Polina Stoykova - Extreme Only in Her Work

Imam Imot Magazine, May 2011

“My first place of work was actually in the air. I was still at university and I spent one summer working as an air hostess. I applied for the job without counting on anything but they liked me. I flew charter flights from Bourgas and Varna to the UK. It was interesting. At that time the Brits had only just started to discover Bulgaria and there was almost no property market. But after that I decided that airlines are not the job for me. The discipline there resembles the army – even your scarf has to face a certain way. I won’t even mention the hierarchy, the order and the discipline which are the law…”.

This is how Polina Stoykova, the Chief Operations Manager of real estate agency BULGARIAN PROPERTIES, starts talking about herself. When meeting her for the first time it is a little startling because it turns out that behind the respectable title of Chief Operations Manager there is a smiling delicate young woman. She oozes charm like Tinker Bell from the Peter Pan story. You can’t but like her. However, when you start talking business it becomes obvious that Polina is a true lioness – both by zodiac and temperament. She is frank: “I am not into extreme sports and experiences but I am extreme in my work. When I have an idea I start digging. I am very motivated, I might even lose sleep until I achieve what I have set my mind on.”

Polina was born in the town of Elhovo. She has a sister who is 6 years younger and young parents. My father turned 50 recently and my mother is 47. She is a teacher and he works at the utility company EVN,” says Polly. She graduated high school in her home town. “I studied mathematics and English in high school. But I also was a private student at the language high school in the town of Yambol. I played the piano, I took part in literary competitions, I wrote essays and poems, some even got published in the local newspaper Elhovska Duma. I even got paid for that – I was very proud. I was good at everything but it was math that I liked best. That is why I went on to study Economics at the Sofia University. After that I got a Masters Degree in Strategic Management. I graduated in 2007. Now I am back at the university – I am studying statistics and financial econometrics – again for a Masters Degree, in the Department of Economics. I decided that because I make market analyses I must never stop learning new things”, explains Polly.

She started working at BULGARIAN PROPERTIES almost 8 years ago, while still at university. At first she helped the founders of the company Mihail Chobanov and Nikola Stoyanov, who she met at university. After graduating in 2003 this company became her first permanent workplace. She has worked in all company levels and that is why she knows them in detail – selling properties and servicing clients, writing property offers and updating the information on the company website, drafting standards and the corporate structure, developing the partnership program of the company, modernizing the data bases which are a trademark of BULGARIAN PROPERTIES, collecting data and developing a methodology for an empirical analysis of the property market, marketing, financial operations and implementing innovation processes. As a Chief Operations Manager Ms Stoykova is responsible for maintaining and controlling all of these activities.

This sounds complicated for a person who is not used to such terminology. But for Polly this is a part of life, because her friends outside work also work in the economy sector – mainly in sales, in marketing, in large international companies.

“We meet almost every week. We don’t have a favorite place to meet – it depends on our mood and on the weather,” smiles Polly.

She lives in a small apartment close to the National Palace of Culture in Sofia. “I am not a fan of gated developments. May be because I am still single and I don’t have children. I love my neighborhood – the space between the boulevards Skobelev, Vitosha, P. Slaveykov and Praga. It is cozy, the blocks of flats are small, mainly four storeys high. My block is quite old – it was built before the Second World War. My neighbors are nice people. I even like the fact that there is laundry on the small balconies. There is a very residential feel to it. My elder neighbors also create a feeling of coziness to me”.

In her free time BULGARIAN PROPERTIES’ Chief Operations Manager likes to ride her bicycle, to read and to travel. In the last few years she has been discovering the Balkan Peninsula – Turkey, Serbia, and Greece.

“Recently I rediscovered Belgrade – a wonderful city. It offers great atmosphere despite the awful traffic”, says Polly and adds: “I notice that in all capitals on the Balkan Peninsula, and in the other towns around Bulgaria, there is a central street where people go to meet each other. To sit in a café or a restaurant, to chat. Here in Sofia there isn’t one. Even Vitosha Blvd. is not like that. I don’t know if it is because of the construction of the underground or not but that feeling I find in the other places is missing here”. She likes to shop in Turkey – it is a very good place for shopping therapy, laughs Polly. Because haggling with the vendor is part of the ritual which she finds pleasant. On the other hand, Greece is the place where the party is – there is no way a young person will find it boring there.

The other thing Polly likes in the Balkans is the cuisine. “I don’t like cooking but I love eating. It is just as good that my boyfriend can cook and likes making different delicacies”, laughs Polly.

I ask her if she has always planned her life or that sometimes she just follows the flow. “Actually, I think I have always had a plan”, says Polina Stoykova. “I am not chaotic, I am organized. If not a plan a person should have at least some idea about what they want to happen to them. In order for it to come true a person should build their life slowly, brick by brick. Yes, there probably are these lucky people who get everything on a silver platter. But I have always worked hard for my dreams”, she admits.

That is why she decided to take the second masters degree. “Statistics came as a result of the real estate market analyses which I make. At one point I found out I needed a basis – both scientific and researching about the interconnections between the real estate sector and the economy, the financial sector. Such researches are very few even on a global scale. That is why I started looking for the relations between the macroeconomic factors and real estate – what actually drives prices. Naturally, there are thousands of answers. The information in the public domain is true – everything is logical but not fully appraisable until some mathematical method, a research is made. This is how I started. And now I am writing an article which I will publish in the Journal of International Business and Economics. This is a journal of the US organization International Academy of Business and Economics, which has units in Europe as well. The topic of the article is what drives prices of real estate.”

“There are people who like to change their workplace. They probably think they gain more experience that way which has some logic, especially when you’re young.” But Polina Stoykova likes it in BULGARIAN PROPERTIES because she doesn’t do the same thing every day. “May be it is more difficult in other companies but if a person wants to do something new there are no barriers for that, what one needs is some imagination. I suppose no employer would object to the introduction of something new and different to the organization. But there are also many young people who prefer clerical jobs – they do their designated work for the day and go home”, Polly says.

She first specialized in the area of leadership and its various aspects. She finished a number of courses with The University of Tennessee, USA in the area of international business and management and intercultural leadership. She published her articles in international business journals from 2003 to 2005 on marketing topics and topics related to intercultural differences and the activity of multinational companies in Bulgaria. Since January 2011 Polina Stoykova is a member of the Society of Property Researchers (SPR) and of the Chartered Institute of Housing, United Kingdom.

We are back to leisure time. Polly admits she wants to buy a piano and have time to play. Now there are electric pianos with headphones so that you wouldn’t bother your neighbors if you decide to play a waltz or an etude. “I don’t know why I like the piano. The vibrations of the piano charge me”. But Polly prefers The Beatles, Depeche Mode, Nora Jones, etc. to classical music.

During her trips around the Balkan Peninsula she started buying music discs from every place she visited. “I explore every small town, not only the popular tourist places. I want to see what is happening around. We are so close but at the same time all peoples are different. I find these cultural mixtures very interesting. Even purely linguistic ones – now I understand some mixed words and phrases. Turkey, Macedonia and Croatia – we share so many words with them that I sometimes find it amazing”.


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