Yana has a diverse professional portfolio and is convinced that staying true to our core values is the underlying factor for achieving a sense of self-fulfillment and success. To her, education and giving back to the community, ensuring a better future for the next generations is an endless source of motivation to become a better person and a more successful professional.

After graduating from Capital Normal University (China, Beijing), she moved back to Bulgaria and worked as a project coordinator for the Bulgarian Travel and Investment Development Centre in China, and later as a sales manager with Walltopia China. Despite keeping a busy work schedule, she was eager to volunteer with ABLE Mentor and part-take in the economic courses at the Centre for Economic Strategy and Competitiveness (a.k.a. Harvard courses). In 2018 she decided to focus on education and parallel to working in a public school, started her own Chinese language courses „Chinese with Yana Jin„.

Mila is one the first mentors, who participated in ABLE Mentor when the program started in 2014. After the end of Season 1, she gladly accepted the invitation to join the organizational team, because she shares the values the project is based on.

Mila has a Masters degree in Architecture and spent 10 years working on projects in Europe and the USA. Along with the studio she worked at, she has got awards and nominations from prestigious institutions as Building of the Year (Bulgaria), BIG SEE (Slovenia), Architizer (USA) and Mies van der Rohe (EU Prize for Contemporary Architecture).

For many years, Mila would share her time between her job as an Architect and volunteering for ABLE Mentor, before deciding to fully dive into the world of informal education and mentorship. She took the Project Lead role in the beginning of 2022, bringing her project management and leadership skills to her new position.

Mila believes that paying it forward to the next generation by sharing your knowledge, experience or simply being there for them, gives ABLE Mentor’s students a solid ground to step on, grow and reach new heights.  The skillset young people develop by participating in the program is critical for their future goals and Mila is proud to be a part of their journey.

Aleksander Grozdanov is best known amongst his colleagues as one of the co-founders of the first in Bulgaria escape room games – Dextrophobia Rooms and his role as the CEO of the company during the seven years of its existence. Alek is born in Sofia and studies Computer Sciences in the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics in Sofia University. He starts his carreer as an IT consultant for projects related to telecom operators, where he spends two ears consecutively in Belgium and Moldovia projects.

He believes that the innovation might be hidden in the same way in both the technologies or small simple things like a creative approach to the business solution, simply the right location, communications or optimized processes. Coming up with an innovative solution is the result of a deep research and analysis on the customer’s behavior and the future proper application of the insight is the one that actually delivers a competitive advantage for the business. His experience makes him believe that in order for the business to be successful and sustainable it’s out of utter  importance to keep constant focus and quality of the product, combined with the motivation of the founding team.

His work as a project leader of BASE allows him to share his experience and perspective to the next generation of entrepreneurs in their initial stages of the development of their ventures.

Diana is a well-rounded person. She has a bachelor’s degree in Korean studies and is currently studying two master’s degrees at Sofia University. Professionally, she works in an IT company, where she writes software documentation and does video editing. Diana has writing experience in both traditional and modern media. She has also volunteered for various causes, including a volunteer translator for the United Nations Association of Bulgaria. Her interests do not stop here. Some of Diana’s hobbies include photography, yoga, board games and hiking. She is an alumni of ABLE Activator and a member of the Association of Bulgarian Leaders and Entrepreneurs. Her passion for writing made her fall for the opportunity to manage our online media dedicated to leadership and personal development – Leadership.bg.

Martin Patsov is a full stack, certified Java developer at Dreamix, a custom software development company. He is also a teaching assistant for the WEB discipline at the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics, Sofia University. He is an ex-member of the student council at that very same faculty, where he was the main organizer of the first edition of the Freshers’ Weekend – event that transformed the council and improved the impact on the students. Also, as an ex-board member at Junior Achievement Alumni Bulgaria he actively contributed to the entrepreneurial education in the region.

His personal motto is to “Think (before you act & about improvements), Create (your own world, your dreams & the world around you) and Share (the knowledge, feedback & motivation)”. Martin always goes the extra mile striving to “Be the person that you needed when you were young.”