Born and raised in the Czech Republic, I spent my teenage years learning the basics of digital design and getting involved in the tech industry. At the early age of 15, I was designing websites and selling them to small business owners.
A significant shift came five years later when I had a chance to be one of the designers for a prominent international project – social media network CrewDates for Cambridge & Oxford universities.
This exposure allowed me to create a small network of international contacts, which I later utilized and founded a boutique design agency called Mersade, focusing on creating exciting and useful digital experiences. Over the next couple of years, I was fortunate to work with a broad range of clients and businesses across Europe and North America.
Life was quite marvellous for a while, but after completing my master's degree in Economics and Business Administration at the University of Technology in Brno, I realized that my career was lacking something. After a bit of research and soul-searching, I decided to move to Asia. This decision awarded me with life-changing experiences that would transform me for the better in both my professional and personal life.
I spent a couple of months living the digital nomad life in Thailand before finally deciding to settle down in the bustling city of Kuala Lumpur. Being able to interact within Kuala Lumpur's digital ecosystem personally opened new doors for me. It was the first time I was engaged with projects in Asia-Pacific for a wide range of industries and worked on projects with an audience of millions.
2017 was an important year for me: I had worked on three significant projects for clients from Singapore, Malaysia & Hong Kong, which gave my career the push I needed to start looking for new opportunities. I then landed a job at Althea Korea and was working there as a Lead UX/UI Designer for a year – helping this startup launch its services in new markets and further optimize and enhance the current platforms.
In late 2018, Accenture Interactive (now Song) hired me as a manager and a design and innovation lead for customer experience teams in Malaysia.
During my time in consulting, I was fortunate to lead incredible multi-disciplinary teams consisting of design researchers, interaction & visual designers, strategists, and creative technologists to create visionary experiences for some of the largest businesses across Asia-Pacific and Fortune 500 companies globally.
It was also a period of intense learning that allowed me to grow significantly in a relatively short period. You can read about my most significant learnings, unfiltered,
here.
Yet, after roughly three years, I felt like it was the perfect time for a new adventure. The hunger for new challenges and the need to be more uncomfortable again, combined with numerous new opportunities, led me to land an in-house role for a change.
Currently, I work as a group head of product design for a global insurtech unicorn, bolttech. I lead a diverse, multifaceted design team in a business that serves 8.3m+ customers across 35+ markets and 3 continents in B2C and B2B2C space, which brings me a step closer to my goal of becoming a design executive.
May 2022
