I grew up in Greece. As a kid I was, I guess, what you would call ‘sporty’. Lucky enough to have a mom that would be, amongst many things, my taxi driver, taking me to all the activities one could possibly fit in, outside school. Foreign languages, ballet, horse riding. Then volleyball, more languages, other types of dance, more horse riding. I loved it, I was so driven and rather consistent in each one of them, spending at least a few years doing it.

Outside all this, I wasn’t particularly well orientated about what I would do as a profession (since my upbringing excluded anything sport-related as a main occupation)… so I selected Engineering as I seemed to like physics and maths at the last years of high school. I chose to study Civils as this was an open enough subject that would give me more options to choose from later on…

My love for extra-curriculars didn’t stop at University when I went back to ballet, immersed myself in capoeira for a couple of years and studied another two languages. This was the answer to anyone wondering whether I was under pressure to do all these things when I was at school. My mom would definitely not let me give up easily when I would come home after a frustrating class, but I don’t think I could have continued the way I did if I hadn’t enjoyed it myself. That said, there was definitely a culture of ‘finish what you started’ in our home.

Even during a period of low uni attendance and partying out as I took a waiting job at a local bar-restaurant didn’t mean these activities stopped. Plus I was combining work with entertainment so I was making money for my first travels. A rather ‘optimised’ approach!

By the time I graduated and already on my first job as a site engineer, I knew I had to leave Greece. Undertaking a Masters abroad was an option for many but didn’t make financial sense for me, so I started an MSc in Greece and fled at the first opportunity through the Erasmus Program, which brought me to Imperial College London for 6 months in 2011. There I completed my thesis, graduated and managed to get a ‘proper’ job so I was here to stay.

The dream had started and the canvas was all mine.