Sanja Milosavljevic: Hi, hello, my name is Sanja Milosavljevic and I’m going to be your host today. Today, my guest is going to be Bistra. Bistra lives in Vienna and Ljubljana and she has a very interesting biography. And in this short introduction, she is going to tell us something more about herself. Bistra, hi, hello – how are you?

Bistra Kumbaroska: Hello Sanja, thank you for inviting me to be a part of this really powerful initiative that you do with Mondopreneur. I am very happy and privileged to be a part of this, and I’m happy that even in these pandemic times we still find creative ways to connect and share our stories and learn from each other. So, thank you for inviting me.

Sanja Milosavljevic: Well, thank you for accepting my invitation to participate. And you actually hit the main goal of this podcast. Because, even though we cannot meet in person, we still have powerful stories to share. And it would be a pity if you just shared your story with me if no one else can hear it, so – thank you once again. Can you tell us something about yourself?

Bistra Kumbaroska: Yeah, I’m a pretty talkative person, so when you say ‘can you tell us something about yourself’ it can turn into a very long ask. But I will try to highlight a few things that I think might be very useful and interesting for the listeners of your podcast. Basically, I come from- I’m a Macedonian, I come from rural Macedonia. I was born in a small town Struga, touristic town at the lake Ohrid. I had the pleasure to be born in a time after Yugoslavia when a lot of things were changing in the country. There was a lot of radical reforms in education, economy, how we looked at business. So let’s say that the mentality of my family was very socialist-related at the same time when capitalism was entering the borders of the Balkans. And I think that influenced me a lot because I was always inspired a lot by art, culture, social causes, social movements. At the same time I wanted to find a way to make money out of it. So, I wanted the freedom that money can buy. I really admired businesses that were successful, entrepreneurs that are successful. And maybe that also comes from my parents because my mother was the chief finance officer in one of the biggest hotels in my town and my father was a poet. So, both of them had very different influence on my life and I think both of them had a tremendous impact on who I wanted to be. And I was really, until the age of 18, thinking I had to choose one of these two things. Either you will be socially active or you will be a business person and work for corporations. So for me this dilemma marked most of my I would say teenage years and also when I decided to go for studies, I moved to Skoplje, to the capital city – I studied English language and literature. I was then very inspired by poetry and writing books. And then at the third year of my studies I decided to sneak in the faculty of economics and just for pleasure started to follow marketing and business modeling and basics of economics. That made my mother very happy, at the same time very confusing. Like, what are you gonna be? You know? What’s your vocation? I never could answer this question, I had many different answers to the question of who I want to be. And then luckily life led me to different experiences. I always wanted to live abroad and study abroad, so I had the chance to move out of Macedonia 10 years ago almost and I left to Slovenia where I actually had finished my Master’s studies. I did Master studies in international business. And I started to work in Slovenia for a global kind of company, a think-tank that was supporting young people to develop business ideas, but only in the social field. And this was the first time I discovered social entrepreneurship. So basically today I call myself ‘social innovator’, also a little bit of a poet and also entrepreneur, but entrepreneur not really like I will create businesses all my life or a serial entrepreneur, but mostly like the mindset of entrepreneurship. So I really take advantage of uncertainty. I try to live in a way that enables others, not only me, to thrive and develop and empower. So, back in Macedonia I was also one of the co-founders of a movement called “Mladi info”, we created a website that offered young people in the Balkans opportunities to go abroad and study abroad. Then, as I moved to Slovenia I moved more into the social entrepreneurship field. Then, I moved to- lived a little bit in Africa as well in Austria, came back to the Balkans. So I had a diversity of experiences that shaped my vision and picture of the world and really how we can do business and profit and at the same time have positive impact. Not only on society but on planet Earth and other local communities. So, if it’s- you know, I really don’t like short biographies so much. I think that behind every short biography there is a very personal human story that we need to hear and we need to connect to. And currently, with my business – I run a consulting company, a professional services agency that we call Heartbeats Innovation and Communication. We dedicate a lot of time on this telling the human part of the stories and putting humans and planet Earth on the center of all experiences we have. Not an easy task, but I’ve always been a visionary so I really do try to put my time as much as possible in supporting businesses and organizations around the world who want to innovate the way we create value for each other or for others. So, I hope I managed to kind of not give a too fluffy answer but to touch upon some of the parts of my short biography.

Sanja Milosavljevic: No, but you actually mentioned all the important things I want to ask you and develop story more about some topics, some of the topics you mentioned. So, when you say you are a ‘social entrepreneur’ or you are in the ‘social entrepreneurship’, what does that mean to you? And do you make a difference between integration and inclusion? What would be the difference between these two terms?

Bistra Kumbaroska: Yeah. I mean, social entrepreneurship, if you google it nowadays, you can find I think around 50 pages on google with different definitions on what social entrepreneurship is. I have a very broad understanding of what it means, and for me it simply means any kind of business or organization or creating of value that goes beyond measurement of profit. So, if you have a business and you are a – I don’t know – a photocopy shop. But, instead of only measuring how much money you make per day, you also measure how many papers you used and how many trees were cut for that paper to be produced, and then you invest part of your profit in order to save trees, or create paper that is innovative enough that doesn’t come from trees, or etc. etc. – to me, you are a social entrepreneur. So, social entrepreneurship is not only seen in specific businesses that are employing only homeless people or marginalized people, it can be applied in many different ways. And I honestly, I love this broadness of it, because I also apply a lot of social entrepreneurship principles in my personal life. I mean – recycling, the use of plastic bottles, what do you do with them? Or, I’m fascinated by zero-waste lifestyles. So, all of these movements for me have these elements of social entrepreneurship or something of the new wave of us discovering how to live and work, actually, in a long run without damaging too much of the so-called externalities or what is around us. When it comes to integration or inclusion, I have pretty strong opinions I have to say because I’ve lived in very different countries. And I’m all for diversity and inclusion. I feel that many Balkan countries, even my home-country Macedonia would benefit a lot of diversity of people coming there, traveling there ,staying there, opening their business there, so the more foreigners, the more cultures, the more skin colors, the more religions in the mix, it’s better. So I’m definitely more on that side. But integration as such is always a very – I would say a very particularly complex topic. So, when I moved to Vienna for the first time, there was even in Vienna a whole department, you know, dealing on the state level with integration of foreigners because there is a lot of foreigners, also refugees, also asylum seekers coming here. And I always thought of integration as something that- you know, the newcomers. They bring something new to the country, but they are not necessarily fascinated by the country they go to. It doesn’t mean that they will now blend and become Austrians. It means that there will be some kind of a space that is kind of fluid. So in this space Austrians will also change. Because the more foreigners come, the more the culture develops into something- it evolves. It developes into something different. And I see integration as a two-way street. And if you’re not ready to go on that two-way street, you should not say that you are the most integrative society. Because inclusion as such means inviting, means openness, right? But it also should mean “I allow you to find your space, and I allow you to take part of my space that we create our shared space together”. So, if you ask me on, like- both of these terms have a lot of layers, I would say, not only in philosophical discussions, but also what we see in the world today. How is integration and inclusion in a time of pandemic. It’s an incredibly interesting topic and I would say we have a lot to learn and experiment on both sides. When it comes to inclusion I just want to mention something. Currently I work with a very, very powerful network of organizations called Civicus. They are a global leader I would say in the space of human rights, especially in the global south. I was impressed by the level of principles and even how you organize events, and how you include others in your events. How do you make sure that certain level of inclusion is embedded in everything that you do. I learned a lot from their experiences. And I think if we wanna talk about inclusion, we should look into civil society. There are so many great examples already. It’s not always that entrepreneurs are only found in businesses. You can find entrepreneurs also in the human rights field. You can find innovators in every other field and I think in terms of innovation and inclusion we can learn a lot from the civil society space.

Sanja Milosavljevic: I asked you what do you think about those two terms – inclusion and integration because I think there is the space for innovation, and you actually mentioned the same thing. Because I know that you work with innovative companies. Do you have any example of innovative company that involves integration or inclusion, any company that is in the field of human rights? Can you share an example? Can we look at the- can we find them on google or somewhere else? Just to make it closer to the people that are listening to this podcast.

Bistra Kumbaroska: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, the one that comes right away to my mind, it’s a social business based in Vienna, but actually the model of it has been applied in different cities in Europe as well. In Vienna it’s called Shades Tours. And it’s basically a social business that employs homeless people and equips them to become tour guides. So if you take a Shades Tour in Vienna, you will discover a totally different side of Vienna. You will not go to the usual suspect museums or usual pretty things about the city, but you will see the city from the eyes of the person who knows the streets the best, because they live there. They live in the streets. And the interesting part of this business is that the money it makes, it also – not only kind of invest in the jobs for these people, but it also invests a lot in policy and pushing for the rights of homeless people and improving the benefits systems or whatever there is needed in order to have a pretty good support system. Homelessness is a big topic in European Union countries and Shades Tours is just one simple example of how you can really push through a lot of changes on a systemic level, government level, also local level – how the city actually is dealing with homeless people and then also in the end to really take homeless people out of homelessness. So, to enable them to earn money, to have dignity, to have money to rent a flat and to build a home. So, for me this was a business that I actually had the pleasure to meet in the very early stage. It’s a female entrepreneur Perrine. She’s the one that founded it. She comes from tourism vocation, and she always knew she wanted to do something in the social field, although everyone told her, you know “find a job that is kind of typical in tourism”. Money, you know – you will be happy with that. But she was brave enough to actually set this up and I think we need these examples. Although maybe they are not the most scalable businesses or the businesses that will attract the biggest investments in the world, they are businesses that show an example of how things can work differently. And how we can look at homeless people differently. Because when you meet the homeless person giving you a tour and when you see them in the street, it’s very different how you act towards them. So, I think it’s a very powerful message. And another one I want to mention, especially in the field of human rights, diversity, inclusion. United Cultures, it’s called. It’s also Vienna-based business that actually produces socks and scarves inspired by the designed of- by the stories of people that live abroad. Who come from different countries but are based now in Austria. And they tell the story of their life to a designer that is designing the socks for them or the scarf, and in that way when you buy this product a lot of the profit goes into, yeah, integration funds, funds for human rights and foreigners etc. So, I chose these two because they are very typical – it’s a fashion business and a tour-operator business. You know? It’s a very typical kind of traditional business, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t have a social cause.

Sanja Milosavljevic: Perfect. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. I never heard for either of these two businesses, so…what is responsible business model? Can you explain what a responsible business model is? You mentioned it somehow, but can you explain, just in- what do you- when you say ‘responsible business model’, what do you first think of it.

Bistra Kumbaroska: Well, yeah. It’s a very- luckily today we have a lot of models and framework that are already developed by others, and I- I am a nerd about these things. I read a lot, I try to discover a lot. And one of the- maybe before I give a very precise answer, a very concrete answer, I just want to say that everything that I’ve learned about responsible businesses or organizations in any way has been truly inspired by how nature and natural ecosystems work. Because in nature, if you look at the biodiversity and what happens in nature – nature can be also very cruel example, but it can be also an example of how in the long run things can develop, while having always flexible dynamics. Nothing stays the same in nature, everything changes. And this is very much what we are trying to replicate in the social systems that we create. We want them to be flexible but at the same time stable so they don’t crash. That they have some kind of, yeah, stability. So, looking at some of these natural bio-frameworks, I discovered something that was called panarchy it’s a scientist 50 years ago came up with a model that actually kind of explains what in nature stays stable and what is the creative part of nature, what is the thing that changes all the time and how these things, how these processes work together. The most important part is, he says, there is no result to anything, you can’t plan the result – only design the process. And if you design a good process, the result will come and be- become the side-effect of everything that you’ve done. And in this sense I’m always looking for frameworks and processes. And I’m always looking at those – I’m never looking at the final result of something, I’m not looking always at the financial sheets, not that. But it’s an important part, I have to say. For a lot of business or an organization. However, I look a lot into HR – how are people managed. Leadership styles in the organization. Who’s actually making the decisions. Is it really transparent, etc? And basically one of the frameworks I adore and I use a lot it’s called ‘Regenerative Business Framework’. It’s available online as well, one US consultant Carol Sanford, she’s the one that developed it. I had the pleasure to meet her last year as well and go through some lectures with her and understand a little bit better her model- her framework. She says ‘model’ is the wrong word because model says something will be successful. But a framework you don’t know the result. So you can apply it to many things and you never know the result. 

Sanja Milosavljevic: That’s smart. Sorry, sorry, but that’s smart. Very smart.

Bistra Kumbaroska: I agree! And that’s why I’m trying to kind of use the word framework, because it’s very open. And you can apply it all sorts in the good, the bad- in many different context. And what does this framework in the very basic and simple way say? It says – if you’re a business, you need to know your customer. Right? Without a customer, you have no business. But if you know your customer, that’s not enough. You need to know, also, who are all the people that create your product or your service and that make it possible for the customer to buy it. So, who are your co-creators? You need to know them and to have processes that regularly check on them. Whether this is your team or you have external freelancers you work with, or you have, I don’t know, supply chain. You need to figure out who are your co-creators and work with them. The third most important stakeholder – apart from co-creators and customers is planet Earth. With planet Earth you can’t talk, but you can be very mindful of it. You need to understand – what does your business create, or damage or harm or provide to planet Earth. If there is no value that you provide to planet Earth, then you should reconsider. Your business is not regenerative. It’s not responsible yet. Then, you look at local community. Wherever you produce part of your service or product. If it’s in different countries, if it’s somewhere in a different city, you need to figure out what’s the change that you bring to the local community. And if you decide you don’t wanna make any change, that’s fine, but usually you do make a change. Maybe you produce waste there? Why should the local community manage the waste and not you? So, you need to look a little bit deeper into your local community. And then the fifth is the investors or funders of your business. How do you actually engage them in a meaningful conversation that maybe also goes beyond profit. What they can provide to you as help, as advice as et cetera in order to really kind of grow this business and thrive. And this framework has been also applied to NGOs, to civil society organizations. So basically it works in both context renewal and I had the chance to work with it quite a lot in the past year and I have to say – for me these five stakeholder groups, if I can call them in a very simple language – they explain a lot and they give a lot of possibility for innovative processes. Because you can also choose and say “I will not dedicate my time in the first five years of my business to planet Earth because I have no capacity. I want to make sure that internally my processes with my team are perfected. After five years, if I reach this profit margin, I will be able to dedicate more to planet Earth.” This is totally fine. We are not saying we should run all the business right away with all these engagements on top, you know? But, it is important that you, as a founder, as a leader, as a director of an organization or a business, that you have a vision that goes in that direction, because by involving these five elements you can create a business that grows regeneratively. So, whenever you lose something, something new will pop up. And it actually works. I can really say it actually works. It’s a lot of work, it’s a lot of additional work, but you know it’s like you change habits for yourself – it’s always a lot of work. If you want to quit smoking – it’s a lot of work. If you want to start recycling and you haven’t before – it’s a lot of work. It takes persistence, it takes commitment but it also takes time. And yeah, I always – and this is my last thought on this – I cherish small examples of something that functions differently a lot. Because the more and more small examples we have, the more inspired and empowered we are to go further and further and develop more. So, we need the small examples. And if that means- you know, I’ve had companies that said ‘what are we gonna do for planet Earth? We will quit smoking, all of us, in the team”. And they did it. You know – you can all the things. It doesn’t always have to be ‘we recycle’ or some big ideas. It can be also very small steps, right? We can also take it very personal. But yeah, that’s one of the definitions of what responsible means. And I hope it’s not a discouraging definition, I hope it’s an inspiring one.

Sanja Milosavljevic: No, I find it to be very inspiring. Actually it’s very similar to circular economy. It has the same base. So, do you – what do you prefer? To tackle problems or to shake the problems and solve the problems?

Bistra Kumbaroska: Well you know, both are important in different contexts. For example, in Macedonia or the Balkans with my experience so far, I can tell you that solving the problem is sometimes cheaper than tackling it. So you can solve problem much faster. But maybe you will not be able to repeat the solution one more time because circumstances change so much, that maybe politically something will happen, something will shake the system and then your solution doesn’t work anymore. So you’ve done it once, but that doesn’t mean you can apply it again. While in countries like Austria, very different experience I’ve had. You can’t solve the problem until you tackle it for a long time. But when you tackle it for a long time, you understand it so well that when you solve it, this solution remains on the long run. Because the system is such that it is very slow and expensive – every change is expensive. But that change remains. And by tackling it you raise awareness until you really build the momentum for that change. And I think this really applies even to small teams – even if you wanna change something in your own team, you need others to buy into it. Because, yeah, I don’t believe in boss-employee relationships anymore. I don’t think you can just tell people do this and this and that’s the change we’re gonna make. So, in all this- in different cultural context, in different working environments, I think it’s important to have maybe both. Tackle, so you raise awareness, you empower people to think about something. But then – yeah, I’m the action person. So, I kind of tend to skip the tackling part, but I tell you it’s not always good. It’s not always good.

Sanja Milosavljevic: It’s amazing, because you have the real-life experience from our region. And our region is very…you know, we have so many problems. Starting from 80’s and 90’s, even now -especially in Serbia. And then you have experience living in Slovenia or Vienna, Austria where things are settled many years ago. Can you tell us something about the state of entrepreneurship, first let’s say in west, in Slovenia and Austria and then just make a parallel with our region. I don’t know, Bosnia, Serbia, Macedonia, whatever country you choose or wherever you have the most information.

Bistra Kumbaroska: Yeah. It’s a very question. A very difficult as well because Europe as such is very fragmented. And although we kind of tend to talk in regions, there is no regional reality. Every country is very, very differently developed, but there are few things I will try to kind of summarize from what I’ve seen so far. Austria, as a country, has a very developed entrepreneurship ecosystem, invests a lot also in social entrepreneurship. And why is that so? It’s because the government has a strong commitment to innovation to entrepreneurship, and also lets the leaders – the ones, the organizations that already exist, they let them lead the way. So it’s not like government officials will come and tell you what to do, but they really hire and create synchronicities and collaboration on several levels. Of course things can be improved. If I compare Singapore and Austria or New Zealand and Austria, I would also find a lot of things that Austria can improve, but there is a very vivid, vibrant ecosystem. Meaning there are many players, and many players doesn’t mean competition, it just proves that there is a lot of innovation in entrepreneurship going on. So, still in Europe we live in a society – we have to be reminded – we live in a society where if you say at the age of 15 “I wanna be an entrepreneur”, your parents will tell you no. You tell them “I wanna be an artist” they will probably be skeptical already. So, entrepreneurship is not a very wanted career choice, because it’s always connected to something difficult, something that you will be on your own or something like that. I think in Austria slowly they started to change this mentality and also there is a little bit more openness now than I would say 10 years ago towards failure. Because failure is a big part of entrepreneurship. If you haven’t failed, you could rarely be a successful entrepreneur. So failure – the culture of failure is not really in the DNA of Europe I would say. Not as much as I’ve seen for example in Africa. But, that doesn’t mean we are not learning and kind of moving in that direction. If I compare Slovenia, Slovenia is a much smaller country. Has already a kind of a vibrant ecosystem as well around entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship but it’s still rather slow, if I compare it to the bigger countries of EU. Slovenia has a dedication that I admire on being ‘green’. So everything in green and circular economy is very much thriving. Of course there is also things to improve there, but if I compare them to the Balkans, to the southern neighbors and I would say Bosnia, Serbia, Macedonia – all of them have many differences, but in the core the ecosystem is very scarce. There are not enough heirs in the space. So if in Vienna for example, in a city of Vienna you find, I don’t know, 40 coworking spaces – maybe all of them struggling at the moment with the pandemic and everything that is happening. In Belgrade you will see, I don’t know, maybe five to ten. When I was living in Belgrade I found it very difficult to find my own entrepreneurial community, not a lot dedicated to social. Of course you have Impact Hub Belgrade, thank god, that’s a very interesting community to look at. But still, collaboration in the Balkans, in general – in Macedonia, Bosnia, everywhere I’ve traveled and worked. Collaboration is a challenge for us. 

Sanja Milosavljevic: Why do you think that’s challenging for us?

Bistra Kumbaroska: Because collaboration is challenging everywhere. Collaboration is not something we are taught how to do. We are actually very much living in a time when we are more easily collaborating with the like minded people and we think when we find a like-minded person, oh we have to cherish this relationship so carefully because this is very rare. And I agree it’s very rare, but it should be equally exciting to meet someone who is opposite of you. And to have the patience to discuss with this person. This is something I am trying to also raise in myself. I am surrounded with like-minded people, I have my own bubble. Not everyone believes businesses should be responsible. And that’s fine. But where do I find these other people to discuss with them in a fair manner that we can – we will not change each other’s opinion, but just to discuss. You know?

Sanja Milosavljevic: Well, you- I don’t think that the main goal is to force somebody to change his mind or his opinion – just to talk. And maybe, you mentioned the small changes, maybe if we share some information or we share some different points of view, there is a chance change is going to happen. But if we don’t communicate, then we just live- we are two bubbles living distant from each other. So nothing is going to change if we just keep living in our own bubbles.

Bistra Kumbaroska: Yeah, yeah. Well, technically, you know this regenerative framework that I mentioned, the five stakeholder groups? I truly believe that if you can apply the process of innovation, the process of communication and the process of collaboration, so these three core processes, to any of these five, you will come up with something tremendously powerful that you have not been aware of before, when you started your business for example. So I believe that collaboration is one of the core elements, core processes of any business. However, running after profit and creating stable structures of your business always will be bigger priority than finding a way to talk to the local government. If they don’t want to talk, I will not talk. You know? I will just move on with my business. This is usually the level of decisions that entrepreneurs are faced with. And I can understand that collaboration is also not on the priority list of many funds or many – you know. We have UN, we have European Commission, we have all these entities that are combining these countries’ governments together, but at the end of the day, where do you go as a citizen to unite with others, or to discuss with others that are different than you. It’s not very easy to find these places. And I believe that the role of social entrepreneurs as well as I will again mention civil society organizations, they are the ones that are able to bring people together, without creating spaces for hatred, spaces for negative emotions. Discussion. And updating. When I was in South Africa a few years ago, I was really amazed by one of the personal friends of Nelson Mendela, an elderly guy gave us a tour and a little bit of an update of his life and last days et cetera, and one of the most inspiring stories I’ve heard was that Nelson Mendela, after he became the president, he kept meeting his own enemies for a very long time. And I said why? Why would he meet the enemies? The ones that locked him in prison. And he said because there are people that locked him in prison and still remained in some important positions. And those people and him have to share what’s going on, simply to be updated on what’s happening. But they knew they will never come with a shared solutions, but they knew what was going on in their own worlds. And I think to have that greatness, we need to personally feel capable to collaborate. Which is I think a human skill that we haven’t learned. I’ve never been taught to collaborate with many different ones. I’m- you know, I’m educating myself a lot in this so I have a book to also recommend to anyone who is interested in this – Adam Kahane. It’s an author from US, he created a book called ‘Collaborating with the enemy’. And it’s a very interesting book that shows all kinds of models and frameworks of what he calls ‘stretch collaborations’. Because we think collaborations is about – I say this, you say that, we create win-win and we find a way forward. Well, in nowadays is so complex, that this doesn’t work anymore. The win-win is very difficult, you know? I sometimes discuss with people that are, let’s say, Trump fans and I can’t find a win-win. I am not a Trump fan. So, it’s very difficult. But I also want to show respect and understand where they come from. And I hope they will have the openness to learn that about me. So, I think it’s time to radically reinvent the way we collaborate and think about each other. But this has yet to come and we will hopefully see more examples of this in the coming years. Because as well with the pandemic, I think it’s time to innovate that.

Sanja Milosavljevic: Yes, I know. Well, pandemic was the reason why we even started this project. Just to decrease the noise that was in the media, on the internet. We couldn’t agree about stuff or some basic information we gain from our, I don’t know, government or whatever. So, that’s also – the pandemic moved us, or pushed us or forced us to think differently, to act rapidly, to even move faster than we moved before. Some things are good – I find many things to be good actually in this pandemic. It’s not good thing that the whole world stopped for two months, but then it forced us, it pushed us to think in innovative ways. To find solutions for some problems. We even noticed that some things were a problem. We didn’t notice it before. Pandemic just put it in front row, so we can see that there are many problems we weren’t afraid because we were always chasing something else, or something different. And I really believe that this pandemic is going to be a chance to first- the nature, I hope the nature is going to recover because it stopped for two months almost. We stopped for two- human beings stopped for two months, not the nature. Human beings stopped for two months. And then we are going to find innovative ways to communicate, to find new business models, to actually give new value to the things we do or produce or whatever. What do you think about these new values? You mentioned that there are several stakeholders like customers, co-creators, supply chains…what is the new value? What would be the new value for each of the groups you mentioned? What is the new value for the customer who has the experience of COVID.

Bistra Kumbaroska: Well, you know, I think we have all been a part of probably the largest global shift and transformation all at the same time. Many countries have different difficulties than others and we still have to accept that we are the part of the privileged groups. There are many groups that have been highly marginalized and have it even worse because of the pandemic. Transformation is very different than change. And maybe the most simple definition I find is transformation is difficult because it has a death experience. You have to let go of something. Something goes away. And something has to go away so something else can be let in. And what will we let go of and what we will let in will be a very personal question, but then it will be a very systemic question as well. And not only our countries, but our local communities, our buildings, our neighborhoods. These will be decisions that we will have to make on a very maybe subtle, psychological way, but this is going to be- this is surfacing out already. I see differences in how my home in Vienna and how my home in Ljubljana has changed because of the pandemic. In Ljubljana I’m much closer to the local community now, I’ve met all the neighbors, I’m there non-stop. I come to Vienna now, I’ve lost touch with some people because I was so much in Ljubljana. So, relationships redefine themselves. What are the values when it comes to business or stakeholders? You know, Sanja, I’ve been a big fan all my life of- I’ve had the chance to give lectures and prepare trainings a lot about social entrepreneurship and one thing I’ve noticed they did wrong was I was always telling answers to questions that need to be asked somewhere else. So if I wanna know what’s the value for the customer after the pandemic, my goal should be as a business to ask them and to open a discussion with them and a dialogue. And to make them able- to enable them to share that with me. Because all of us are very real and strong human experiences and we have very different layers in our personalities and characters. And I don’t think there is one answer to this question. I think the values will shift in the next months. Maybe we think we know something now, but I think in December it might be something else. I think the transformation has just begun. I don’t think we’re in the middle or the end of it. Not yet. That’s my feeling. And what is transformation? Why is it so scary and why is it different than change? Because you can never go back to what it was. That’s the point. So with change, it’s like modifying things – I love this, this is actually a definition by Nick Cave who unfortunately lost his son at one point, and did a documentary about it and he said – “Transformation is when you go to a place where you can’t go back to where you were before.” And some of these experiences are very painful. However, I’m not saying there’s anything- there is not anything good about transformations. As you said, Sanja, already – some things are surfacing up that we didn’t see before. Some of them are negative, some of them are positive. Some of them are innovative, some of them are fueling us with new energy and new vibes. One thing I can say that I see for myself as a customer, as a consultant, in all my roles – I’m not gonna do any more work for something I don’t believe in 100%. There is no time for that anymore. So, I can tell that as a customer I will not buy the products that are not wrapped in a recycling plastic bag. If it’s a plastic bag that is not recyclable or it is something I noticed that does not really connect to protecting the environment or contributing to some social good. I think we have enough of other choices and we can just go for those choices. I will maybe not buy sneakers anymore every month, every three months, every five months – I will save money and buy organic shoes this time. And these are small things, but they are coming to the surface for me. And this year is the year where I think I can commit more time to think about it. What does it mean? From small-scale, how that influences my life and my business on the long run. So, when I talk to my team about this. We have a lot of talks like this. I have to say I love this question because we had also a coworker that was tested positive a few weeks ago. And for her as well some perceptions are changing, you know? You are put in a situation where your home becomes your prison, when you’re not allowed to leave your home. And you are with yourself and yourself only and then you are facing very different fears, very different characteristics of who you are. But you can also look at the situation as your home is a cave, where you go to retreat, to heal. It’s not a prison, maybe. Maybe it’s a dark place, where you don’t need light because you bring light when you want to understand light, but when you want to understand darkness you stay in darkness a little bit. So let’s stay and see whether it will be a prison or cave, and what will be the values we will bring out. Because we will go out of the prison or the cave at one point. And I just- yeah, I would very much like to see a world where these kind of podcast are happening much more often, we have much more women leaders in the world. Our new values are already there – they will just be highlighted. That’s what I feel.

Sanja Milosavljevic: Yes, thank you. Surfacing was the word I was trying to think of and then you just said it, so…thank you. Can you tell us something, or do you have any information regarding female entrepreneurship, or women managing or leading their companies. Do you have any information regarding that topic?

Bistra Kumbaroska: Well yeah. It’s one of my favorite topics. I am a very gender-aware person. I am not a- I don’t believe in the binary system of male and female, but I do believe in the difference of paycheck and financial opportunity for women and men. There is a huge difference but there are also a multitude of other genders that are just not represented in the world we live in in a proper way. However when I think of women leaders as such in Europe, I would love to see much more happening. I know we’ve shifted a lot. 20 years ago it was a very different picture, today we have progressed a lot. But, Sanja if you ask me, this world we live in at the moment has definitely been designed by one mind- one side of a mind. And whether male or female I’m not gonna comment because I don’t believe in this binary system, but we need a different side of things. We need to look at things differently. And I believe that women are one of the solutions to this challenge. Because women have a very different way of looking at community, looking at leadership, looking at spending money, saving money. So, from the most basic things to, you know, large-scale questions. What we can do more? I would definitely say- you know, I organize a lot of events in my work, because there’s part of the innovation that I’m dedicated a lot of time to innovating with people together. So, co-create workshops and hackathons and different events. If I want to have all-female panel, I have to spend much more time finding these women to speak at my event, rather than just choosing the usual stars that are mostly men. That’s really the case.

Sanja Milosavljevic: How come? 

Bistra Kumbaroska: Well, they were not given the possibilities, so we have much more men leading organizations, or…you know, I had a moment. I had a really strong moment on this in Vienna at the university of economics. I was giving a lecture about social entrepreneurship – it was five years ago. And I enter a room where it’s like a preparation room where I lead the team and then we go on stage. And in this room there are portraits of all the deans of the University- of the Faculty of Economics in Vienna. And it’s all men. White men. So, I am sitting in this room and I’m thinking – how is this possible? Tell me this is not systemic. So, the same- these kind of experiences made me realize that we have to push for more women. And, I have to say it’s not only us women as being feminist, we need allies. We need allies in the men, we need allies in different groups, we need allies to really make- shed light on women that made tremendous impact or had some really significant inspiring work that they did but no one knows about them. And I think, you know, there are many posts online you for sure noticed winners of Nobel prizes et cetera. So, systemically we’ve been nurturing a lot of this kind of attitude of celebration for men more than for women. But I have to say I see this changing. I see the change going. It’s not fully there, it will be more radical I feel in the next years. And if there is any assumptions that I would make in regard to what’s the new values that you asked me before, I think you will not be able to run a company without having women on board in senior leadership positions. This is what change I think will happen. And then, you know, if you look at civil society for example on the other hand. You have a lot of women-led organizations. And then in certain contexts women also had to take even the skills and ways of doing stuff like men did, never having the chance to really explore what’s their style of leading, what’s their style of working. And this is also another thing I believe will shift for sure.

Sanja Milosavljevic: I hope so. Well, I don’t like the term ‘women entrepreneurship’, or that prefix women-something, because entrepreneurship is entrepreneurship. It has its own rules or it has its own dynamic. So it doesn’t matter who is leading the company or small-scale business, but we are using that term like women-entrepreneurs. I don’t like it, but I use it just to make a distinction between old values and new values. Because I also agree, or hope so that we are going to see much more women in leading positions. Like, they gave us the opportunity to finish universities, but then- it sounded like some big win – but then we are not on the leading positions, or decision-making positions. We are not policy makers. That sphere is still only for men. So I really hope something is going to change and women are going to be more in those decision making positions. Because that’s how we can make policies and that’s how we can change the world. Together. I also agree that we need to have allies. It’s not one-sided, it’s not one-side street, it’s two-way street. It’s not something that either men or women should do, all groups have to communicate and make the change. 

Bistra Kumbaroska: I’m gonna just maybe share in this moment – sorry Sanja – a story I remembered. It’s very interesting how we look at these things. They have- this topic has many faces, right? I also don’t like ‘women-entrepreneurs’ as a term, I agree with you. On the other hand, I really want to highlight that there is no equality. There is no equality and we have to be able to name that. And, in that sense I had one situation in a conference in Slovenia. I was not a speaker, I was part of the attendees in the audience and then there was questions and answers sessions. So, I wanted to raise a question. So it turned out I raised my hand at the same time with another time in the audience and we started talking at the same time. Then this guy turns to me and says ‘Sorry, sorry, Miss- whatever, please go ahead, go first’. And I said ‘sorry, but no – you go first’. And he’s like – this was the trigger – he says ‘I’m a gentleman so you should go first’. And I said ‘I’m a gentlewoman, so you go first’. I don’t want someone to give me the right without me being able to choose. I also have the right to choose and being a gentleman in the context of Slovenia maybe means I go first, but I have a choice. That’s the most important thing. And I can choose not to go first. And it’s just a very local kind of example, but it also shows where are we with the awareness and mentality. There is a lot of myths and culture aspects that we have to change for ourselves as women also position ourselves to where we want to be, you know?

Sanja Milosavljevic: I know, I agree. Okay, so, for the end, can you tell us- can you share a message with us? Can you share something with us? In Serbia and the world. What would be the- I don’t know,  do you wish to recommend a book to read or do you have any wisdom to share with us?

Bistra Kumbaroska: That’s a very difficult question Sanja, it was not part of the e-mail. (laughter)

Sanja Milosavljevic: Sorry! Actually none of the questions were in the e-mail.

Bistra Kumbaroska: Yeah, exactly, yeah. That’s very true. You know what? I think I wanna share something that I’ve been thinking about a lot. In my company we have a very strong focus on communication or what we call responsible communication and impact communication and I’ve been faced with the pandemic in a- it was a difficult year for me so far. I am an extrovert, I love events, I love meeting people. And the first thing- I was on the border between Serbia and Croatia, driving from Belgrade to Ljubljana on the day when the borders were closed. So I was very lucky to enter my home on that day. And the stress of it made me think a lot about what now? You know? Especially what now for extrovert like me? I had to be at home all the time and do everything online. For me it’s different. And bringing human experiences in the online world is a very big challenge and I’m sure you have also felt it. Conversations are different. Maybe this conversation would’ve been different if we met. We would’ve seen our body language much more, maybe we would’ve shifted to other topics, we don’t know that. But communication and the level of communication we have established through the internet is something we need to really cherish and appreciate every day and we need to use it to share stories of unity. Stories of one. We are all one. And we’ve been told this many times, but the truth is we don’t know how to live as one. We have a lot of voiceless people around us. We need to give them voice, we need to give them space to be who they are. If we have done good so far, now we need to triple that good. It’s the time to really radically consider to dedicate more space for social things, for human relations, for art, for culture, things that highlight the true, the true belonging of this race. And at the end of the day, you know, when the climate change movement started. Everyone was saying climate change will cause a lot of problems for humanity. The truth is planet Earth will survive. Whether we will be on it or not, that’s the question. Let’s try to embrace these times of such crises to really reimagine what can we do together better. And I really am a strong believer that the challenges of today will not be solved by individual imagination. So we need to find a place and time to co-imagine together. To share our visions of the world. To belong to each other, to trust each other. I know we are all very different and we’ve  developed also very different bubbles. I’m not saying we all come and talk from the same intentions or same values, but that’s not the point and that was never the point. So now is the time to elevate that language and narrative and communication of the one, of the unity of the togetherness. Because I think without it we are gonna get lost. So, yeah. I’m a poet as well, Sanja, so…

Sanja Milosavljevic: Yeah, I know. 

Bistra Kumbaroska: You can tell.

Sanja Milosavljevic: This was really beautiful. Thank you, Bistra. Thank you so much for your time. And I said correctly – share the wisdom and you shared a wisdom with us.

Bistra Kumbaroska: Yeah, I’m a little bit fluffy maybe today because I had a  day when I was talking a lot about what’s the meaning of this pandemic for us, so…sorry if I was not very precise and concrete with my answers, but…

Sanja Milosavljevic: No, no, just perfect – really. And thank you. I changed the questions. Actually I think I didn’t ask one single question from the list I sent you. 

Bistra Kumbaroska: Totally fine. I really enjoyed the questions and also your- the way you shared your opinions and inspired me to answer. Sorry if I was also too long, but I hope it was useful.

Sanja Milosavljevic: No, perfect. Thank you. Dear people of the world, thank you for staying with us, thank you for watching and listening to Bistra and me. You can follow us on social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel and watch the episodes there and – be good, stay safe, stay in good health and see you in a week.