She's Next Talks

With an academic background in political science and international relations, Aleksandra Simoni seemed set on a traditional, predictable path in academia and corporate marketing. Yet, driven by a creative spark and a desire for personal agency, she left a comfortable role to launch Green Lining, a design and product venture based in Montenegro. Recently named Young Woman Entrepreneur of the Year 2026 at the RCC Western Balkans Women Entrepreneurs Awards, Simoni’s trajectory shows the power of stepping outside prescribed boundaries. Simoni’s decision to pivot into entrepreneurship surprised her colleagues and family, whose views were shaped by generations focused on traditional job stability. But for her, true safety lay in autonomy rather than a predictable routine. “For me safety isn't about like getting the paycheck at the end of the month,” she explains. “For me safety is actually taking control and taking charge of how things will flow”. Building that control required overcoming initial anxieties about fitting in. She fondly recalls showing up to a startup accelerator event expecting an informal gathering, dressed in a summer dress and slippers, only to discover a formal black-tie affair where she was called on stage first to pitch her concept. Stepping up to speak anyway transformed her perspective on risk. “I will survive. It's really not that serious,” she realised. That moment solidified a core piece of advice she shares with aspiring founders: “You don't need to wait for everything to be perfect... You just need to be able to afford to fail”. For Simoni, entrepreneurship is about turning ideas into tangible reality and treating setbacks as valuable feedback rather than defeat. “For me, success is the ability to actually see in person something that you once imagined,” she reflects. As she prepares to scale Green Lining into international markets and explore new techniques like 3D printing on textiles, she credits her growth to lessons passed down by her grandmother Meera. By viewing every challenge as information, Simoni continues to build a resilient, purpose-driven business on her own terms.

Holding a PhD in bioengineering through the joint MIT-Portugal programme, Dr Ivana Kostić spent years between Lisbon and Boston working on cardiac regeneration and cutting-edge health innovation. While she could have pursued a comfortable academic trajectory abroad, she chose to return home to Serbia to build the local biotech ecosystem—co-founding Health Tech Lab to support regional health tech pioneers. Recently, Kostić’s focus has expanded toward a pressing societal challenge: youth mental health. In a region shaped by historical conflicts and systemic disruptions, she observes that younger generations often carry inherited burdens. “We have years of family and ecosystem challenges that were transferred from one generation to another,” she explains. To break that cycle, Health Tech Lab is developing a holistic mental health hub in Serbia, bridging traditional medicine with preventive education, mindfulness, and digital health innovations. Navigating complex multi-continental research, stolen lab data, and delayed timelines taught Kostić to view setbacks through a constructive lens. “Some of the things probably were considered failures, but for me were redirections,” she reflects. That adaptability underpins her approach to startup resilience, where she stresses that technical expertise must be paired with emotional grounding. “It's very important for entrepreneurs... to work on themselves and to have this vertical that is stable,” she advises, warning that unresolved internal stress “creates a lot of dissonance in the world around you and in your business”. For Kostić, female leadership brings a vital edge: honoring intuition alongside hard logic. As she expands Health Tech Lab's footprint across the Western Balkans and prepares her upcoming book, her definition of accomplishment remains rooted in purpose. “When I feel inspired and in peace within myself, that's a success today for me”.

Growing up in Albania, Aneida Bajraktari followed a well-trodden path: earn a degree, secure a stable corporate job, and settle into family life. “I grew up believing that the right path was to study, to find a stable job... because actually that's how families raise kids in Albania,” she reflects on She’s Next. Armed with a background in finance and law, she was thriving as a finance manager for a Swedish NGO when a single weekend event altered her trajectory entirely. Attending a Startup Weekend workshop transformed her perspective on risk and initiative. "I realised entrepreneurs are not like superheroes," she says. "They are ordinary people who decide to solve a problem and just take action". That mindset shift inspired her to found Balkans Capital. After balancing both roles for nearly a year, she took the leap into full-time entrepreneurship, confronting her initial anxieties about leaving a secure salary behind. Looking back, she recognises that traditional corporate stability can be an illusion. "As an entrepreneur you realise there is no ceiling, but there is also no floor," she observes. "That's both the scary and the beautiful part". Today, Bajraktari is not only leading Balkans Capital but also launching Doll'App, a resale app bringing circular fashion to the Western Balkans, while actively building Albania’s start-up ecosystem through mentorship and Startup Grind. Rather than fearing technological disruption, she is actively learning AI and coding to keep her ventures ahead. “The real challenge is not AI replacing entrepreneurs,” she argues. “It’s entrepreneurs who don’t embrace AI being replaced by those who do”. For Bajraktari, modern leadership requires humility and the confidence to admit when you do not have all the answers. "One of the biggest strengths a leader can have is the confidence to say, 'I don't know, let's figure it out together,'" she notes. Across her ventures, she defines ultimate success not by revenue alone, but by personal agency and community impact. “My biggest success is my freedom,” she says—from picking up her three children from school without asking for permission to helping cultivate the region's first tech unicorn.

After leading business development at Billz—one of Uzbekistan’s most prominent tech start-ups—Tashkent-based entrepreneur Natalya Klimenko felt driven to create something of her own. In late 2023, she launched STEMIO, an EdTech platform designed to teach school students STEM subjects and programming. Driven by a desire for meaningful social impact alongside commercial viability, Klimenko stepped into the grueling reality of early-stage entrepreneurship. Building as a solo non-technical founder proved to be a steep learning curve. Navigating rapid market shifts, hiring difficulties, and high marketing costs, Klimenko made two major product pivots before confronting a hard financial truth. In December 2023, she made the conscious decision to shut down the project. “I calculated all my investments and loss cost opportunities. It was more than 70,000 dollars. I could buy one apartment in Tashkent, but still it was really cool experience,” she reflects, choosing to view the closure not as failure, but as an invaluable professional investment. For Klimenko, failure in entrepreneurship is a masterclass in adaptability, emotional intelligence, and rigorous planning. She cautions founders against falling so in love with their product that they ignore unit economics or sales. Her advice to female founders is practical: “Take risks, but of course you should have ABCDE plans if something doesn't work”. Rather than stepping away from innovation, Klimenko took her hard-earned lessons into her next venture. Today, she serves as COO of an AI project delivering intelligent voice assistants for telecom operators across Central Asia, replacing outdated voicemails and filtering spam calls. Reflecting on her journey, Klimenko remains fiercely committed to using technology for good. “We are not a charity—we need to earn money, but at the same time, for me, it was very important to have this social impact,” she says, demonstrating that true entrepreneurial resilience lies in knowing when to pivot, when to let go, and how to build again.

Growing up in a traditional, patriarchal family in Azerbaijan, Turana Alieva faced a pre-written future: her parents dreamt of her becoming a doctor. “I’m afraid of blood,” she recalls, admitting she faints at the sight of it. Refusing to follow their roadmap, she pursued politics and economics instead, eventually securing a scholarship for a master’s degree at the University of Glasgow despite her family’s initial reluctance to let her study abroad. After graduating in the UK, multiple unsuccessful job attempts led Alieva to pivot into entrepreneurship, launching her start-up, FeMight. Building a business from scratch proved draining and misunderstood by her family, who initially assumed she was unemployed. Her mother regularly sent her office job vacancies until FeMight won the UK Start-up Award regional finals. “Until recently my mom thought I was jobless,” she explains, noting how hard it can be for traditional families to grasp the building phase of a start-up. Through coaching female founders, Alieva identified the "confidence gap" as the primary barrier preventing women from taking risks, asking for promotions, or pitching investors. She views confidence not as an innate trait, but as a muscle that requires continuous daily exercise. “Once you stop training it, it goes weak again,” she observes, emphasizing that women often focus on current metrics while men pitch ambitious future projections. Entrepreneurship also taught Alieva hard lessons about pacing. Early on, she attempted to do everything at once, leaving her devastated when no one showed up to her first two events in Glasgow. Realizing she was on the path to burnout, she shifted to setting one focused goal at a time. Today, inspired by the rapid shifts in women's independence across Azerbaijan, Alieva is expanding FeMight’s global community by raising funds through B2B crowdfunding to build a dedicated digital platform for female founders.