By: Erol Mujanović
It is well known that some celebrities and famous leaders are the best promoters and amazing image builders for every country, usually better known and more appreciated by the wider public than, for example, ambassadors. They are involved in a variety of fields, such as sports, politics, business and music. Their twitter accounts have millions of followers and their Facebook pages have thousands of fans. B&H is no exception to such a rule, and the country already reached a certain glory after qualifying for the 2014 World Cup, sending an extremely positive message to the world. But in this story we will not focus on Edin Dzeko and his teammates who received a lot of attention, which will only increase as the World Cup approaches. We will speak about lesser-known but equally talented and enthusiastic people from Bosnia and Herzegovina who are involved in various fields and are serving as great “Ambassadors” of BiH. From managers, innovators, politicians to scientists and fashion models, they are the future of this country and many local media already highlighted their value and exploits. The list below is of course not exhaustive, and there are many other brilliant and hardworking talents who also deserve to be included.
To start with fashion, models from B&H are very successful, and while we all already know stunning the Amra Silajdzic, Sarah Cerkez and a few others, there is a new generation of growing stars. The popular international Women Portal awarded the title of the most beautiful women in the world in 2013 to young and beautiful Bosnian Aida Djapo. Young Aida competed with celebrities such as Monica Belucci, Megan Fox and Adriana Lima. Furthermore, the same portal has proclaimed Sonja Zekić (26), a Bosnian woman as the most beautiful natural beauty. Sonja comes from the small town of Zepce, and she became involved in the modeling business at the age of 18. She has been living in Sarajevo for the past few years where she graduated from the School of Economics. She was in a few musical clips, and she also attained significant success at the Gentleman’s Choice Competition, where her profile was viewed more than 5 million times. Young and attractive Australian-based model Esma Voloder (21) is taking this same path to success. She currently resides in Melbourne and holds several titles including the one for “Miss Supranational Australia 2013”. Esma also had an effective start in business development, as she has been involved in the launch of the fashion related start-up “My Fashion Guide”, which she successfully launched in Dubai a few weeks ago.
In the field of business, besides many successful entrepreneurs in BiH, there are excellent examples abroad as well. Amil Hota from Sarajevo manages “Blumberry”, a company known for organizing Angela Merkel’s election campaign. Amil was born in 1979 and has been engaged in the company with famous customers including Volkswagen. He worked as a consultant for prominent clients such as Honda, Vodafone, Deutsche Bank, Loewe, WILO and others. The price for tenacity in business would certainly go to Mr. Emil Hajric, a young and brilliant US-based Bosnian entrepreneur. After several difficult learning experiences with his startups he finally got it all right with HelpJuice, a company that was featured in Financial Times and many other top world business media. Some giants like Yahoo were interested in buying that company from Emil, but instead of selling his promising start-up he continued to build his dream and realize his vision. Finally, twenty six year old Sana Alajmović is another Bosnian woman who achieved great results beyond B&H’s borders. She is from Olovo and has been living in Sweden since 1992. According to a selection of the prominent business outlet Veckan Affare, she has been recognized as one of the most successful entrepreneurial talents. She obtained her Bachelor Degree in Economics, followed by degrees in psychology and philosophy. Sana has worked for many Swedish branch affiliate offices in the U.S, and she organized the Swedish-American Summit last year, an event that gathers the largest financial sector leaders. Last but not least in this field, one could be surprised by the fact that the design of Ford’s new Mustang has been entrusted to Kemal Curic from Sarajevo. Kemal was born in 1978 and has been employed by Ford to work on the interior design of Ford’s Kuga, Ka and Fiesta models. He fled to Germany as a refugee and represents today another B&H success story.
In terms of language skills, the most talented young Bosnian is Muhamed Mešić from Tuzla who speaks 70 languages, including rare and difficult ones such as Hebrew. He is known as a language genius. Mesic is now 29 and he learned English, German, Greek and Turkish as a child. At his age of 26, Muhamed spoke 56 languages, of which 12 he speaks fluently. He was a lawyer and worked in 24 countries worldwide, inter alia as a Brainswork Group Team Leader, British Council Project Manager, personal advisor to the Macedonian President Gjorgo Ivanov and Advisor to the Mayor of Tuzla. And speaking of Brainswork, guess what, this Vienna-based company is one of the most influential consultancies for startup and new business development and connecting in Central Europe. The company was founded in 2005 by visionary entrepreneur and philanthropist Selma Prodanovic who has an international reputation for being a discoverer and connector of (business) potential.
In sciences, brilliant youngsters who are high school physics students from different cities in B&H won recently a bronze medal and numerous praises at the international Olympics in Copenhagen. Their success is all the more important if we take into account the poor conditions in which they are studying. Also, Mate Rimac (24), originally from Livno, has impressed the world public by inventing the speediest electrical car that reaches a speed of 305 km/ per hour and has an engine with over 1000-horse power. Among experienced scientists, Mr. Damir Becirevic, a widely recognized expert in nuclear physics, is progressing within the most famous national research institute in France in this field (CNRS). Damir graduated from the Sarajevo Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, and after longs years of specialization in Norway, Italy and France, he is now based in Paris and collaborates with many excellent scientists, including several Nobel prize winners in physics.
Many other bright people from B&H are shining all over the world, but the most important questions are if and when the country will be able to attract and to retain such talents.
