Kaja Pavlinić, a 28-year-old graduate from FER in Koprivnica, is an example of a young leader who successfully balances between the worlds of technology and civil society. As the Chief Operating Officer (COO) at Speck and the founder of her own business and leader of the association for sustainable development, Kaja combines her IT expertise with work on projects that have a positive social impact. Her career is marked by innovations, projects with long-term results, and tireless commitment to the development of young talents, which is why she is also on this year’s Lider’s ’30 Under 30′ list.
– In the summer between high school and university, I received a scholarship from the State Department and went to the USA for a month to participate in the Benjamin Franklin Transatlantic Fellowship program. This actually opened many doors for me and connected me with ambitious, talented, and wonderful people across Europe and the USA. Because of that, I practically started working on numerous local and international youth projects in my own organization, as well as assisting others, parallel to enrolling in FER.
This continued throughout my studies – after attending lectures, laboratory exercises, and studying, I would get on a plane and spend a weekend or several working days on a project. I am very grateful for all those opportunities because they taught me a lot, I traveled a lot which I certainly could not afford privately, but I also gained a very military work ethic early on that significantly eased my life later on – reveals Kaja.
Because of this, she constantly thought about how to reconcile the so-called hard skills she learned at university, but also how to utilize everything she learned while working on projects in the civil sector and working with youth. In programming, although she was relatively good at it, she did not find herself ‘because it is simply not the type of work that suits my character.’ And so, in mid-2020, just before defending her thesis, she accidentally came across an ad for a project manager at Speck, applied, and – got the job.
Positive impact on the environment and society
After working with some of Speck’s largest clients, she transitioned to product development and took on the role of product manager. However, all the time, she says, she wanted and strived to be involved in the key decisions being made at Speck, and it was very interesting to her, ‘and I really clicked with the core team responsible for making Speck function, so the most logical decision was to simply move into that role as COO.’
To remain in touch with civil society and fulfill that part of herself, she simultaneously runs her business KAJUŠKA, through which she helps associations, and she also leads the association Forum for Sustainable Development Green Window where she works with youth.
– I definitely consider my greatest success to be when an idea that was just a thought in my head becomes a reality and has a positive impact on the environment or society. For example, this year we organized the Product Academy for the first time as part of the Speck Academy program, which was an idea that had been brewing in my head for about two or three years because I noticed that there is still a lack of product experts in our area. And the program was really successful, and we raised a new generation of product managers.
Many successes we achieved with clients come to mind – it is very rewarding for me when a client approaches us with a serious business problem that affects their business and they cannot solve it, and we then help them solve it through a combination of technology and skills. Sometimes the solution even seems impossible to us, and then everything somehow unravels. That feeling is perhaps even the main reason why I am in this industry – explains Kaja.
Through the association, with zero employees and a few hands that regularly help organize all activities, they have managed every year to write and obtain projects worth what is often equivalent to some associations with three to four employees, which meant they could gather a large number of young people and organize a series of educational events and other activities for them to learn something and enrich their skills, just as she was enabled during her studies.
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