Futures Voices

As a 10-year-old boy, Dennis Savic wanted to build a motorcycle. Then, pretty soon, he decided: no, he wanted to build a motorcycle company. “By the time I was 14, it had become an obsession,” he says. “Everything I did was for this one goal – to create my own electric motorcycle brand.” Today, Savic Motorcycles is all about obsession: the obsession of a young and passionate team that Dennis has h...

Have you heard of language engineers? No worries, not many people are familiar with this profession, as it is very new. Dunja Veselinovic is one of the endemic people who compute around language. The story of Dunja Veselinovic shows the turnovers of life and the personal transformation. She graduated from the Grammar School in Sarajevo, Druga gimnazija. A highly mathematical school shaped her inte...

How many of us can say that we played basketball against Mirza Teletovic, performed together with hip hop superstars Edo Maajka, Frenkie, Jala Brat, and presented on the same stage where Steve Jobs launched numerous products at Apple? Miralem Salihovic, also known as King Mire in the hip hop world, was passionate about technology and music but due to a lack of opportunities, he became a German lan...

Are you up for a game? Despite a difficult start, Kenan Huremovic graduated as a star of the Faculty of Math and Natural Sciences and got a position at the Sarajevo School of Economics. Finally, earning a decent living and having a secure job. Yet it didn’t make him happy, so he opted for another challenge. His interest shifted more to Economics and Applied Math so he completed his MA and PhD at t...

At the age of 17 he narrowly escaped with his life, when one of the two buses that was transporting refugees Zivinice, Bosnia & Herzegovina to Germany was bombed. His life would never be the same. Being haunted by images of war, he felt a mix of guilt and gratitude for the gift of life and woke up every morning in Germany to work at a factory while finishing his high school studies. His life t...

Growing up in the 1980s in the neighbourhood of Otoka, Sarajevo, Sejo who was a little boy then couldn’t have dreamed of becoming the owner of a consulting company in California. His story is a perfect example of not being afraid to make impromptu decisions and trusting your inner voice. Today Sejo Jahic is the owner of ECHO Technology Solutions, an engineer, and a biocybernetics expert. Sejo grad...

He went to school wanting to be a politician in the US in order help Bosnia & Herzegovina but ended up working at Facebook designing the publishing user experience. This is the story of Meaz Hajdarovic, a political science graduate and self-taught user experience designer who took a very unconventional path to his true calling. He was born in Capljina and his early childhood is marked by memor...

Born and raised in Sarajevo, studied engineering and ended up as a globally recognised leader in the communication and advertising media world. The circumstances back at her home country set Gordana on a journey she had never envisaged. Today she is a marketing and advertising media professional with extensive experience in leading global clients and their business and digital transformation agend...

Someone said that science rewards you for every effort you put in. Adnan  Mehonic is the real proof of it. He graduated in Electronic Engineering from the University of Sarajevo as the best student in the 2006-2009  cohort, receiving the Golden Badge award. He continued his education in  London, finishing MSc in Nanotechnology at University College London,  and received the Oxf...

Are you stuck in your career and think you have to be there forever? Then listen to the story of Milan Vručinić a senior consultant at Accenture, London, a fortune 500 company with revenues of $43.2 billion in 2019 and had 492,000 employees, serving clients in more than 120 countries. His life started in Lušci Palanka, in a small village in north-eastern Bosnia & Herzegovina. He graduated as t...

Bosnia and Herzegovina is well-known for its rich natural resources, but also human potential. It is so common to hear in the news that young Bosnian-Herzegovinian talents won Math and Physics Olympic medals, who later land at top world universities. Is it luck, hard work or raw talent? Haris Brkic is a Math olympian who shared his experience with us and his path to the Massachusetts Institute of...

Listen to the story of a young lady who made it from a small village in Banja Luka to an Ivy League University!  Ivana Devic spent her primary and secondary education in studying, competing at different school contests, but devoted her time to teach less privileged children. Life offered her an amazing opportunity to study at Dartmouth College as a James O. Freedman Presidential Scholar where...

There is no peak that can’t be conquered. Nina's life is worthy of a Hollywood movie about Adventure and Science as if it was written by Jules Verne personally. She grew up on Grmeč mountain in Bosnia & Herzegovina where she fell in love with mountains and nature. She survived a Taliban attack, lost a loved one, saved the life of a rugby player, received significant honors, spent 3 days in a P...

One day everything changes: suddenly an awful war erupts and you find yourself across the ocean over several different time zones. You can’t make things undone, but you can decide to impact and create the future. This is the story of Mizra Cifric who utilised all available opportunities of the  “American Dream”. He co-founded Veritas, together with world-famous Harvard University Prof. George...

Degrees in Psychology, Spanish & Literature, Environmental, and Water Resources Engineering - sound like a random collection of topics? Well, it is everything but that! Azra Tanovic completed her education in the US and worked in organisations like Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) and EU supported projects. Having changed her New York address to Mostar , she has taken an unusual step, backed by...

Kenya: doesn't it sound exotic? Dragana Marinkovic combined her background in International Relations and Public Policy with technology and business to green the planet and develop sustainable forestry at "Komaza". Her professional life evolved around different roles and while she managed to make her social science background an asset in contributing to social impact through Komaza's pursuit of di...

A Herzegovinian's life path made a sudden turnover and transformed his life. After years of "jobbing" around and hard work in the pursuit of education, he risked and said "yes" to a completely unexpected opportunity that took him to China where he became a Science teacher.  Listen to his road to China where he works with students, while his heart still beats for Bosnia and Herzegovina. Goran...

Maja Paleka is the co-founder and director of Juggle Strategies -  an Australian consultancy that specialises in the capability and  leadership development, as well as implementation of flexible working  practices. She has almost 20 years experience in leadership roles across  a variety of areas - engineering, operations and sales gained working  in Canada, UK and now Aust...

Mersiha Kovacevic is a learning designer at Mohamed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences in Dubai. She has a background in teaching and curriculum development in higher education in Saudi Arabia and the United States. She’s currently pursuing a doctoral degree in Leadership with a concentration in Adult Education and Online Learning at the City University of Seattle. Together we a...

For over 10 years, Elma's passion is to empower people by creating simple and meaningful digital experiences. She is mentor at our Foundation, mother of three, and she also works at IKEA as Experience Design Lead, and Design Thinking is a big passion of hers. It is an innovation process by which new products and services are developed, and we talked about using this process to feel joy and make yo...

Innovative and  analytical clinical development professional with many years of  experience in healthcare industry ranging from direct patient care to  pharmaceutical industry.  Almasa has been a lead clinical scientist on  many Phase 1-3, pediatric, and post-marketing clinical trials and is  responsible for the clinical strategy that enables new drug  applicatio...

Artist, consultant, AI advisor for G7, futurist, TED speaker, engineer and then some. It is impossible to describe Michela with only one or two words, but we are glad to have her as a friend of our Foundation. Since her childhood, she has been involved in creative processes of architecture and design and she has not stopped ever since. We talked with her about the importance of creativity in busin...

How often do you have an opportunity to talk with one Senior Radio Frequency Engineer? Vedran's life journey took him from Sarajevo in the 90s, over to Germany and Australia. Thanks to his dedication and hard work he has worked for some of the biggest telecommunications companies in the world, including Ericsson and Optus. He is also a mentor in our Foundation and a few other organisations, and he...

Amir is someone who wears many hats, he is Artificial Intelligence protagonist, digital transformation strategist, professional speaker, general manager at Symphony.is and mentor in our Foundation. In this episode we talked about crazy potential of human brain through various topics - social media and how its poor usage can lead to idiocracy,  how students can create a personal brand at Linke...

How a perfect ecosystem can be developed in one country? Why are universities in Sweden a perfect place to gather knowledge? How students should educate themselves outside of university classrooms? Is a perfect relationship between academia and the business world possible? What are good practices in Bosnia and Herzegovina at the moment? Vernisa, Board member of BH Futures Foundation, is someone wh...