Ilia Dobrev graduated AUBG in May 2021 with Summa Cum Laude in Business Administration. He completed a concentration in Management and a minor in Integrated Marketing Communications, which helped him expand his knowledge and develop useful skills. On top of that, he completed a second minor in Information Systems that proved handy in understanding the IT industry and gaining adding technical knowledge to his skillset. After graduating from AUBG, he continued contemplating the calmness of Blagoevgrad while working remotely at the leader in outsourced sales, Marketstar.
Read more about his journey of challenge and growth below.
About Ilia
I’m originally from Velingrad, Bulgaria. I found out about AUBG through a friend of mine who was studying at the university when I was in High School. After attending an Open House event, AUBG became truly my only choice for continuing my education.
What won me over was the authenticity of the place – the sense that true effort and hard work does get valued fairly here.
And that you get the chance to become a part of a real, meaningful, proactive, and vibrant community that would give you a true sense of belonging away from home. AUBG felt like a place that would give me both control of and direction in my life.
AUBG life
Applying for AUBG was one of the best decisions in my life. The university met and exceeded all my initial expectations for quality of education, appreciation and fairness, and community feeling.
What truly shaped my university experience, however, even more than academics, were the student clubs. I spent four years in StartUP and Olympics, and I joined The Hub in my senior year.
For me, Olympics was the embodiment of passion and team effort.
Pulling off D-Day is a feat that requires true motivation and, although being rather challenging at times, it really brings the Crew together around the fire.
When I think of StartUP, I think of devotion and family.
Going through all departments of the club and being its President in my junior year thought me what it means to truly care about the people around you and your common goal as micro-community.
Joining a third club in my last year was one of the best experiments I’ve done. I had always been drawn to The Hub – in my opinion, the club that has arguably had the most rapid growth in recent years, even during COVID, and also a club with an extremely friendly, transparent, supportive, and healthy environment. I immediately felt at home, as if I had been a part of this community for years.
These clubs are really what shaped my AUBG experience. The people I met suddenly became my friends outside of the meetings, my teammates in group projects in classes, my study buddies in late-night study sessions in the Skapto lobbies, my WAT housemates, and people who created an environment where we would push each other, challenge ourselves and grow.
The overall sense of belonging to this proactive and healthy community is what remains, alongside the desire to give back to my alma mater.
Career path
I met my current manager and mentor at MarketStar Bulgaria at a StartUP Weekend competition that I was organizing as a part of StartUP in my sophomore year. The following year, we invited him to lead a Sales workshop in front of our Sponsorship department that would help us find and recruit more sponsors for our events.
This also turned out to be the moment that sparked my interest in sales.
I was supposed to start an internship at Out2Bound, as the company was named before its acquisition by MarketStar, in the summer before my senior year. However, COVID-19 happened, and all internships in the company were cancelled. As a true salesperson, my future manager followed up on me before my graduation and, so, on May 1, 2021, I started in Out2Bound as a Business Development Representative (BDR).
As a BDR, I was working with two international clients – one was a Swiss startup developing eye-tracking software that could be developed into a product for different industries, and the other was one of the leading UX platforms in the world. My responsibilities involved researching and identifying the ideal clients for these companies across numerous industries and reaching out to them via different sales channels with the goal of setting up an introductory meeting.
Exactly one year later, my manager and the other co-founders of Out2Bound came to me with the idea to try to replicate my proactiveness, desire to innovate the company’s processes, and great client results to other projects.
As a result, I was promoted to Sales Team Lead, which meant I was going to lead a team of 5 BDRs working with 10 clients.
Then, a couple of months after my transition, we were acquired by MarketStar, which opened a ton of opportunities for me and all my colleagues. My main goal was to create a cooperative culture within the team, where everyone would help each other and would constantly search for new ways to innovate their sales approach.
So, a little over a year later, I had the chance to become a Sales Manager for half of our client portfolio, with the goal of replicating this mentality to a larger scale, this time working directly with our Sales Team Leads.
One of the few things that have remained almost constant in these dynamic three years was my involvement with AUBG.
On one of our team buildings a couple of months after I joined the company, our co-founders asked us whether there’s something we want to do outside of our work responsibilities. This is when I knew this would be a great opportunity to engage with AUBG and help its students.
In the following weeks, I came up with some suggestions to pitch to our co-founders on how we can educate AUBG’s students on sales, support the student clubs, and help the university establish an even better connection with the workforce.
For three academic years, we’ve managed to
- lead 2 1-credit courses;
- support 4 different clubs with mentors, judges, finances, and cases for their events;
- lead internal workshops for 2 sponsorship departments;
- participate in 2 job fairs, 6 guest lectures and 1 podcast;
- support the university accelerator every season since its creation; and more.
As a result, today we’re on great terms with AUBG’s students, faculty, and staff, and have several superstar AUBGers on our team. We plan on continuing giving back to this amazing community and on helping its students learn more about their own interests on their path to having a productive and fulfilling post-AUBG life.
Life in Blagoevgrad
After graduation, I decided to stay in Blago. As I was working remotely, I did not have a pressing need to go to Sofia or another city. And this was one of the best decisions I’ve made.
I love how walkable and calm Blago is, and how easy it is to reach anything you need on foot, or to just have a walk out in nature.
All this is key for me to maintain a good work-life balance and to have enough time to enjoy every single day as much as possible.
Of course, this also means I remain close to AUBG and its proactive bubble that forged my character. The university, of course, played the main role in the city warming up to me. The many memories I’ve created in those four years have created this aura around the city, this feeling of familiarity and acceptance, which is the reason why I can easily call this place home.
Piece of Advice
AUBG is one the few places in our country that really allows you to challenge yourself. I cannot stress how important it is to do exactly that at this early age – to do something you haven’t done before, to discover new things about yourself, to get out of your comfort zone.
My advice for current students would be to be brave enough to dive headfirst into every single opportunity that AUBG throws at you, no matter if it’s an interesting class, an event, or something else.
Show up, for yourselves, not for anybody else – you deserve it.
To my fellow alumni – reach out. To your professors that are still at AUBG, to your clubs, to the Career Center, to the administration, to the students. And give back.
You carry a lot of knowledge that you can share.
And there’s hardly anything more rewarding than being someone’s inspiration.
On Civic Engagement
From my perspective, civic engagement is a mindset. And it is almost equivalent to proactiveness. To me, proactiveness means adopting the attitude that, if you want to change something, you attempt to do it yourself, and not wait for someone else to deliver it for you.
It’s taking control of your own state and of your environment.
The university achieves this effect by creating an environment of numerous opportunities to express yourself and to challenge yourself, and then treats people with fairness, and not judgement.
