that the comic book video for the single — which now has more than one million views on YouTube — was produced by Studio 351, a music video production company serving the needs of the music industry based in Skopje, North Macedonia?
Zoran Aleksikj, one of the founders and the CEO of 351 Studio, speaks with Andrew Wrobel about the firm's work with Ed Sheeran’s team, about the studio’s other productions for musicians such as Bruno Mars and James Blunt, and labels like Universal or Atlantic Records.
He also shares a few stories about the challenges and failures that he has had to overcome along the way.
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Click here to download a free copy of the Future of Sustainability in Emerging Europe report
Tuum is a next-generation core banking platform. It underpins the aims of both regulated banks and other businesses in meeting customer needs and aspirations by enabling the rapid rollout of new financial services. In September, the company — formerly known as Modularbank — changed its name to Tuum, which means “core” in Estonian, highlighting both its native roots and its goal to help customers supercharge their business from within through the use of its banking technology.
The company was founded in 2019 by a small group of Estonian financial IT pioneers and entrepreneurs who have a strong background in banking, including Vilve Vene, now the firm's CEO.
In the two years that the company has been operating, it has seen rapid growth and has already acquired an impressive customer base throughout Europe. It currently employs over 60 people across Europe with offices now in Tallinn, Berlin and Malaga. In December 2020, it closed a funding round of four million euros.
Vene speaks with Andrew Wrobel about the development of fintech during her career, which now spans more than two decades, about women in tech, and about her own successes and failures on the way.
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Redesigning public services and supporting digital transformation with automation — click here to download a free copy of the white paper.
Over the past decade, Israel has seen the birth of over 11,000 start-ups: 70 of which have gone on to become unicorns.
Israeli tech companies have attracted investments of more than 65 billion US dollars. So what sets Israeli entrepreneurs apart, in terms of thought, creativity and innovation?
Adi Barel, managing director at the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) hub in Israel, speaks with Andrew Wrobel about the Israeli approach to doing business, success and failure, the importance of tachles, chutzpah and yalla and - most importantly - what emerging Europe's start-up founders can learn from the Israeli approach.
The limited financial knowledge of Tajik consumers means that more than 40 per cent of the population spends all their income and accumulates debt.
According to available data, only 11.5 per cent of all Tajik adults hold accounts at financial institutions and only 9.1 per cent of women. The situation looks better in Uzbekistan, where 36 per cent of surveyed adults report owning an account at a formal financial institution, according to the 2020 Financial Capability Survey.
However, Tajikistan has thriving fintech start-ups which are helping the country catch up. Alif, a challenger bank headquartered in the country, has over 600,000 users and a team of 700 professionals. It is now establishing its presence in the UK as part of its 2021 growth strategy, bringing greater financial stability, efficiency and inclusion to the market.
Zuhursho Rahmatulloev, one of the founders of Alif Bank, speaks with Andrew Wrobel about his return to Tajikistan after his studies in the UK, the opportunities Tajikistan and Uzbekistan offer and the bank’s plans to contribute to the social change the two countries are facing.
Building and managing a global business has never been simple.
It naturally has strategic benefits such as the ability to access new customer markets, new suppliers, and new partners. But it also has challenges like language barriers, cultural differences, political nuances, strategy development and allocating resources can struggle to cope with the increasing diversity of markets, customers, and channels.
Against this backdrop, there is emerging Europe — a region that has achieved notable albeit uneven gains over the last three decades and has been an incubator to thriving, competitive companies, which do not always want to remain in the region once they have acquired international status.
Oleg Krot, managing partner at TECHIIA Holding, a group of companies operating globally in various sectors but still headquartered in Ukraine, speaks with Andrew Wrobel about how he and his business partner have been building an international business for less than a decade.
He shares his challenges and even mistakes and offers tips to those who also dream of going global.
Although Georgia is a relative latecomer to the tech industry, recent developments and initiatives have shown a promising commitment to developing the industry.
With its slowly-improving education system and with 515 ICT specialists employed in the sector per 100,000 people, the country might still have quite some work to do but there is no question that its start-up scene is growing fast.
In May this year SpinCar, a leader in digital sales systems for the automotive industry, acquired the Georgian start-up Pulsar AI. As a result of the deal, the value of the Georgian company has already climbed to several tens of millions of dollars.
That event is bound to encourage others to follow suit, and there are plenty of Georgian start-ups to watch: Agronavti, B2C.GE, Kernel, PAYZE, CarDeal, Cargon, Phubber, Stack. Initiatives such as the 500Georgia acceleration programme are helping to raise awareness about the opportunities the country offers.
In this podcast, Emerging Europe's Andrew Wrobel speaks with Alina Rozanova, partner at TITANS Playground creative studio, former CEO of Touch Platform and country ambassador for Georgia at Tech Emerging Europe Advocates about the start-up ecosystem in Georgia, the challenges it faces and the opportunities it offers.
She also discusses how involving Georgian entrepreneurs in the Tech Emerging Europe Advocates community might help the ecosystem evolve further.
Innovation and digitalisation mean open, transparent and convenient opportunities for citizens and business.
While 59.5 per cent of the global population are active internet users, Central Asia is one of the least digitally connected regions in the world. However, national governments, particularly in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, have lofty digital ambitions. That process is enhanced by young entrepreneurs with creative ideas that offer various solutions and a large consumer market of some 75 million people.
Bruno Balvanera, a non-executive independent director of the supervisory board of Asakabank in Uzbekistan, a former managing director for Central Asia at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and an advisory board member at Tech Emerging Europe Advocates, speaks with Andrew Wrobel and shares his views on social and economic development in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, the five countries included in the Tech Emerging Europe Advocates community, as well as how investment can drive innovation, entrepreneurship and digitalisation in the region.
Travel is what usually comes to mind when thinking about Montenegro, and it's no wonder.
In 2019, before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, some three million tourists arrived in the country, which has a population of less than 650,000: the tourism sector accounts for almost a quarter of Montenegro’s GDP.
Beyond tourism, however, the country also boasts a thriving entrepreneurial scene with an increasing pool of young and creative talent.
Uroš Bulatović, the founder and president of the Union of Young Entrepreneurs of Montenegro, speaks with Andrew Wrobel about some of those creative young Montenegrin entrepreneurs, the opportunities the country offers, and the challenges it faces.
South Korea is one of the four Asian Tigers, which have steadily retained a high rate of economic growth since the 1960s.
It started as an agriculture-based country and is now the world’s 12th largest economy, its GDP worth 1,619 billion US dollars. The value of the country’s technology exports has grown more than 20 times since the beginning of the millennium to reach 13.8 billion US dollars.
Yonho Kim, associate research professor of practice and associate director of the Institute for Korean Studies at the George Washington University, speaks with Andrew Wrobel about the drivers of the country’s transformation, its current challenges, geopolitical ambitions and the potential of its collaboration with emerging Europe and the wider European Union.
The discussion is part of the Emerging Europe and the Asian Tigers: Towards 2030 programme, in partnership with Money Today, South Korea’s leading business media platform, and the K.E.Y Platform conference scheduled to take place on April 29, 2021.
Click here to register and/or take part in a survey looking at the political and economic relations between emerging Europe and the Asian Tigers.
Two in five Europeans feel that digital technologies are spreading too quickly, while nearly the same amount (39 per cent) say that the pace of change is overwhelming, according to a recent survey by eToro.
Despite the relatively low level of digital penetration, Poland values digital technologies more highly than any of the other nine countries, while Romania’s support for increased digitalisation across various sectors is second only to Poland.
Monika Czerwonka, a professor at the Warsaw School of Economics and an expert in behavioural finance with specific interest in cognitive reflection test and experimental finance, speaks with Andrew Wrobel about how the Covid pandemic has impacted the way we make use of services, shop, invest and spend and what digital skills we will need in the future.
French President Emmanuel Macron doesn't have a good track record of collaboration with the emerging Europe region.
In 2017, he said that Poland, where a nationalist, eurosceptic government took office in 2015, was moving in the opposite direction to Europe on numerous issues and would not be able to dictate the path of Europe’s future. He annoyed governments in the region when he pledged to take steps to counter “social dumping” in France in which companies employ cheaper labour from the poorer eastern European states, threatening French workers’ jobs, during a debate about the EU posted workers directive. In 2019, Macron’s desire for a strategic reset in relations with Russia caused further rancour in the region.
What went wrong between France and emerging Europe? Is France losing ground in the region?
Romain Le Quiniou, managing director at Euro Créative, a French think tank focused on the emerging Europe region and a fellow at WISE Europa, speaks to Andrew Wrobel about the need to trigger a debate about future relations between the region and France and the need to raise awareness about opportunities in the region.
He also discusses the cliches and stereotypes French people have about what they call New Europe, as those that Eastern Europeans have about France.
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