Anna Hristova: Figure Skater turned Social Entrepreneur

Hi, I'm Anna from Bulgaria and I once got lost in an island because of my civic project. That's Anna Christova from M24. This week we're diving deep into Anna's story on Humans and Minerva. Welcome to Humans and Minerva, a podcast that captures the interesting stories of humans at Minerva. I'm your host Julia Ipp and today I'll be sitting down with Anna Christova from M24. Hey Anna. Hi Julia, thank you for having me. Thanks for joining us today. So let's start with a fun intro question. Can you tell me more about how you got lost in an island? Yes, last semester when I was in Seoul I worked with my civic partner on a project that was about recreating building on an island and basically our civic partner decided to invite us to visit the site and we had to take a ferry with my classmates to get there and what happened is that me and one of my classmates fell asleep on the ferry and then no one could wake us up because everyone got out of the ferry and we were in the back of it and it got dark and I think around 20 minutes after the ferry already reached the destination we realized that we fallen asleep and we woke up and then we could not also get out of the ferry because it was like the platform was pushed up so we did not know how to get out but eventually there was someone at the ferry that helped us get into another ferry and jump out but the hardest part was then finding our civic partner without data. We just eventually went to the station and found them but it was a very very interesting experience I'd say. Oh my gosh that must have been like a very scary experience not having any data and having to like you know in the country where no one really speaks English. I hope that civic project was worth it and turned out to work well. Yeah, I did. That's good. Awesome. So you're from Bulgaria, I'm curious you know what was it like growing up in Schumann, Bulgaria? Yeah generally Schumann is a very small town in Bulgaria, 70,000 people live there and it's not really close to the capital so we're very I would say quiet. I think it was really enriching in some ways because it made me feel very balanced and very like appreciate what I have and want to gain more experience to go to other places. So in my high school we did not really have anyone who would apply to Minerva to like almost any foreign university so I felt like wow like going to the US was such a big thing and I think coming from such a small city really makes you believe that if you could do like this you can do anything and makes you not forget that again to appreciate what you have. Wow so I'm curious though coming from a small city what made you discover Minerva or what made you want to go outside? You know everyone else around you was staying in Bulgaria, what made you want to go out? Yeah well one day I just received like a paper that said like oh apply for scholarships to get into a US university and basically I decided to try it out. I did not know if it will work out or not. Eventually I did get the scholarship and my counselor from that scholarship advised me to go to Minerva. I think generally I was very motivated to just try for more because I felt like staying in one place was not really my thing and although Minerva first sounded very very scary place to go I think generally I understood that it would provide me with opportunities that I would not get otherwise and yeah there's other factors like having dual nationality like I was how Bulgarian I am and how Russian so I always appreciated like meeting people from other countries from other ethnicities and who speak other languages that made me want to go out and pursue something more and I think it's also just my friend circle was very also motivated to do things differently and I guess just pursue higher goals and not just stay at this one place. Yeah and tying into that how would you describe the love you grew up with what was your household like or siblings or your friends like who were you surrounded by that you think helped shapes the way you're thinking now. Yeah I think one really important person is my mom. Generally she was very supportive of me throughout all of my childhood and I don't always think about it it's always like on the back of my mind how much actually parents play a role into a child's development I think generally like even if I mess up my mom would say like oh no you still did great or like would always even when it was really hard she would be there and still believe like really believe that I'm the best although I would feel a lot of insecurities and then yeah my parents got divorced when I was around 10 years old I think so it was a little bit I had a little bit of a hard relationship with my dad but I think being raised by only my mom kind of taught me about the importance of being independent and just like solving problems on your own not like fearing what is to come and I think also it taught me about moving on and just appreciating the relationships that you have but also understanding that some relationships can also be fixed and now I'm in really good terms with my dad and she's very supportive of Minerva so I'm really glad about that my brother also just recently came to visit me at Minerva so that is also something really exciting that's really nice to hear you and your brother is able to visit you at Minerva that's cool I love it when my family visits me too so you know what was one of the most pivotal moments in your life so far and you know you talked about that divorce being a little hard were there any other pivotal moments that you think helped shape the way you are now or your interests and you know also curious about you know what were your interests scoring up leading up to Minerva yeah I think one of my biggest interests in growing up with ice skating or like figure skating yeah I've always wanted to and coming from Canada as a kid like in Canada like I feel like almost everyone does use like figure skating lessons not figure skating but skating lessons I was so bad at it by always like watching figure skating especially during like the Olympics so super cool yeah no I think for me it's very similar because like my mom is Russian so she always like put an emphasis on like winter sports but it's okay or ice skating and since like a young age I learned figure skating professionally and I think it just really taught me like self-discipline and just like the importance of exercising and being in the flow I think this is like the activity that kind of whenever I get on the ring even now I just feel like I just forget about the world like there's nothing that's happening and it's just I'm there and I can stay there for hours and it's just something that I would I think love doing till the end of my life yeah I think this is one of like the core parts of me that's super cool did you do like figure skating competitions or did you just do it like lessons for fun no I did I did ice skating competitions too as a child I wouldn't say that I was very competitive but I do think that this experience kind of taught me later in middle school and high school to kind of like participate in different competitions and be confident in my abilities and like in high school I participated in a lot of debating and that's also what got me into Minerva all right and you know what have you learned I guess you talked about your ice skating experience learning how to be more disciplined sounds like you got lots of great lessons from your mom what is like a best piece of advice that has stuck with you yeah I think the best piece of advice that I didn't really get it I think I just watched the video but it's basically that no one knows anything and whenever I am scared about like oh going to Minerva or pursuing something that I'm uncertain about like a major or something like that I just think about like no one really knows anything no one knows how the future will unfold although some people are like they have a lot of expertise in something like everything is so uncertain that why not just try it and it's very simple to say I think but very hard and practice but I think it really helps me kind of calm my mind whenever I'm too anxious about making a decision yeah yeah that's great advice all that embracing uncertainty is always something that we have to do at Minerva a lot and I'm wondering you know at Minerva what did you come to Minerva to do or to find or to be yeah I think generally I was really interested in the concept of creative thinking um not creative but also critical thinking because as I mentioned I was participating in a lot of debate competitions in high school and I think growing up in like I don't know in Eastern Europe and not in a very like device. developing country makes you think of like oh why is my country like this like how can we improve and I was generally really interested in seeing the world and just seeing why some places outperform and others do not and what can we kind of gain from there but also I think because I don't really like identify as like oh like with one nationality and I wouldn't say like oh I'm a global citizen or so on because it sounds a little bit of cliche but I think that to me just I really value the idea of knowing people from different places is just something that also my mom kind of ingrained in me of like learning different languages and immersing myself in different cultures because I do think that this is like what shapes a person it's not like oh I was born here so I should just be that person how many languages can you speak I'm so curious um I speak Bulgarian Russian English and German oh wow that's awesome I love like what going in maneuver my residential halls and walking through them you hear like so many different languages being spoken is so different from like how I grew up too like I grew up in Canada where everyone speaks English and maybe a little bit of French but not really so it's super cool to hear you know hear whenever people can speak multiple languages and I think it's so important you know you learn a lot through which is and through my culture is awesome so doing more into the present now what was your best or worst moment from last semester and what did you take away from it yeah my best moment from last semester was just learning to appreciate the small things I think so really kind of anchored me into the moment so for instance when you're just like sitting at the cafe and you're be sitting there for hours and they would bring you like a little piece of cake just as a appreciation for staying there for too long or even like going to a flower shop and you want to buy flowers and they would be like oh we have some left so like here you can have them for free I think just I want to get I want to get free flowers I've never had that happen I'm still about flowers because I felt like uncomfortable just like getting free but I feel like so was the semester when we really M24s felt as a community before that we were very separated because different people arrived at different times because of COVID restrictions and that was the moment when you could also kind of show your peers I don't know care in some ways like bringing them little like tea or whenever they're like feeling down like I don't know writing a note and I'm not putting a tangerine on their bed I feel like also the community spaces were just so open that you could really like talk to anyone and interact with anyone and I felt like community absorbed and just generally like appreciative of other people the care that we can provide for others although they're like not our biological family but yeah the value of friendship I love that and yeah soul is also one of my favorite semester to like community spaces there are way better than all of the current other res halls so yeah definitely miss that all right so now we talked about your past we talked a little bit about the present and now let's talk about where you're going so what are you currently studying at Minerva yeah I'm studying social science and business I'm not sure what concentrations I'm gonna do but I do have specific interests tied to both of them well and what are those interests like what are you passionate about right now yeah I think I'm really passionate about impact investing and like social entrepreneurship because before coming to Minerva I was really interested in like how politics can shape the world I think I was like very much into like international relations international development political science but as I gained some work experience in NGOs and even in government I realized that there's always insufficient funding to make a lot of projects happen and the word especially in government is very like slow and I realized that businesses are just way faster at facilitating those problems and so I see a lot of potential especially in like social entrepreneurship businesses and I saw that also a lot in saw like how small companies can really impact the way that consumers act and this is like an interest that I'm currently pursuing to in my work well yeah that kind of ties into my next question what is something that you're working on right now outside of school yeah currently I'm working in a private equity fund and at first I was like wow they would really need me to know all these techy stuff and I was very like kind of worried but I think now I'm realizing that it's more about people after all like we're working with a lot of like investments into companies but what I've learned I think is that when you buy a company it's not just like only about the transactions it's also about like the people that are working there and like fixing what if you want to like especially with private equity you want to like fix a company so you have to understand the culture you have to understand the people that work there and then only then can you actually like improve its development and yeah I'm working with a fund that is mostly working in emerging economies or like Eastern Europe so in Poland and the Czech Republic because there's just so many opportunities and at the same time there's also I think I see that as really positive impact because coming from Bulgaria and like from an emerging economy I do want like more foreign investors to come and like see the potential of our companies so I'm trying to think of ways maybe of how we can expand also to my own country but we will see how that goes very cool that's awesome that you're already working on something so soon and so relevant to already what you're passionate about I'm like so curious as to in a couple of years you know what your capstone is going to be you already sound like you're working on really cool things I'm like going to that process right now and I'm so close to finishing but it already sounds like you're working on something pretty amazing yeah that's awesome all right so bring us to closing this podcast that we we're gonna end with a fast far round of questions so phone calls are texting phone calls Netflix or YouTube YouTube while walking music or podcast music what okay this podcast you better listen to this podcast what is your word of the day compassion oh I love that all right thank you so much for being on the show and it was such a pleasure to have you on the podcast there's a pleasure to be here thank you so much thank you Julia all right let's wrap this episode be sure to subscribe to this podcast and automatically get notified about new episodes on Apple Music and Spotify thanks for listening to humans of Minerva