Sanja Milosavljević: Hello, my name is Sanja Milosavljevic and I’m going to be your host today. This is Mondopreneur podcast and we are trying to share stories of successful women, or women that run their own businesses or work at universities or just try to empower other women. This whole podcast is supported by the US embassy in Belgrade. Today, my guest is from Serbia and we’re going to speak in Serbian language and you can always find a transcript of our conversation on our website, so enjoy our conversation. Hi, Svetlana, how are you?

Svetlana Stefanović: Hi, Sanja, I am fine.

Sanja Milosavljevic: Thank you for accepting my invitation to participate in this podcast. I think that you perfectly fit in the concept of this podcast. Maybe, you are not an entrepreneur in formal sense of this term, and run your own business, but you are included in supporting women, i.e. through various support programs and project that you run in the past and that you are going to run in the future, you are trying to empower women – girls, women and elderly women. Can you tell us something about yourself? Something as an introduction – what is your educational background, what schools have you finished, did it coincide with your current career or you changed something in the meanwhile, where is your focus at the moment?

Svetlana Stefanović: So, I graduated at the Faculty of Political Sciences and as any person – male or female, I dreamed of becoming an ambassador. It was like – you enroll at Political Sciences and it implies that you are going to be an ambassador that you are going to represent your country and promote what is the best of it. However, life wanted it to be different, and after the second years of study, I realized that I won’t be working as an ambassador, not in that formal sense. Especially, as some situations occurred while I was studying, you see how public institutions function, how they change, what is the path of getting the job in ministries. So, in that period, when I was halfway of my studies, I started to be more active and I was very active. I was searching on the Internet, and in that moment of time, you couldn’t find everything on the Internet. We didn’t even have computers or the Internet. And from this perspective, this looks…

Sanja Milosavljević: Unbelievable.

Svetlana Stefanović: Unbelievable, like I lived in another world. And then I started doing some projects, I volunteered for a very long time, I got involved in projects that were interesting to me at the time, and were connected, in some way, with foreign policy, international relations, since that was my main course of studies at faculty. And I actually started being active in an NGO completely by accident. I actually went there to see what opportunities they provide, so that I could gain some practical knowledge because I had enough theoretical knowledge after college. And I went and searched for some additional knowledge and then stayed in the sector, and I’m still in the non-governmental sector, that is, I work in a civil society organization and I actually spent the last 15 years of my career there. And again, I was what I wanted to be – not in a formal sense, I was not a formal ambassador, but I was informal because I ran programs for a long time that allowed young students to travel and get to know Europe and some European countries first hand. So through those projects I represented my country in the best possible way and somehow made those dreams come true at some point. Now, I deal mainly with, as you have already said, empowering women primarily through mentoring. Somehow, mentoring has been my way of life for the past ten years – it was before, but now is formally my way of life. And somehow, through the projects I lead, I deal with gender equality, security and international relations, of course, that is always somehow in my focus. But that empowerment and support for women through non-formal education, through mentoring support, has become my focus.

Sanja Milosavljević: Nice, that’s how we actually met. In 2017, I was a participant in that program “Share knowledge, become a mentor”, I was a mentee. And I enjoyed it so much, that year passed – that is, that program lasted for a year and it initially seemed like a “gosh, whole year”, and in fact when that November arrived and the Walk was organized, I was like, is it possible that a year has already passed, and we were seeing each other every Saturday and it was a lot – it meant a lot to me. We will talk more about mentoring, but for example what meant the most to me – it was only a year or two after that program that I actually started to feel the first effects of that program. At the time this was happening, I was not mature enough, ready enough, open enough, however. Like, as if nothing had happened, as if nothing had caught on to me. And then a year or two later, when everything came together, when I may have changed a bit and opened up, then I started to really see the good sides and benefits of that whole program. What does mentoring mean to you?

Svetlana Stefanović: Well, for me, mentoring is a way of life. Constantly, in everyday life – both professional and personal – I constantly share and absorb knowledge. And somehow, I am constantly learning and educating others, although maybe sometimes I do it unconsciously, sometimes I do it consciously depending on the situation I find myself in. Mentoring is a way to share what you know, what you have learned, what you have gained during both your professional engagement and career. But, also with some personal things through which you also learn or go through some challenges that you face constantly and somehow, they intertwine. Professionally and personally, it is constantly intertwined, and in fact, through mentoring – regardless of the fact that I led that program and started that program – I was an informal mentee. Because I learned from every girl, both mentors and mentees, in different segments, that I recognized at that moment. We all have some learned patterns that we carry from our childhood, from that period while we were educating ourselves in school, in college. And, I come from a small community and it was all completely different. For me, Belgrade was – like now when we go to New York, Belgrade for me like that then. And somewhere I always had that, how am I going to manage? Town of Trstenik has 15-17 thousand inhabitants, you can go through the town in half an hour and how can I do that in Belgrade now, you have to use transport, you have to do all that … but in fact everything is your school, you learn from everything and through that experience you actually learn the best. Mentoring also taught me that I really like to talk a lot, that I listen a lot and try to hear well and that sometimes you recognize even what is not said that there is space somewhere so that you can jump in, that you can say, that you can share, that you are able to encourage, to be the wind in ones back. Because, I feel good in that role. Because when I give someone the wind in their back, it comes back to me so that I can continue to work. And somehow the program itself and mentoring as a concept – when we started implementing it in 2010 – was not so relevant. It was, but in that formal sense: you come at the end of high school, you have a mentor, you write a paper, you come to college, you also have a mentor, he/she reviews your work and it’s “mentoring”, and in fact it’s everything but not the mentoring. And somehow I, through the process itself and through the program, as the program grew, so did I, I read a lot, I followed a lot of how it works in some other countries and now I’m proud of what we all created together and what is now “Share your knowledge” and how much is it – 10 years is not now to say a long period, but on the other side, it is. Just like you were impatient, like “no results, what am I going to do now?” So I am impatient by nature and I like to see it as “aha here we are now trained” and I would immediately like all these women to become leaders at the same time. They leave the program, return to their city and become leaders and change their local community, and that is not really the case. And somewhere I got used to it, learned to let time show. And it rarely happens that you recognize all the benefits and gains from mentoring in a formal period – five, six months to a year. In fact, it takes you a little longer to be okay with everything you’ve learned, what you’ve heard, what you’ve experienced, what you’ve changed, what you’ve realized somewhere to embark on an adventure and then it all starts. And then it seems to you like it always been there, everything was there. But it is important that you are not alone on that journey. To know that you can always turn to someone to talk to, whether to your mentor, to someone when you think and recognize them as a mentor, regardless of whether you were in a formal program or not. For example, I have never been in a formal mentoring program, but I have had many mentors throughout my professional career who were actually real mentors, but I did not call them that. My older colleagues were more experienced, but I went through that mentoring relationship and process in a completely informal way. I would say it was informal mentoring and you were in a program where you were introduced to formal mentoring. And now, I realize how important that is and how some things would be much easier for me if I had a formal mentor 10 years ago. Maybe I would shorten some paths, maybe I would get involved in some things somewhere sooner. And this is how I discovered this process myself and I followed myself and listened and came and I didn’t lose anything in that process, on the contrary, but I could have done it faster, I could have come to some things faster. Impatience always motivates me to go further. But one should actually look at it all from a different angle. And now that I am, because somehow November is the month of mentoring for us – otherwise January is the month of mentoring. And when I actually summed up those 10 years, when I realized how much we all did together to make that program recognizable – that women are looking for mentoring whether or not they are in the program. It doesn’t have to be “Share your knowledge” there are other programs that deal not only with women’s support but with mentoring support in a specific professions, how much progress has been made and how much more we talk about it now, at least at some level where people who have information exist and how much work is left to do to transfer that information to other women and men.

Sanja Milosalvjević: Well, that’s fine … for example, if I was a mentee, I’m going to talk to my little micro-community about the program, so maybe fifty of my friends will hear  about it, and that’s how it’s going to spread. It seems to me that this is how it goes, especially since you are a pioneer in that, it did not formally exist. You were among the first to launch this mentoring program at all and to talk about it in general and to think about it. I know that my impression is that these women, these mentors and mentees from my generation, it is like a safe network for me. Formally, Milica Čalija was my mentor and in fact many women from the program became my friends, we hear with each other, we are a part of each other’s lives, not only in business but also in private. So on multiple levels that mentoring connected us. And how important is it – how important is feminism to you? For example, this program “Share Knowledge Become a Mentor” pairs women with women, that is, it deals with women’s empowerment and building a secure network. So what is feminism to you? Sorry, is feminism just two women talking?

Svetlana Stefanović: No, it’s much more than that. For me, feminism is a struggle for equal rights and equal opportunities, and somehow in our country, but not only in our country, I think it is also at the world level, “feminism” as a word has become overused. And I use that term too often and it’s actually true. And when you tell someone, when I tell someone that I am a feminist, you see that physical reaction in people, and they open they eyes a bit, in the style “why are you a feminist?”. Because in their head it represents something ugly and they imagine completely stereotypical messages that they unfortunately receive through the media. This is what the Internet, in a way, has made possible. But when you explain what feminism means and what it is, you see a change in both men and women. Like, yes but I never thought it was a fight for equal rights and equal opportunities that belong to us. And somewhere I didn’t see it in that way for a long time because you don’t get information about it through formal education. What is it now that I don’t in my time, what is civic activism and how can I be active, how can I change what I don’t like, what is it that I should do to start something, or is activism, I stay at home, I press like on everything on Instagram, I visit everything on Facebook, I go to all events, is that activism? No, activism is actually alive and it is happening. You have to go out on the street in the sense of talking to people, talking to people who are not from our immediate environment and actually explaining yourself. We take a lot of things for granted because we are still surrounded by people who are similar to us in some interests, beliefs, values ​​and people choose others, and so you make friends and expand the network and somehow empower yourself in the circle of people who are similar to you in terms of way of thinking and values. And values ​​are very important to me. Solidarity, freedom, trust, these are the values ​​from which I never deviate and they somehow lead me and have not changed. It’s something that’s in my core and without it I couldn’t be, if I can’t speak freely and do whatever I want, it actually hinders my nature and I couldn’t live like that. Trust is also an important part, it is trust that someone is doing the best both for you and him/herself. And that is a key moment in the mentoring relationship as well. If trust is not built, then there is not going to be a good mentoring relationship. And solidarity, that regardless of the fact that you do not do something for the benefit of you, you are there for someone who needs support at that moment and you selflessly give that support without those personal “yes, now I will help him/her to get something back”. And somewhere it got a little lost because more and more young people – I would not make a generalization, but when I read the research, in fact we all became, on that individual level “aha well, just that I’m good, that I have to I can work, but for others, who cares.” Well, somehow this pandemic also emphasized that because we distanced ourselves, unfortunately there is no moment of socialization, and then it feels even more that we are closing ourselves in some of our circles. And, I started thinking about feminism when I started working with the women’s government. It was a great project that was implemented in 2006. In fact, daily newspaper Blic and the OEPS Mission and the European Movement in Serbia have launched the “Let’s Choose a Women’s Government” initiative. At that time, all ministries were led by men. The idea was to show that there are women who have the expertise, knowledge, experience and who could lead these ministries in exactly the same way. And at one of those first meetings when that women’s government was elected and formed – they are now an association of citizens and they still function – for the first time, I was actually sitting with some women who had – first who were recognized, which I only saw on TV, and then you sit like this and realize that they are completely normal, just like you, that they talk normally, they do everything normally, they are not completely imaginary people. And then when you listen to those conversations, I remember then Slavenka Savić who explained why it is important, what feminism is, why feminism is important and why gender equality is important, why gender sensitive language is important and I come home, sit down and think, the fact that I wasn`t aware of it, that I don’t know it, I didn’t study at school, I don’t know what it is, it doesn’t mean that there is also no discrimination because I am not discriminated against. In fact, it was the trigger for me to start reading, I get a little more educated, I talk like that and then I realize that I don’t really know that many things. And if you always start from yourself “well, great, no one has ever discriminated against me”, I am the first child in the family, it was known who was the main one, there was no such thing. We are somehow – our parents raised us in such a way that my brother and I are completely equal and that there is no such division because he is a man or something – I have never felt that way. And then you realize like yes, it’s me and my family and maybe some immediate surroundings, but you don’t know a lot because people don’t talk about it. They are ashamed and may not talk about it out loud. And somehow the idea was that through this – in this way, to encourage female-female mentoring that it is not always that the woman is the enemy to other women and just puts her down and hinders her. That this is not true and there are many more women who support you, who are there, who selflessly share, give and are always there for you. And somehow, the program itself promotes the importance of gender equality, and the fight for equal rights and opportunities, but also that women’s solidarity. Not only solidarity at the level of women to women, but also that intergenerational cooperation because mentoring does not know for years. Maybe in ten years I will decide to start doing something new and I need a mentor – it doesn’t matter that she can be younger than me, in fact I think that there is a new value of mentoring that these younger generations can teach you to somethings I as a representative of an older generation don’t know. I’m learning fast, but for example, I learned from this younger generation how to open accounts everywhere on social networks – I’ve opened accounts everywhere now, and that actually encouraged me, so come on, here’s Twitter, then Instagram, so Facebook, so it wasn’t in my system and now I am going to this, I’m going to open it. And then they encouraged me like, so what does it matter, it’s a new space. I remember, there was a story back in 2008, I took a group of high school students to Denmark and when we came back they said to me “so how are we going to download pictures?”. I said to them, send me an email, email was the law to me at the time. And they said, why not to put on Facebook, and I said, I’m not on Facebook. Everyone is on Facebook, how come you are not on Facebook? Well I said I’m not on Facebook and what am I going to do on Facebook now. Well everyone is on Facebook, it’s a network, it’s a future, come on, come on, open an account. So I opened an account on Facebook and for the first 6 months I didn’t know what to do with it. And then you realize how you can use it as a tool and as a way to connect, to network, to share to promote and that’s how it started. So I think it’s important for this kind of intergenerational cooperation that mentoring is not always to learn from the older, more experienced than to learn from the younger ones as well. Sharing knowledge and mentoring doesn`t know for age it is a value for itself, you learn at every step, at every moment from everyone.

Sanja Milosavljević: Yes, there is that rule for example, if you run a business you need to have at least five mentors from different fields in order to progress. For instance, you map five areas in which you are bad, not good at, or you have no knowledge in them, try to find adequate mentors and then start to grow and develop. I mean there is, that mentoring is really layered on multiple levels. And what is the dialogue of the future for you? Is it a dialogue for the future or a dialogue of the future?

Svetlana Stefanović: Well, the project I led was called “Dialogue for the Future”, but dialogue is the future, so to speak. And I don’t think there is any progress without it. That we all have to be somewhere in some dialogue, to exchange. Communication is the key to everything. We can speak the same language without understanding each other, we can say some things in a way that is understandable to us and not at all to someone else because we look at the same picture in a different way.

Sanja Milosavljević: Sorry, it is just what you said earlier, nothing is implied.

Svetlana Stefanović: That’s right, that’s right. It’s just, it seems to us that it is, but it is not. There is one great thing, we introduced it in some training that we do for mentoring, when we build communication, we have one great exercise where we work in pairs and each person gets a photo. In a photograph, usually a geometric shape that needs to be retold to another person and that person draws the same one – he/she doesn’t have to draw the same one, just to draw an object. And then it’s very nice because then you realize how, first you speak and you look at the object you’re describing and how the one who draws, because he/she doesn’t see it, how he/she draws it. And then you realize how clear it is what you are saying to you and you know what you mean, but what the other person hears, can be the complete opposite. And then that dialogue is important for us to be present and for us to talk. I have no problem when someone criticizes me with arguments, defends his position. I am an absolute advocate that every person has the right to live and work the way he/she wants. And to return to values ​​again, in accordance with the values ​​that are important to her – the same values ​​do not have to be important to me and to you, but also that we do not understand or understand some things. But, it’s important to talk about it and to know what is important to you and what is important to me and that we may have a minimum of agreement that we will not talk about things we disagree on or things we disagree on, but with arguments. We agree we can have a reasoned dialogue. So, in our country, dialogue as a word has disappeared a bit. It has not disappeared, but we do not communicate well enough with others, we do not listen, we are not always present, we say what we think we should say and we are done, we move on. And it’s not, it’s much more than that. It requires from you to be present. It often happens that you are in a situation where you are physically present, and in fact your thoughts are somewhere else and you are already thinking about what you will do in the next 20 minutes, 40 minutes because this does not hold your attention. There are too many things around us that attract our attention and, an interesting thing was, when a state of emergency was imposed due to a pandemic, a set of different things was offered for education, empowerment, watching movies, series, theater, reading online books and everything else and I stopped at that moment and I was in state, I can’t do that. There is too much content and somehow the fear that you will not give enough opportunities to read something was always present and then I decided that I would actually let it sort itself out for me and that I would go my own way pace, because there were too many things at one point that are completely to me- I couldn’t decide what I was actually going to do, so I decided I wasn’t going to do anything. Then I waited for it to pass a bit so I went back to what I love to do the most. But somehow in the sea of ​​information you are looking for what is for you, what you are going to read and what is what you are going to follow and what is what will brighten your day and what is what will completely tire you if you read. And that is important. This is important for basic communication on a daily basis and how we communicate with other people. It’s always a good example for me when you go to the store and see how someone treats everyone else and then you realize that, like, we’re all on the edge sometimes waiting for us and you’re completely in your bubble so to speak.

Sanja Milosavljević: In a bubble, yes, yes. Ah, yes. But it’s great that you mentioned it. I remember when it started, when they imposed a state of emergency and we couldn’t go anywhere and all of a sudden it was like that – everyone is reading books, everyone is learning foreign languages, everyone is trying to develop. I was uncomfortable. At one point I thought – what’s wrong with me? I don’t want any of this, I don’t have patience, I don’t – my focus is now somewhere else. I don’t want to read, I don’t want to learn foreign languages? I can’t figure out what’s happening to me, let alone learn something completely new and different now. What you said, I let go, time passes, things come together and you just choose what you need the most. Oh yes, you mentioned solidarity. What do you think, did this pandemic contribute to solidarity among people to increase, strengthen, empower or is it on a level to show off, to show other people how great we are, solidary or actually that solidarity was long gone and everyone looks only at themselves and how to get back to their homes as soon as possible.

Svetlana Stefanović: I think it’s divided…

Sanja Milosavljević: I don’t want to generalize, but are your impressions, what happened to solidarity?

Svetlana Stefanović: Well, somehow it seems to me that solidarity has been lost a bit and that somehow the pandemic has triggered that fear for survival. We all have fears and that is completely normal, but do fears motivate us to go further or do fears block us from doing anything? That is what we are – or let our fears block us and that is where I think we are not all rational and that somewhere on the level when we look at what is important to us, when your life and security are endangered in some way, there is no solidarity. Not because you are not solidary and because it is not your value, but simply because fear is stronger than what you want to do. I think the fear naturally increases with what you get through the media, the information you get. Everyone can speak and interpret and it is the matter whom you trust. This pandemic showed me that we do not communicate important things well enough, important topics in the way that is necessary – openly, transparently, clearly, empathetically. We are all in the same situation, no one can be spared and it is an interesting thing that in countries where women in decision-making positions and positions of power have shown to be better leaders because they had better approach to tell their fellow citizens the situation is like this, this is happening, to be transparent, to clearly say what steps have been taken and what steps will be taken. And, that empathy and that care for others – it is not like, okay, like I am in a position now so I can do what I want – but I also care for the population, that we all remain normal, above all, and safe. And I think it’s in the announcement of some new leadership where those values, those traits that you consider bad so that someone is empathetic – as if, someone is immediately a bad person because he/she is empathetic. And no, it just showed the opposite, that it is much needed now. You need to know that someone cares about you, for you. I think solidarity is something you learn. You learn that in school and if your parents encourage you to be solidary and how you behave in school, that it actually starts from there and that it is something you acquire that way. And of course we are not all by nature solidary, we are not even taught that, perhaps. But it’s something you learn the same. While somewhere through school and through formal education, you should learn what it means to be solidary, what it means to be a good friend but not in the communist sense.

Sanja Milosavljević: Yes, it sounded like that to me, too.

Svetlana Stefanović: Yes to me too, when I said that. But not in that sense, but in a sense, like when you go to school and you have a best friend. I am always reminded of those movies where a girl defends a boy when he is attacked by some older boys, threatens him and she stays with him despite the fact that they will beat them, take away his lunch and stuff. But you learn that in school, you achieve that through education. And that is why I think that education has a very important role, and upbringing, of course, it is brought from home, but it is supplemented through school. So I think that solidarity has fallen asleep a bit and it is the responsibility of all of us to push it a little bit to go back to being there for each other, regardless of the fact that at that moment there is nothing there for us and we have no interest but to simply be here.

Sanja Milosavljević: Well, this is very nice that you mentioned that the countries headed by women did better or had better results, because no one competes, we are not at the Olympic Games against the Covid-19.

Svetlana Stefanović: There are no winners…

Sanja Milosavljević: That’s right, there are no winners. But that very empathy and just that care for others showed that the countries that have women at the helm may have solved that problem a little better, more elegantly or, in any case, more successfully. So why then do we have so few women who are … those things change a little in our country? By law, we must have a number of women who are in some positions purely for the statistics to be met. But when will that really change and why do we, just win one freedom and then it somehow turns out as if I don’t know, they gave us that freedom, and as if we really didn’t fight for that freedom but as if someone gave it to us along the way as a gift. And let’s not keep up with, like, male leaders or politicians who are – that is, with politicians. When will that change? What do we need to do? We as women?

Svetlana Stefanović: We should also change. We have to change the approach. We should change the approach, and that support is very important. What we mentioned at the beginning, no one desires to fight for something, alone. It is hard, harder, and slower and it showed as such through history. It was always a group of women or men who started the change.

Sanja Milosavljević: A group of determined people, that’s it.

Svetlana Stefanović: That’s right. That’s right. Which motivated other people and which are actually – other people recognized themselves in that idea and saw that it was really what gives results and then you change together. And in fact, change occurs when people come together to believe together in what they want to change. And a hundred years ago when women fought for the right to vote, or more, it was not now that women just came and won the right to vote. That struggle actually lasted for years, many women lost their lives so that we now enjoy the opportunity to be able to choose and to be elected. It was probably unthinkable for them when they started that fight. And I think that has changed a bit, but still those – what society dictates you and what society imposes on you. Consciously, unconsciously, it is not always conscious – it is simply some learned things.

Sanja Milosavljević: Patterns that we carry on…

Svetlana Stefanović: Yes, patterns that are repeated and that are passed from generation to generation and somehow it is normal for you that something is not possible. That you can’t go further than others. And if you go beyond that level, then there is someone again “so what are you going to do, it’s not for you, it’s not a woman’s profession”. We now live in a time when this male-female occupation, and it really never existed, but there is no difference between what a male and female occupation is. Everyone can do whatever they want according to their abilities and there is no one – no one can stop someone from doing something just because they are a woman, without taking into account qualifications, readiness, knowledge, skills and everything else. So I think it’s time for women to get out of their box. It is not the responsibility of women, the responsibility is on society, but you are right when you say that they are not in executive functions, they are not in that, to say the least, at the level of decision-making. That situation has changed, for example, and in relation to when I started dealing with gender equality, it is going a little slow. And we don’t really need to formally have only women in decision-making positions, but we actually need to have women who have the power to implement decisions. It is important that you follow yourself that you do not do what someone told you to do, but that you decide for yourself how you will do it. And I think that this empowerment and that support and that we can do whatever we want, is very important. Because they usually tell us “you can’t do that”. So how are you going to do that, no one in your family had done it before, why would you do that now if no one did it. And on the other hand, what is holding you back? Someone has to be the first, someone will have to open it. And that imposed paradigm, the imposed thing that you have to choose between career and family. And if you decide that you are for a career and not for a family, then you are on a pole of shame or vice versa. So there are a lot of norms, common norms that prevent women from getting into that fight. Because the fight is not easy, of course, and you enter an arena where it is not a fair game, it is not played according to the rules. And somehow, it’s easier to insult you in a way and humiliate you in some way just because you don’t want to play the way the rules are – I mean, there are no rules, everyone creates their own rules. And it is also important that each of us is a leader. And each of us has the potential to be one in their environment, only when she steps out of that certain comfort zone.

Sanja MIlosavljević: So, how shall we do that?

Svetlana Stefanović: Well, we have to support each other.

Sanja Milosavljević: And?

Svetlana Stefanović: Good examples are always a way to see that you can do something. Yes, something can be done. And I really believe that education is the key. If you know what all your possibilities are and if you have all the available information on how to change something, you can’t – here I am now, when I look back 15 years, I was engaged in education, empowerment and I constantly had the impression that I am always returning to the beginning and that there is never going to see an end. But only because the outcome you see is not big. And each of us should actually do that. That is why the networks that are being formed and that exist should be put into function to support more and more women who want to, but do not know how. Those who are ready to change something, but do not know how. They don’t have – no information reaches them. No matter what we all think, information comes to everyone, we don’t all use the same things, we don’t all read the same books, the way we get information is not the same. And conversation, an open conversation about what is needed, what do you want, actually what do I as Svetlana want now or you as Sanja, what do we want now? What do we want to change? Where is the starting point, where do we start? And once you commence there is no turning back, then it flows and then it happens. And I know, and you know yourself, when you come to a program, you always – you keep yourself at safe distance, I don’t want to expose myself, I speak super nicely, I keep quiet. Why are we silent? Why don’t we ask questions, re-examine, ask – that’s our right. We can ask anyone whatever we want. Just to repeat, it is instilled in us to listen – like, I heard everything, I received knowledge, I learned and now it needs to be applied. You need to open up, open that road and say yeah, well, here I am, going to the next level. And the way you see yourself, what the environment tells you also affects you. If the environment constantly tells you that you can’t do that, that there is no room for you, that nothing will change there, of course it will demotivate you. And of course everything will be hopeless in some way. But, don’t let that be an obstacle for you. Okay, I’ll try, so even if I fail, it’s okay. And it is important that there is no success overnight and what we see on the Internet, in movies, no one has succeeded in a manner – here I am, just born and already succeeded. But it’s actually a road where you fall, get up, fall, get up – it’s just a question of how fast you get up or have someone to help you get up. Or you will lie down a little longer and you will gather yourself and move on. And that’s hard. It’s hard if you’re alone. If you have no support at all. And it is – you can imagine what it’s like in small communities, in villages, in small towns where you stick out if you fight for something basic. And what are the words that someone addresses to you if you simply do not fit into the existing scheme. We are still a traditional society – not only we, in fact our whole region, but society-

Sanja Milosavljević: Sorry, I have to interrupt you. Through these conversations with women I came to one conclusion. The thing that you have said, that we are a traditional, patriarch society, or our region, well we are not. Not just us. South America, Asia, the same. We have some similar problems, that we don`t speak about, so we don`t know that someone in Argentina has the same problem like we have, here in Serbia, and there is no connection between us. We are not the region in a wider sense of that term.

Svetlana Stefanović: That’s right. No, no, no, the challenges are different. No, no, no, but in general, it is more present here, because we are still trapped in the past and because of everything that was happening in the region and the way we deal with it. Absolutely, when you hear other examples, I know how many times you go to some of those conferences that are international and you sit and listen. Well like – that’s it. It’s the same as with us. I was, for example, when I was on a program supported by the American Embassy, I was in America for three weeks. I imagined – because what I read – I was like I will go there now and the mentoring is flourishing and there is equality, we are all equal, there are no such problems as here. And then I get there and I tell them what I do, what I work on and they all look at me. And like wow – it was 2012 – how do you do that all? Like, we do it, we have quotas, mentoring. Well, like – we don’t have what you have. I was like, well, you’re America, aren’t you? And then you realize that actually what you see somewhere and what you get information is not apparently like that. Especially since I was lucky enough to stay in both small and large – like “small” towns. I went to different countries and talked to different women, and then I realized, man, so Serbia is way better! Really, way better. And I was like, we really made progress in that regard. It seems to us because of our surrounding that- but no – in some situations, they were much worse than us. They didn’t even have like – like that quotas, no, no, no, they didn’t fight for it at all. So, it’s not always as they say the green grass is greener on the other side and it’s not always better somewhere else. It’s just that we have too much of our own, so sometimes we don’t even see other things, the different things.

Sanja Milosavljević: Ah, yes, yes – we have too much of our own. You said that well. And the fact that you started talking about getting out of the comfort zone, it’s like “I am fine in this place”, and that hurts. I think it’s great for us to talk and get stronger and it’s like getting out of the comfort zone – when someone tells me “get out of the comfort zone” and doesn’t tell me how to do it and what will be waiting for me afterwards and how many times I will have to fall while getting out of my comfort zone … how do we explain to people that it’s okay, it hurts, but that’s how you’re going to progress. But, really to trust you without second thoughts, without that “I swear, everything will be fine”.

Svetlana Stefanović: Everything will be fine. Well, you know what, if you perceive, if you present all the advantages and disadvantages, what is all that can be done – if you really just look at things. And, actually, I was often unrealistic with my expectations. And there are expectations – until I realized that expectations are actually holding me back. Because I expect, as you said, to change everything instantly. Like now, I have decided, I will change everything. It doesn’t work that way. Simply, my expectations are one thing, the way I manage to do it is another, and what happens to me along the way is the third thing. None of us can predict – this year has shown us that everything you have planned can actually disappear in one day. And that is the moment where we are not always actually aware of our capabilities or our weaknesses, so to speak, or we force our weaknesses too much in relation to what our strengths are. And then that unrealistic image is created that we can’t do something just because we think we can’t do it, and there’s nothing to prove that we actually can’t do it. And in my work and in conversations, I always ask, and that is my starting point, I start from myself because I tried that and it works for me. And that is to look at something on one level, write down, be with myself and say okay, let’s see what you really have and what you don’t really have, and whether you need to do something, what you need to do, whether you need to do more, do some extra education. And not just going to education for the sake of education. Because it is quite popular now – I go to education, meet different people, hang out, and when we could travel, it was great to travel as well. And what do you get out of it and is it just a travel for the sake of it, or is it a travel for the sake of knowledge, for the sake of expanding the network of contacts, for the sake of developing new ideas and somehow I always think we should be realistic. And it doesn’t matter how much you can do at any given moment and whether you will do it now or the day after tomorrow, but knowing that it won’t be the end. And because we expect certain things and because that leads us, we actually set goals too high. I am known for that – I set my goals very high because I think I can do everything. And of course each of us can do everything at a given moment, but still sometimes we can’t. It takes some time to set some priorities – what is it that I will start from. And for example, I experienced it through mentoring, but also through some other things that I did, the qualities that I considered to be virtues, have now become my flaws. For example, perfectionism was great for me – I do everything perfectly. And I spend a lot more time, and if I was satisfied with something normal, it means not to be something ordinary, but to be on a certain level – I would give – not less, I would get into it just the same. But, I could do it in the best possible way without falling off my feet from work. The same goes with multitasking. I always thought it is great to be able to do more things in parallel but that is never a good thing. Because then you lose what is important and what is your focus. It’s good to remind myself from time to time what I really want. What is the main thing, and what are these secondary ones that I will do in parallel. There is no help to that, nobody can tell you that, until I decide what I want and how much I want to open myself, how much I want to give, how much I want to fall and how more to rise, then no, no one can tell you that. There has been a lot of this stuff lately, through various newsletters and through various organizations that deal with it, and psychotherapists who talk about it. No, you are the one who decides when you are ready to work on yourself and then the change actually starts. When you say aha well, that’s enough – I can’t go anywhere further, I have to change something. And you always have some downs. And you may call them what they are popularly called now, but you burn out at some point in an attempt to make everything like you planned and you should always make those realistic plans that you can realize, and then work on them, step by step. And I think that’s the key. There is no best recipe, and each of us will take a different path, but it is important that we reach the goal we want. Maybe we will change our goal along the way – and that’s also fine. Maybe we will understand that our goal is absolutely what we are not interested in – and we can leave it.

Sanja Milosavljević: You change, grow up, outgrow it, find it’s not the thing you want and admit that –

Svetlana Stefanović: That you made a mistake.

Sanja Milosavljević: That you have changed. It doesn’t have to be that you made a mistake or made a bad choice, you have changed.

Svetlana Stefanović: That’s right, that’s it. That’s life.

Sanja Milosavljević: For the end, I usually ask my guests to send a message, but I am not going to ask you that. I will ask you to recommend a book or two that you have read and that – and it doesn’t have to be something epic, but have changed you, and you think that would be useful for others. It doesn’t matter if you are male or female, just the book that you think people should read. I think it is more powerful than one message, as the whole book would be a message.

Svetlana Stefanović: Yes, for sure, but if I have to choose one or two books…

Sanja Milosavljević: I feel like I put you in a tough position. Like you would choose ten books.

Svetlana Stefanović: Well, you put me in a tough position. It’s like when someone asks me “Can you explain something in one word, or in one sentence” – I can’t. I can, but I have to try very hard. The first book is “Playing Big” – no matter what I do, which is education and empowerment and mentoring, by chance I did a review for that book and I read it somewhere in English and I’m really glad that it was translated into our language. And it came to me in the perfect moment. To rethink what it is that I want to change, to do, what it is that I may be doing differently and I should change my view of it, somehow. So “Playing Big” is a book that can be kind of a guide for everyone and that’s the book you carry as a handbook, actually. You always have it somewhere, and the format is nice. And I think it’s a book that you always come back to, and if you want to work on yourself, if you need help to summarize something, to rethink, to go through again and to make that big step – is it it’s a comfort zone or something else, that book is actually that. So I would definitely recommend this one. It changed me in the sense that I started to look at some things differently. That I went back to some things that I suppressed a little bit on the other side and that I realized that there are many ways you do something without being aware of it. For example, I love to draw and I have no idea how to draw – I never even knew. I even went to film school for animation, I did that, but I don’t know how to draw, I’m just not talented. And then I found a way to do it differently, so for me photography is actually the moment where I show my creativity and my angle of looking at different things, the things we pass by every day and that’s for example one thing I’ve changed thanks to that book, it returned me to one of my first passions, and that is photography.

Sanja Milosavljević: We will leave the link, when this interview is published, we will leave a link to your Instagram page. I hope you don’t mind, because the photos are beautiful. So that’s it- there are a few people I follow on Instagram and in the morning I like to go through their profile, just to brighten my day, and your profile is one of those profiles. That’s it. Thank you very much. I love talking to you so much, I love listening to you actually. You have a lot of experience and knowledge and you have a lot of understanding. You are that big sister – we can always go to Svetlana’s shoulder, to comfort us, to listen to us and to – you don’t always have to find a solution for us, but you can say I can help you, or I can’t help you, I’ll try to find someone that can help you and so on. So thank you for accepting to talk to me.

Svetlana Stefanović: No, thank you for inviting me. It was really an honor and pleasure for me to be your guest and you somehow embellished me with an invitation and gave me the reason to rethink why am I doing things I do. I know that the results are there, and that my patience is paying off.

Sanja Milosavljević: Dear people, this was Svetlana Stefanovic from Serbia. And if you want, you can always follow us on social media like Facebook and Instagram and you can listen to our podcast on YouTube and other audio platforms. So, stay good, stay in good health and see you in a week.