"Once a banker, forever a banker," they say in the business world. Bulgaria’s Milena Ivanova refutes this expression, although she has a remarkable international career behind her, dealing with buying and selling banks, stock trading, etc. A graduate of the foreign-languages high school in her hometown of Veliko Tarnovo and afterwards the University of National and World Economy in Sofia, in 1997 she left for the United States.

"While I was studying in Bulgaria," Milena recalls, "we had an American teacher who kept telling us, 'Your next step is a Master of Business Administration (MBA) in a school that must be among the top ten in the world.' I followed her advice. In 2003 I was admitted to INSEAD - France, which is in the "top 5" of business schools in the world.

I graduated and started working in Vienna, then I found myself in London, in the stock market of banks in Central and Eastern Europe, which are traded on the stock exchange. There I received a very tempting offer from a bank in Kazakhstan. Later I was transferred to the headquarters of the same bank in Moscow. I was deputy head of the stocks and bonds research department. The employees reached 120 people, we had offices in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, of course London, Moscow, Kazakhstan, I was constantly in touch with investors from all over the world. Those were complex times. For about a year we had to halve the number of employees, and I found myself in the position of a person who had to determine who was to be laid off. Finally it was my turn, too. Finding myself out of job, I took this as a sign that I needed to change direction. The years as a financier were a wonderful opportunity for me to learn a lot, to develop career-wise and financially. But I wanted to find the next thing that would keep me thrilled and awake at night”.

Milena decides to take a six-month break and, in search of her new inspiration, embarked on a journey.

"In 2013, with only one suitcase, I left London with a ticket for a trip around the world. The condition for this type of ticket is that you have the right to fly only in one direction. So I decided to travel symbolically from west to east. Naturally, no one could share my 6-month unemployment with me, but when you have spent 20 years away from your loved ones, you learn to make the best of the moments when you can be with them. So I arranged in advance wherever I arrived to see one of my friends, and they are all over the world. After all, I have worked in seven countries, I speak seven languages. I was in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos with my brother and daughter-in-law, it was my wedding gift for them. My mother and I realized another dream of mine - to cross the United States. I arrived there from Tokyo, and my mother - from Sofia. We met in San Francisco. We rented a car and crossed the entire United States to Miami and from there to Key West. Then we travelled along the East Coast. At times I was driving on the road and singing at the top of my lungs, screaming with happiness. What I have not been able to tell anyone so far is that another of my dreams came true – to spend two months on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast. That's where my trip around the world ended. Many people in our country prefer to go to the seaside in Greece, but for 20 years I had a dream to be at the Bulgarian Black Sea coast and to have enough time just to relax. The biggest delicacy for me there were the Bulgarian roasted peppers. There is nothing tastier in this world!”

Her home was still in London at the time. She had decided to give up finances, but was still in two minds as what to do next. At that moment, a compatriot of hers "landed" on her terrace in London, as she likes to say jokingly. "I can afford to live anywhere in the world, and at this point I had all the freedom to choose where." I decided to see what happened in Bulgaria during those years."Since then, she has been dividing her time between London and Bulgaria. And she still thinks that everything in her life is happening just as it is supposed to. Today she and the “man from the balcony” have a wonderful little boy and Milena is happy that he grows up close to his Bulgarian grandmothers.

"I used to criticize our traditional Bulgarian ways, I thought that, as in the West, children should be raised only by their parents," she said. “I realized that this contact between the generations is extremely important for the formation of the psyche of youngsters. If we were abroad, this could not have happened easily”

Milena has also discovered a new vocation - aromatherapy. She was travelling to London over the weekend for several years to complete her education as a clinical aromatherapist. She has been a member of the board of directors of the International Federation of Professional Aromatherapists. She can also practice this new profession also in hospitals in Great Britain or other countries, but not in Bulgaria for the time being as it is not yet recognized officially as a profession. Yet Milena believes that this is bound to happen sooner or later because there are many Bulgarians who are interested in aromatherapy and besides, Bulgaria is among the world’s largest producers and exporters of rose oil and lavender oil.

Milena is glad that when the pandemic started, she was in her homeland, close to family and friends, and at the end of a seven-year cycle in which she went from a high-class banker to fragrances. She dreams of traveling again, but has changed her focus from "I want to see new places" to "I want to see my friends." Because, as Milena says, “time is the most limited resource we have. And spending time with family and friends is becoming more and more important to me”.

English version Rositsa Petkova