Good Life Project - From the Ashes of War to the Brownstones of Brooklyn | Aleksandra Scepanovic

Episode Date: February 12, 2019

Aleksandra Scepanovic was born into a nation soon to be at war.Growing up in then Yugoslavia, she found herself entering adulthood in the middle of the Bosnian war. While she lived in the relative safety of Belgrade (at least in the early part of the war), she left to head into the heat of the war zone, on a quest to discover not just the highly-filtered stories being reported by a state-controlled media, but the truth on-the-ground.Scepanovic joined local media efforts, became a reporter, then editor and analyst, where she spent years documenting and sharing what happened as her country divided itself, became decimated from violence, leaving so many lives destroyed and entire areas riddled with broken “Swiss cheese-like” buildings. The experience left her not only longing for truth, justice and peace, but also with a belief in architecture as a symbol of perseverance and the human need to rebuild and move on.Aleksandra eventually made her way to New York, where she discovered a love of design and pursued a degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology. That program awakened her inner eye for detail, and also invigorated her passion for architecture and interiors. Blending the experience of seeing a brutal war destroy so many homes with her renewed passion to help people find and create beautiful homes, she co-founded Ideal Properties Group (https://ipg.nyc/), which has now grown into a leading residential real estate firm in New York's Brooklyn neighborhoods.-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today, Alessandra Sapanovic, was born into a nation soon to be at war. Growing up in then Yugoslavia, she found herself entering adulthood in the middle of the Bosnian War. And while she lived in the relative safety of Belgrade, at least in the early parts of the war, she also felt like she needed to leave and head into the heart of the war zone on a quest to discover the truth, not just the highly filtered stories being reported in a state-controlled media, but the truth on the ground. And she joined local media efforts, became a reporter, then an editor, an analyst, where she spent years documenting and sharing what was actually happening as her country literally

split into pieces, became decimated from violence, leaving so many lives destroyed and entire areas riddled with what she describes as Swiss cheese-like buildings and neighborhoods. And that experience left her not only longing for truth and justice and peace, but also with a belief in architecture as a symbol of perseverance and the human need to rebuild and move on. Alexandra eventually made her way to New York, where she discovered a love of design and pursued a degree at FIT, that's Fashion Institute of Technology here in the city. And that program awakened an inner eye for detail and also kind of reconnected to her passion for architecture and interiors and the idea of home. And blending this experience of

seeing a brutal war destroy so many homes and homesteads and places that people called and felt their home with a renewed passion to help people find and create beautiful homes. She co founded a real estate company in New York called Ideal Properties Group, which is actually now grown into a leading residential real estate firm in Brooklyn. And it's really fascinating to see this sort of full circle journey of where she came from, the incredible experience of being in the middle of this war, seeing what happened to people's neighborhoods and homes and towns and cities, and then coming to a new place and rebuilding her life and her

livelihood around the idea of finding people a place that they can call home. Really excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. We'll be right back. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10.

Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. I find your story fascinating. I'm 53, so I'm of an age where I remember in the late 80s and the 90s, there was a very different story dominating even the U.S. news than we have going on now. We have a lot of stories about conflict, but you lived through the conflict that really dominated in this country a lot of the news cycle for a number of years. You were born in, I guess,

what's now formally known as the Republic of Yugoslavia. Yes. I was born in former Yugoslavia, you know, fast forward all these years. Now I say that I'm from Serbia because there is no Yugoslavia anymore to refer to. And it was an interesting time and an interesting place. And then it all fell apart. Yeah. What part of Yugoslavia were you? I'm originally from Serbia. So I am from the bad side of the conflict, if you wish. Yes, I was born to a place that then exposed me and my countrymen to a whole lot of really interesting propaganda. And a lot of people, you know, just like kind of in the United States right now, bought into it. At the end of the day, it was a big kaboom and now I'm here. As a young child, what was just sort of your everyday life like there?

Oh, Serbia was awesome. It was one of the best places in the world. Obviously, I didn't know of any others, although we did travel extensively, my family and I. It was fun. You could play out in the streets with your friends, not care about much except for maybe what type of candy you were going to try to coerce your mom to giving you before dinner. That was about it. It was pretty idyllic. Yes. It was really nice.

We were one of those places that most people thought we were behind the Iron Curtain, but we were not. We kind of flew under the radar. We had this iconic figure known as President Tito, who played both sides, you know, the East and the West fairly well. So we ended up being left to our own devices. Although he did borrow a lot of money over his lifetime as a president, because he was the president for life. And then that's one of the economic subtext is what did them in

in the long run. Yeah. Well, I guess back then it was sort of under the public umbrella of being a communist or a socialist government. But it's interesting. I have almost no memories of classes I took in college. The one memory I do have of a professor was a judge from former Yugoslavia who left the country, fled the country, sought asylum here, was then, according to his story, tried an abstentia, and if he had ever returned, would not be a good thing. That was my earliest sort of exposure to that world. What did he teach? He taught international law. Interesting. Yeah. And he spoke from a lot of personal experience. It was also my first exposure coming up from a fairly idyllic, you know, like suburban kid in New York to sort of subtext and

reality versus the gloss of what's really happening, as he would share stories about, you know, what seems to be happening from the outside looking in and what's really happening, you know, internally on a government level. Yeah, well, it's an interesting, I mean, we could have, you know, at least a few parallels drawn right now between, you know, the Milosevic regime and how skilled they were at manipulating the media, skilled beyond belief. Well, actually, they kind of owned the media as well. So it was fairly easy, I guess, to have that agenda on, you know, 100% of the time. But you're seeing a lot of that here now. You know, part of me wonders, you know, since I came to New York back in 1999, I've learned quite

a few interesting words, one of them being gentrification. And now this other one of, you know, this idea of democracy in, you know, in flux, to put it at least. So it's an interesting time to kind of be here and have been there. Yeah, because you have a very different lens. I would imagine that a lot of things that people born and raised in the U.S. conceive as being inconceivable, impossible. You probably look at it and say, not so fast. Not so fast. And that's one of the favorite questions out there that I always get is, well, how do you do it?

The real estate market in New York City is so competitive and, you know, it's such a dangerous and, you know, living on the edge type of an environment. And I'm like, hmm, yes, it is. You're right. It is. But compared to where I come from and what happened to me prior to real estate in New York City, you know, it's a different world. It pales in comparison. So you're growing up in what we'll call Serbia now. Yes. You, when was, and when did you start to notice a shift from idealistic, like everything was great as a kid to, uh-oh, things are changing? Well, there were, there were already some signs, even when you're a child and you're a little bit, you know, you still have that lizard brain going on. You still start to pick up on little items such as I used to, because I am from Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, then Yugoslavia, where you would see en route from your home to your school, there would be

the presidency. And then every now and then President Tito would be coming back to the country and they would take everyone from our school out into the streets to cheer him on. So we would be so happy because he's returned, you know, our big, you know, beloved Tito, the ruler of the world, not the free world, but the ruler of our world would be back. And so you would be like, why is this person so important in all of our lives? He was glorified and turned into this, you know, larger than life person. And then when he died, there was a widespread hysteria everywhere from, you know, Serbs were crying, Croats were crying, Bosnians were crying, Slovenians were crying. I know this for a fact because my mother is Slovenian. She cried when Tito died. And I remember crying when Tito died as well. My father died a few years prior to that. And I felt this sudden sense of

an even deeper loss, which is so weird. You know, you lose your father when you're nine, and then you lose the president of your country when you're 11. And you're like, I am so sad. It was a different time, but it goes to show you how this cult of a personality that's larger than life is created and how down the road you can feel that that somehow wasn't right and that things are about to change and that they probably just won't change nicely. And they didn't. And it's almost, I mean, it's kind of bizarre the way you describe that. It's almost like you're a feeling, like almost more feeling of like a child of the state or of the quote ruler than of your own biological father to a certain extent. Yes. And because, you know,

I already had, I guess, two years to not maybe mourn the loss, but percolate on the loss kind of defined that early childhood kind of moment for me. And then later on in college, really, when everything started falling apart, I realized I just, I just couldn't stay silent and just be on the sidelines. I couldn't do it. Yeah. And you mentioned also that your mom was actually not Serbian. My mom is not Serbian. So how, I mean, was there any conflict or conversation around that growing up in Belgrade? There was, you know, Belgrade was very cosmopolitan at that time. That has changed a lot during the wartime and then after the war when most of the refugees from Bosnia and Croatia have settled in Belgrade.

So Belgrade is now a very provincial part of the world rather than, you know, the metropolis that it once was. But the discourse was there was definitely, you know, there were weird looks now and then, you know, we weren't really from there in a way. And I guess my mother also made one of the mistakes of, you know, leaving me with my grandparents when I was very small. And so they taught me Slovenian. So the first language I ever spoke was Slovenian. And then when I started school in Belgrade, it was difficult to adjust. But it was an interesting kind of take on, you know, when you already feel like you're a foreigner in a way in that situation, it was a very easy for me kind of, you know, precursor to being able to detach from the situation because I didn't really feel entirely later on that I belonged.

Yeah. It's sort of like you had a foothold in different worlds, but you didn't really feel completely a part of any. So you end up in college. What were you actually studying? Archaeology. Ah, where did that come from, that interest? You know, I was always interested in how things came to be

because I felt that it was important to know where you were coming from in order to understand where you're going to. So, and even at an early age, I guess one of the reasons was my grandfather who spoke about that a lot. You know, if you forget your history and if you forget who you are and where you're coming from, down the road, you have a problem remembering not only who you were, but understanding who you are at that moment in time. So that's where it came from originally. And then the country started falling apart everywhere around me. So that's where it came from originally. And then the country started falling

apart everywhere around me. So I guess archaeology just stopped making sense, at least on that academic level. Right. And for the time being, you use the phrase falling apart, which is, my understanding, a pretty mild sort of way of describing what really happened. For those, and this is going back now 25 years, right? Early 90s. So for those who are not familiar with just really the general arc of what actually happened, would you share a bit more about what actually happened? Absolutely. I think the history now thinks of that conflict as a conflict, sort of in a civil conflict or a civil unrest type of a,

that's where most people are putting it. But it was really a conflict of ideology, number one, I think. And then secondly, people were reminded who they were. So all of a sudden, all Yugoslavs, if you wish, became primarily Serbs and Bosnians and Croats and Slovenes and Montenegrins and whatnot. So there was this tremendous ethnic tension that, you know, in my mind, and I just have been thinking about that lately in the last maybe 15 years, it all does go back to that very elitarian regime of Slobodan Milosevic, but Tito, who decided to not only just stay that president for life, but also stay the president afterlife by deciding not to name one person to succeed him. So without one successor, all of a sudden you had

eight people in a room trying to, you know, hold on to their little portions of power. So it was bound to go into a very bloody conflict where everybody decided to, you know, Serbs wanted a large chunk of the country because they did make up for the majority ethnically of the population. But there were a lot of other people living in the country that you couldn't just cast aside. Milosevic's regime that was a brilliant propaganda, you know, machinery like Saddam's and probably even a little bit more sophisticated than Saddam's because, you know, Milosevic learned from like some really good, you know, predecessors. And at the end of the day, you know, Croats wouldn't have any of it.

Bosnians wouldn't have any of it. Like any other person in their right mind wouldn't have any of it. And, you know, they took up arms. And after four plus years of bloody conflict, now we have six republics in place of one country. Yeah. When you saw people starting to take up arms and when you realize, okay, so we're no longer, there's no longer even the illusion of one. This is, they're the different groups, the different cultures, the different histories, and now

they're all fighting for a piece of this former land. What was your sense? I mean, first, just somebody who lives there and grew up there and is immersed in it and is studying anthropology. What was your experience of being in the middle of military conflict and danger? It's interesting because at the very beginning, I didn't feel it at all. And the reason for that is because I lived in Belgrade. Belgrade did not have a conflict at any point in time, except for the conflict with the Milosevic regime, which the local populace did have for very many years. So it was more like Kosovo and Sarajevo.

Yes. There was no physical conflict happening in Belgrade. And in that sense, and not to give too much credit, Milosevic's regime in that sense knew what they were doing because they kept the conflict localized to other republics. Kind of like you sit in Washington, D.C. and you're fighting your war in Baghdad's of the world. Similar, you know, not to that extent. And so at first it didn't really physically and fully dawn on me that it was happening everywhere.

And then I realized that if I'm watching this conflict on TV for the first month or so, there's got to be an underlying truth to it that I'm not aware of and that I really had to go out and uncover it. So it was more like a personal quest for, I understand that I'm, you know, being told about 1% of what's actually going on in the world. And I need to know what the real story is that prompted me to go to Sarajevo. And I went to Sarajevo and stayed pretty much throughout the conflict. What's it like if you take yourself back to sort of you arriving for the first time in Sarajevo? I think still already it was, a lot of people were still stricken by the lack of belief. You know, there was this block by block mentality where, oh, you know, well, the fighting is happening over there right now, seven, eight, 15, 20, however many blocks away. It's never going to come here,

really. This is not going to happen. It's not going to take place. So it was very, you know, minimally territorial in a way, because you were thinking about it in terms of increments of how many blocks the fighting has moved down. And then just everything went to hell. The powder keg exploded and it was everywhere. And there's no doubt about it being everywhere around you. So it kind of emotionally puts you in so many different places. People are simply changed by war when they're inside of it, when they're gobbled up by the conflict itself. They turn into their actual self. I don't know if this makes sense.

I've said it before. I've spoken to a lot of friends about it. But there's this outer layer, almost like a shell of who we are, that I guess culture and schooling and family give us that we all of a sudden lose. And we become exactly who we are as an individual. There is no more, if you wish, sugarcoating or putting things nicely or just, you're just reduced to who you are as a human. And if you're not a good human, obviously you will take up arms and harm other people. And if you are a good human, you are going to be in an internal sense of shock.

And you are always going to try to do your best to stop what's going on around you because it makes no sense. Do you remember being surprised as that stripping away process happened and you were with people or people that you knew or people that you met, being surprised by which direction people sort of reverted to as the facade fell away?

It's funny because quite often, especially if you know people really well, if you're talking about friends, there were people who were completely surprised. But more often than not, you have little kind of insights into one's soul if you know them for a while. So you kind of, for example, if we were friends, I would assume that down the road you would be on the eternally shocked person's side and not, you know, screaming into one's face and grabbing onto a machete or a gun or whatever. So yeah, people can surprise you. You know, somebody has recently asked me to make a comparison between war and the real estate scene in New York City.

And I'm like, yes, there are surprises always in every industry. And unfortunately, war, as we know, is an industry. And for me, as a reporter at that time in Sarajevo, again, luckily with that detachment, I could find that room to kind of still look at things and understand them and try to wrap my brain around them. And I had the option to leave the theater. I had the option to leave the scene, unlike many of the Sarajevans who did not. So that was, so you went in then under the context of reporting on it and being essentially a journalist and saying, trying to show what was really happening on the ground.

That was my, you know, quest for truth that I mentioned some just before, because whatever Slobodan Milosevic's TV served up just didn't, didn't, you know, make any sense to me. A lot of people thought it incredible and I just did not. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk.

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It's like you can't hide it. The minute you start speaking, it's like, oh, that's where you're from. Right. So wait, you are from that side? The people who are, you know, shelling us every day? Doing that to us. Yeah. So why here?

So how do you negotiate those conversations? You know, I remember, and this is just one of the, like, really those flash memory moments. There was someone in a cab that I took once asking me, so wait, you're from Belgrade? And I said, yeah, I'm from Belgrade. And they're like, well, so what do you think of us Muslims? It's a very provocative question. And again, it comes from that place. I don't have time to waste my time talking to you. I'm just going to ask you directly what I need to know. And that's it. And I said, well, some of you are great. Some of you are horrible, just like everybody else. What are you exactly asking me. So that's kind of what the dynamic was like. You kind of shield those questions and try to make it reasonable that you're there because you care. I said, I could have stayed in Belgrade. I could have sat in my house and watched TV and watch you all die on that screen. But that's just not what I did. Is it?

I'm here. I mean, because there was such a media machine, as you described, Andrei Milosevic, that it must have been just really, even if you said that, I would have to imagine so many people like, no, no, no. You're just looking for sort of like parts of the story that you can go back and add to the existing story that's being told to people who want to believe what they want to believe. Right. But I think that there was still an understanding in Sarajevo there were independent media as well. And there were government-ran media.

So I think... There's international media there as well, too. Yeah, of course. But I think Sarajevo, even before the arrival of the international media, they understood that there is a difference between a government-ran outlet, an owned outlet, and a little independent voice. And I think that they did feel that it's important that those independent voices are heard and that they get out. And that was, you were representing that independent voice? Yes. One of the outlets that I worked for was this radio station in Belgrade that was an independent, really anti-Milosevic station that called things the right names. And yeah, so that's where I mostly reported for and sent my stories to.

Then I worked for Reuters news agency for a while. There were a lot of people interested in words coming out of Bosnia. Yeah. When you are in, how long were you actually in sort of like, quote, war zone, in a zone where there's danger? Well, I was there pretty much till, you know, the war ended and then the peace was signed in 1995. I actually left Sarajevo in 99 and I moved.

Oh, wow. Yeah. So I stayed there to see, you know, what the next steps were. Because, you know, I felt that if you're part of something that's like at a moment where everything is, there's this great destruction going on, you want to see what happens next and how it rebuilds. Does it rebuild?

Can you help? Can you be a part of it? That's what was on my mind. So I worked for, among others, media analysis companies and the war finally came to an end through treaty agreement. And you're in this place the whole time. I know, you know, you read and you hear all sorts of accounts of people and how it leads to sustained trauma, how it really changes you and your sensitivities, your awareness. And did you feel that you, even on as there to report on this conflict, you're still in the middle of it, living it every day. You're still in danger.

Did you feel that being in that place changed you in deeply meaningful ways? By all means. It completely affects you to the core. Whoever you were beforehand, I think something, you know, you add, maybe it's a layer that gets added on top or maybe there's a change that happens from within. I know when I first moved to New York, it took me probably about two years to be able to even sit in a restaurant by myself or with a friend without worrying about my back not being exposed. I had this thing where I had to sit in a corner and see the entire restaurant in front of me to feel comfortable. And that's just, you know, having a, you know, sitting in a diner in New York City.

It's kind of, I guess, ridiculous. But it's, you know, there's that sense of physical danger that you're in at all times that once, for me at least, when I finally felt that once, for me, at least when I finally felt that I could shed it, you go through an additional emotional turmoil. And it took me about two years in New York City, which I think was a very good thing, you know, in hindsight, because it put an ocean between me and the events that took place. And it put me in a position where I had enough physical detachment to be able to digest and understand what happened.

And I felt that I, you know, being there was put to a useless end at the end because Milosevic was still in power when I came to New York City. I came at a time where they were, NATO was just about to start bombing or has about started really bombing Belgrade. And it was funny because I was still in Sarajevo at the time. And I knew that the preparations were on the way because I was working for the office of the high representative. They were pretty much the only governing body of Bosnia at that moment. They were put in place by the Dayton Peace Agreement. And so knowing that the bombing was about to happen,

you know, there was this big network being put in place and so on and so forth. Here I am now in Sarajevo. And for me, it was like a moment of, you know, maybe there is some kind of a cosmic justice that will happen in this very moment in time. I know that some planes will head their way to Belgrade. And then the part of me that is Belgrade is like, oh, you know, all of those places that I remember from before, what is going to happen and what's

going to happen with the people. And a lot of people there don't deserve, you know, this tragic outcome either because, you know, they were trying to have their voices heard. But it's difficult to go against Milosevic regime on the streets of Belgrade and protest because all he does is takes the tanks out onto his own streets to quell it. Yeah. So even if you believe other, you know, even if you're in solidarity with with those who the bigger regime is attacking, you can't express that. You can't. Well, I guess you can, but at your peril. At your own peril. Exactly.

Was your family still in Belgrade at that point? Yes. My family was still in Belgrade at that point. And I called my mom and I remember saying, may want to leave Belgrade for a few weeks. And she says, ah, nah, don't worry. They're not going to bomb us. They're never going to bomb us. NATO has been talking about that forever. They're not going to do it. I was like, okay. But nevertheless, remember my friends are on his family. They invited you over. So maybe you could just go for a visit because obviously she did she did because I I called her until she finally said yes I said they're so excited to host you for you know even if it's a week or two just as she left the the bombing started so that was it my brother was still there with his family they were like they were not you know were so many, I guess that's how propaganda works.

It works on many different levels, but that's one of them where there are all these semi-truths and, you know, negotiations with your reason at all times. Could it be? Will it be? Is it possible? And you get to this point where you don't know what to think. You don't trust yourself. Kind of like here right now. Yeah.

Interesting parallels, right? what to think yeah you don't trust yourself yeah yeah kind of like here right now yeah interesting parallels right it's but i mean they're really you know when you zoom the lens out and you look at that and you're like this was decades ago this you know like that conflict has been analyzed and deconstructed and picked apart and reported on had books written on it and yet all around the world history just continues to repeat itself over and over and over again i think maybe my grandfather was right maybe we just need to stop and learn from the past and understand where we're coming from and where we're headed yeah anyway you so you stay in sarajevo from 95 to 99 as they're rebuilding. The conflict shifts for a short amount of time, at least back to Belgrade. And Kosovo, yeah. And Kosovo, right. And what were you seeing in Sarajevo from

95 to 99? Was the process of renewal? Because at that point, the city was pretty devastated, from what I recall. Yes, it was pretty devastated. And there was a lot of red tape everywhere. So even the funds that were coming in, the funds that were allocated, all these channels that were being opened up for the funds to start pouring into the country. You have to remember you're dealing with a formerly communist country. No matter what, you know, you can change colors, you can change flags. And I know this because I was a part of the OHR when the new flag was being designed. But you can't take that whole notion of, you know, I can take these funds and

not really do what I'm supposed to do with them. And I can do that with impunity because this is such a massive theater and there's just so much pouring in that it doesn't really matter. So you had, you had a lot of really say famous buildings, if nothing else, that were just sitting, you know, untouched for very, very, very many months after the war and some even years. And there was a lot of indecision of what to do, how to do it, where to go and how to start anew, which I guess is normal. Also, again, you have to go through that period of shock. Okay, now it's really over because we've been trying to get this to be over for so long.

And now it's really over. Now what do we do? It's kind of like you get married and you're like, okay, I've wanted to get married my entire life and now I'm married. Now what? And plus, I mean, you're talking about areas where, you know, even though there were local governance structures, it wasn't like, you know, like end to end, this is how we govern ourselves. You know, there was always a reliance on centralization to a certain. So now all of a sudden you've got entire areas where it's like, okay, so we need essentially effectively to create entire self-governance structure from the top down to the bottom and do that when we're sort of like completely devastated, you know, and trying to recover from a brutal war at the same time and short of funds. Yeah. And I think that OHR, the Office of the High Representative, actually filled in that void

because they were that central power, in a sense. They were putting together everything from the new constitution to the flag, to the new monetary units, to whatnot. Everything was being put in motion, but again, by a centralized authority that to a point, you know, Sarajevo felt was a foreign body to what they really needed and wanted. So, you know, politics continued as usual. Yeah. Let's put it that way.

What, during that window of time before you headed to New York, which we're going to jump back into in a second, what were you actually hoping to experience? I mean, what was, were you just observing, well, like, this will be fascinating to see how we recover from this, or was there something else going on? I think it was that. And then also, you know, again, when you're, you go through so much emotionally and physically, I guess maybe your, your mind comes to a point where it really needs to rest and see things just take off and recover. And maybe I was idealistic, you know, now that the war was over, because you crave it, you wait for it, you can't wait for it to happen. And now you've embraced it as, you know, okay, so it's finally here.

And again, you know, you expect these things to move faster and that you will see flourishing. And you saw flourishing in spirit. You know, the locals were finally, and I hate to say locals because, you know, again, I was someone from a side in that environment, unfortunately, or fortunately. You come to a point where they all come to a meeting of the minds with their own, you know, self, how they got there and what they need to do to move on as people. So if they need to mourn a relative or if they need to, you know, decide to leave Sarajevo or, you know, stay in, you know, start a new business. There are so many different things that pop up as options. And I guess it takes time to heal.

Emotionally, number one, obviously, but then in every other way. Yeah. So the process of renewal, sort of like where you were focused. Were you still reporting or were you doing something else at the time? No, I was doing the media analysis a lot. And that really entailed analyzing what all the local medias were doing and really doing briefings for the OHR so that they could have that finger on the pulse. So a lot of intel gathering. Yes, pretty much.

Why, what makes you decide to leave? So at that point, things are resolved. Well, kind of resolved. Kind of resolved, yeah. Four years after the primary conflict ends in Sarajevo, what happens in 99 that makes you say, I need to go to New York? I thought at that point, you know, at some point during those four years, I started feeling a little bit desperate for a change, political

change more so than anything else, because the war ended and yet all the people who were in power before it pretty much were still in power. And I started questioning my original motives and I started questioning whether, you know, my involvement actually meant anything. So at the end of that road, when you find yourself thinking, well, everything that I've done and all these days that I have risked my life or lost friends and whatnot, what was it all for? What was it about? You almost feel like a failure, or at least I felt like a failure in that sense, because I didn't feel like I enacted anything.

I didn't feel that me being there meant anything in the grand scheme of things. Milosevic was still in power. A few friends of mine and I, we had, you know, some champagne still stashed away that we were hoping to open once he's not in power any longer. And I just felt I didn't have the energy any longer to wait and that it was just time for a new theater for me. And that was it. It's so interesting too, because you talk to journalists who've been in conflict zones and, or even just journalists that cover really tough stories of people in harm's way, people suffering on a mass scale, especially. And there, there always seems to be this sort of like this inner torment of I'm here to do a

job. And the job is not to try and become a savior, become involved in the thing. The job is to try and shine the light of truth on it and share as honestly as I can what's really happening. And on a personal level, like as somebody who feels, it's's got to be really hard. I can only compare it to one of my good friends right now, upstate New York in Woodstock. She does autopsies every day for a living. It's just what she does for a living. And she is one of the very few experts in the field in this entire country. Apparently, I think there's eight of them.

And, you know, I remember when we first met, I was like, well, how do you do that? How do you do that and then go home to your family every day? And she says, well, how did you do the war and then went back home to your family every day? And I was like, okay, point taken. So, you know, I guess it's that at some point you really do need to have the ability to detach because otherwise you cannot do your job.

And in my case or the journalist's case, you can't spread the news. And in her case, you couldn't complete, you know, what the higher powers in the hospital needed you to do for that. Yeah. I mean, you wonder, you know, at what personal cost, you know, if you gain the skills to cope and to compartmentalize, sure, that translates to like giving you a great it. They will just never come back, you know. But then there are other days when, at least for me, and I go back and forth between many, you know, ideas about that every day. When you're like, okay, so that meant something. Because if there wasn't for me, this younger generation of people living in Belgrade would not have had an opportunity to hear on their radio, this independent radio station, you know, words that completely differed from what their government were serving up at that time. So maybe that did mean something. Maybe that affected a few lives, you know, five, 10,000.

I don't really know. So maybe there was something to it. So you end up deciding it's time. You just have, you can't be in this place anymore. You have to go somewhere different. Why New York? I actually originally wanted to move to Amsterdam. That was the plan. Because, you know, Amsterdam is lovely. It's picturesque. A lot closer. A lot closer, yes. But it's lovely. There's, you know, it's flowerful.

It's colorful. It's unlike anything that you've seen in a gray, completely, you know, devastated war zone. So it appealed to that side of my being, I guess. And then I came to New York to visit a friend. And I was like, you know, I'm just going to go to New York for a week or two, three. I've heard that story before. I know, right? And I think most New Yorkers who are not originally from New York, that's how their stories begin. Well, you know, I came to New York for a day, for a weekend.

Just to visit. Just like, you know. And then, you know, I was just struck by first and foremost, how divergent these realities are, you know, where I come from and what New York is all about. And the first day I ended up in, I ended up in Chinatown and I was just blown away by, you know, this, this multitude of, there were people from everywhere in the world, you know, passing by each other on every street, just, you know, using different languages and not caring about anything in the world. They were just here. There was no like, there were no, you know, political debates or reasons why somebody couldn't be here or had to look different or had to wear something else. Everything was just, it made sense. People were, you know, just completely, you know, able to be themselves, I guess, in a way. And then, of course,

I was standing actually in Chinatown and this person appeared out of nowhere and gave me a teddy bear for no reason. There I was standing in the middle of Chinatown and somebody felt that they needed to give me a teddy bear. And I looked at, you know, I put that teddy bear under my arm and I looked at him and I said to myself, I really like this place. And that was it. I was sold. How do you stay though? Because you're coming, I mean, how does that, did you actually have to, was it political asylum? It was political asylum. Yes. I applied for a political asylum that I ended up getting about a year, year and a half later. And it was a very difficult time because 9-11 happened. So then after that-

Everybody is, anyone who wasn't already here automatically think so. Yeah. The process just completely stopped, but I already did have my asylum resolved by then. And then getting the green card was a forever wait. But at that point it didn't really- So you're coming from a war zone where you've lived for years, you come to New York and you're like, finally, I get to turn the page. I'm out. I'm somewhere different. And in the blink of an eye, New York turns into something where we, especially then, we had no idea. Is this going to become the next war zone? Right. Well, you know, a part of me, I remember that morning when the buildings went down, actually. I remember thinking to myself, I have to leave New York City because apparently wherever I go, something bad happens.

So it can't be me because, you know, it's not the universe saying, you know, leave. But what is this? And what was really incredible to me was the exact round of emotions that I went through the exact same round of emotions really quickly. I was back in time in my head immediately. I was back in Sarajevo and a lot of people around me, they were acting exactly as people in Sarajevo did during the war. There was that all of a sudden, everybody was a New Yorker. There was this overwhelming sense of camaraderie, of warmth, of it was not the New York that I knew just a few days before that.

Yeah, I completely agree. I mean, it was in the blink of an eye. It was different, profoundly different. So when a journalist tells you that there are certain aspects of a war that they miss, that's what they're, I think, talking about. For me, that's what it was. Because there's this different self that emerges in that conflict, in any conflict. I so agree.

I've written about that, my own experience of it in the past, because I almost felt a sense of shame because I remember it's about six months or so where New York was, it was literally, you know, like it was a brotherly, sisterly, it was just, everyone was walking around saying, how can I help? Like seeing each other's humanity, like hugging and just really being real and in touch. And, and there was an urgency to being human that after six months or so, it kind of started to fade as the city slowly came back. And similarly, I remember that time as something that was so beautiful. And I would never want the thing that made it happen to happen. And still the change that it created,

at least for a window, was stunning. It brought out the best in people in a city where normally nobody pays attention to anybody and like your head's down and moving faster than ever. Yeah. And I remember a couple of years later reflecting on it and almost feeling like a sense of shame about missing that window of time.

It's very easy to be nostalgic for those days. And that's when somebody asked me, so when people say, oh, you must be glad to be out of that conflict zone and whatnot, I always say, there's a part of me and a part of that conflict that I will miss forever. There are some of the most truthful friendships

I've ever had in my entire life actually happened there. Some of my most, you know, just, you know, as you said, warm moments in life literally date back to Sarajevo. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum.

Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. So we start to emerge in New York from our own drama. And you're here as you start to emerge out of that also. What's your intention? You're like, okay, I'm in New York. It seems like we're going to try and move forward. Doing what? What was the idea?

So, you know, wherever you find yourself, i guess you first start with what you know so at that point my comfort zone was media analysis i ended up getting in touch with a media analyst who worked on the lower east side it was his publication was actually called the tindall report and i stayed with with Mr. Tyndall, Andrew Tyndall, for some time. He was this former BBC journalist who was very independent thinking. And he used to do the analysis of ABC, CBS and NBC news programming, the nightly news and the morning shows. And it was a very interesting time because for me, you know, I obviously come from a different place and I don't have a background in American media. Everything that I knew about American media was very rosy because we were told that, you know, independent journalism

is important and it's a bastion of freedom and so on and so forth. But then when I moved to the United States, I realized, you know, there's a certain level of propaganda when it comes to, you know, free press as well. Everywhere, yeah. So I was like, well, wait, the press is not as free here as we would like to believe back home. Granted, you could still ask questions, but a lot of times people just don't ask questions they should be asking.

There's a lot more self-censorship that I've discovered here than, you know, I've seen back home. And yeah, so that's how it all started. And then I realized that, you know, media analysis is great and it's a fun way to go about your professional life, but there was something else that I really needed to do. And that something else ended up being interior design. Yeah. What drew you to that? Was it in any way almost sort of like a reflection or a rebound reaction to the devastation you had seen? I think it's the exact opposite because it's my little Amsterdam in my head. I need this flowerful, pretty, you know, interior space that's

intact and it's not ravaged or damaged by anything. And it, you know, it needs to have a sense of self, sort of kind of like your balloons here in the front. And so that's what really caused it. And I got incredibly passionate about it during the studies. I was at FIT, the Fashion Institute of Technology here on 27th. And it was a, it was a really good time, you know, being back in college, in a sense, was a really fun time because you got to, now that I learned a little bit more about the media here and I was learning a lot about the educational process, yeah, process, I guess, if you wish, and, you know, what young Americans were coming up with and what they cared about and where they were coming from

and how poorly they were educated, mostly. Unfortunately, I have to say that. And yeah, so those were interesting days. And, you know, I just jumped in both feet. I started off by working at the Tyndall Report for the first two years of school. So it was one of those like nighttime activities, you know, and then- What's it like for you? So now this was undergrad, right? So you're coming from your background. You've seen things that pretty safe bet nobody, you nobody, like no other 19, 20 year old

in your class has seen or experienced. You're older. What's that like for you? Sort of going into that like altered reality. It did feel like at first I felt like I was in a very wrong place at a very wrong time. But then, you know, I was somehow able to relate because their hopes were not unlike what mine were like when the war started, before the war started. And I got to relive that time, that time of innocence, pretty much before the conflict back, back home. And it was, it was a really interesting, you know, kind of, I've never, like, one of the things was very interesting that the FIT didn't take my credits from back home. It was very dramatic at one point. But, you know, I studied Latin and ancient Greek.

And, you know, pretty much I remember to this day this day, what, you know, you know, everything in biology I've ever learned, I still remember it to this day. And yet I was surrounded by these young, you know, recent high school graduates who, you know, to put it bluntly, knew very little about anything. You know, we had a class where we were, for example, learning about the light and the reflection of light. You could, you know, hear these young people asking their teacher over and over again to spell words. And I was like, wait, we're in college.

You should know this by now. You know, so it was an interesting time for me to, but also to understand the American culture at its source, because American culture is not just what you read in the papers and what you see on TV. It's what, you know, the people that you surround yourself and especially young people of a country can give you. And if you're with them in, you know, as a student right next to them, you're just one of them.

It's such an interesting insight that you get. Yeah. And for you simultaneously, it's a bit of a reclamation. Yeah. It's like you're finishing something that you started that you never really got to do on that level. And then you come out and with apparently a deep interest, not just interior design, but also just in, in property, in real estate in general.

I got infected by the real estate bug. I don't know anybody. Which in New York is sort of like, it's not like anywhere else. It's like air, water, food, the real estate. I mean that, I think. It's like its own living, breathing beast. Organism, yeah. That's totally true.

I got infected during the process because we were, you know, going out in the fields to some spectacular homes and commercial spaces. I was really interested more in commercial spaces, so much more so than residential. I felt that that was my comfort zone at the end of the day. And it was just, it was such an interesting time for me as well to rediscover, you know, the interior of the space as an opportunity, but also the interior of the space as a space in New York City now that somebody inhabits. So that's where that connection, I think, started happening because these were not just spaces, pretty beautiful spaces. There were spaces that people lived in. There were pictures on the walls.

There were, you know, these little elements of self that you could see kind of woven through everywhere. And I just, all of a sudden it started making sense. And I knew that that was the direction. That was the direction I had to go in. Yeah. It's like your shift. And it's interesting because it's almost like, it's like you start to officially really remove the journalistic detachment and say i am now a player in the process of reconnecting people to a sense of home in a process of renewal the process of creation yes and i want to be a part of it yeah right and and yet you launched your company in New York, in the real estate world, in 2007. Talk about timing. Right.

I'm like, tell me what your next move is. We all know what happened the next year. The bottom fill out of the economy here, led by the real estate world, led in no small part by a lot of what was happening in New York. And yet at the same time, the New York real estate market was likely one of the most insulated from what actually happened nationally. Well, Manhattan market was battered. Not tremendously, but it was battered. But also, it's a different, New York City in general is a completely different. Yeah, it's an outlier. a different, New York City in general is a completely different, yeah, you can't compare,

you know, us with Iowa, you know, no matter how big a town or city in Iowa, you just can't. So, and I think Brooklyn, especially where we were, because we focused on Brooklyn right away, it was just such a promising market. And there was, you could feel it. It was almost like a palpable sense. It's almost like when you know that the war is coming and you feel something in the air, something is just not right. Well, with Brooklyn in 2007, it just felt that everything was right. And I probably- So the ingredients were all there. Yes. Everything was there. The locations, the homes, the housing stock was amazing, still is. A lot of young people leaving Manhattan.

A lot of, you know, memory of 9-11 and not wanting to live in really tall buildings in the center of the city. All of that came together. And, you know, there's a few really amazing waterfronts, fabulous parks, you know, it just made sense. And what didn't make sense was that Manhattan brokerages didn't care. And so I guess me and my partner, Eric Sarris, we felt that we could fill that void, that we should start working on filling that void. We bootstrapped the whole thing. We didn't, you know, in hindsight, you know, we would have grown more and faster, maybe, if we went the direction of, you know, getting somebody else to actually finance our ideas. But I think that we like where we are now because everything that we have, all the five offices that are in place right now, it's all us. Yeah. And also, I mean,

starting in 2007 and in 2008, 2009, probably would have been really hard to get anybody else to say like, oh, here's a chunk of money. Yes. You know, there's a world of opportunity here. I think most of people were looking and saying, I want like, I'll fund you for almost anything, but not that. But I think also there's this other component to New York City real estate where a lot of really big players only make moves when the times are rough. Yeah. That's definitely been part of the history. Yeah. And I think that that's what turned our business.

I mean, we went from literally two enthusiasts in a spare little brownstone, you know, bedroom trying to do real estate. That's us in 2007 to, you know, having 120 people before the end of, you know, 2008. So that's a massive growth. That's insane growth. So in the time where everything around you is collapsing, and again, it's almost like being in a war zone. There's shelling and there's bombs and there's everything around you. But if you find that focus and you manage to hold onto it, I believe that you can only go up. Yeah. Do you feel like your time in Sarajevo allowed you a certain lens or mindset in that window that allowed you, that let you see the

possibility, the opportunity in that moment in time in a way that others maybe couldn't or didn't? I think so because a lot of times I do feel detached from things that I'm thinking about in the sense that I wonder if something is a good move, but I can get that emotional detachment from it and think about it really objectively. Is this a good idea or is this a bad idea? What are the pros? What are the cons? And even though it's like wanting a red Ferrari, do I really want it? Maybe. But the answer to that is most of the time, no. Yeah.

It's a proxy. I really don't. Just breathe. It gives you a couple of weeks. Exactly. But, you know, a lot of us can't detach. You know, us females have a thing we choose and whatnot. It's very difficult to say to yourself, do I really want to go that route? And I think that that skill

or that, I guess, quality of my professional being at this point is crucially important because I can take an idea or 10 ideas that we all come up with and not have an emotional attachment to any of them, even though they might be mine, some of them, and just really go for the one that makes more sense. And the one that when you analyze it from 10 different angles and put a lot of money into research and whatnot, you understand that it's the best bet. That's the one we're going to take. There's no, you know, but I still think that this could be better because I suggested that just doesn't work.

Do you feel like as you build a substantial company now, which has a bunch of people and a culture, either by intention or by default, that your lens and your experience informs the culture that you're creating and the way that in 2005, both Eric and I worked for this Manhattan brokerage firm. There was a toxic work environment, absolutely toxic. And, you know, from talking to a lot of our friends who were working for other brokerages, most of them were toxic environments. And at that time they were in a way the wild west of, you know, the real estate world in the city. So the brokerages were really, you know, unregulated, had no training. There was a lot going on that just wasn't right. So seeing that from an agent's perspective and being again in those, you know, in that forefront, I guess, from that perspective, it informs your decisions so much better down the road because you can decide consciously that you want to create an environment where people want to come in and work and be happy

to be there and share their experiences with their colleagues, as opposed to come in there, compete against everyone, you know, create a lot of enemies and then leave. So yeah, we worked on creating that environment from day one, very actively. So zooming the lens out now, so as we're sitting here at Sienna 2018, this company has now been around for over a decade, grown beautifully, touching the lives of the people who are in the organization, in service of the lives of the people who are in the organization, in service of the lives of exponentially more people who you serve on a client level. When you reflect on what you've now built here over the last decade, and how does it make you feel?

You know, part of me feels that, you know, we have achieved something, but then the other part of me feels that we are just starting. And I'm hoping that I have not forever been bitten by that, you know, more and more and more kind of American thing. Just a bit more. Just a bit more. It's not a bit. I mean, there are certain things that an aspects of the business that I think will down the road be commuted into non-for-profit aspects. So that's something that I really don't want to fully go into yet because nobody's ever heard of a real estate company that, you know, just does not want to make any more money and just wants to give all of their money away for the good causes.

But, you know, there are people out there who think about business that way as well. So why not real estate for a change in New York City? And so, yeah, I think at this point, we are at a very good moment in time. The market is again, starting to shift a little bit down the sliding scale of prices. And for us, that's a good problem because, as you know, we handle that really well. It's funny. I think it was, I don't remember, maybe it was something you sent over to me beforehand. You said that one of your listings was that, like, John Travolta's house from Saturday Night Fever. Am I remembering that correctly?

Yes, yes. There's a house in Bay Ridge on 79th Street that we are listing right now. And, you know, we all internally refer to it as the disco house. That's funny. But, you know, the agents who are representing it, the brokers who are representing it, sometimes going around going, ha, ha, ha. It's one of the, you never know what is going to come next. Oh, man. So as we sit here coming full circle, context of this container, the Good Life Project,

if I offer out the phrase to live a good life, what comes out for you? To live a good life is to be true to who you are, always remember it, and be optimistic

about where you're headed. You know, everything will somehow come together. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible. You can check them out in the links we have included in today's show notes. And while you're at it, if you've ever asked yourself, what should I do with my life? We have created a really cool online assessment that will help you discover the source code for the work that you're here to do.

You can find it at sparkotype.com. That's S-P-A-R-K-E-T-Y-P-E dot com. Or just click the link in the show notes. And of course, if you haven't already done so, be sure to click on the subscribe button in your listening app so you never miss an episode. And then share, share the love. If there's something that you've heard in this episode that you would love to turn into a conversation, share it with people and have that conversation. Because when ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change takes hold. See you next time. Mayday, mayday, we've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman.

I knew you were gonna be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot.

The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes the apple watch series 10 available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum

compared to previous generations iphone 10s are later required charge time and actual results will vary