"I have turned off fear of change". Profile of Jowita Michalska

"Imagine that you can see a chart of your entire life: from birth to death, describing how the chemical structure of your body will develop. If you see a long and healthy life on the chart: mental and physical fitness. What decisions would you make?".

A platinum blonde freely speaks English from the stage. She is one of the speakers at the largest Central European Infoshare technology conference. Charismatic and stylish, she stands out in the crowd of speakers in subdued jeans and t-shirts. In the Polish media sphere, there are only a few women who speak as confidently and broadly about technological innovations, including Natalia Hatalska, Aleksandra Przegalińska and Jowita Michalska - the heroine of this text.

– I have always been fascinated by her incredible, positive energy - quite contagious, unusual in our country and very useful in NGO activities - Alek Tarkowski from the Digital Centre and Open Future Foundation tells me.

Jowita Michalska is the founder and president of Digital University, a foundation and company that support the development of technological skills and digital competencies. Every year she organizes the international Masters&Robots conference, which has hosted, among others, the world's most famous futurist Amy Webb, humanoid robot creator David Hanson or marketing guru Seth Godin. Michalska is an exceptionally active popularizer of technology: she runs the Digitalks podcast, on her Instagram, which is followed by over 16.5 thousand people, she reviews books about the future, innovations and writes about self-development. Recently, she recommended the book F.U. Money, or I can afford it! How to earn enough money to be able to say <fuck off> when you want to, commenting:

"I know it sounds stupid, but shouldn't we, women, have this approach more often?!"

Jowita wears short, slicked back white hair and distinctive makeup, which are her trademark. She is wearing a denim jacket, a floral dress, summer flip-flops, and the only classic accessory in her informal outfit are Ralph Lauren glasses. She speaks quickly, in full sentences, without moments of hesitation or reflection. You can feel her media freedom.

– I love Jowita for her authenticity - says Eliza Kruczowska, Director of Innovation at the Polish Development Fund. – Image experts praise her for a consistent brand. The best thing is that she is just like that, it's not some planned strategy.

"It was a work subculture"

Her childhood in Warsaw's Chomiczówka was marked by sport, she trained in volleyball for several years. From those times, she has kept friendships and iron self-discipline. She gave up when she realized that she was not outstanding. She turned in a completely different direction: business. She studies the most popular course of the 90s: business and management at the Warsaw School of Economics. Just at the moment when Western corporations looking for young and talented people are entering Poland during the transformation period.

Already as a student, she finds a job in an international creative agency, with which she creates advertising campaigns and marketing strategies for large companies entering the domestic market. As she admits, during the creation of the Polish market economy, it was enough to know English well and have a passion for work. Her team was made up of young people without experience, just as hungry for capitalist success, everything was learned on the fly.

– I traveled, I sat at work until 23, then it was the norm, we all did that. It was a kind of work subculture – she says.

The corporation and the opportunities it offered in gray Poland drew her in:

– I was intoxicated with this global world. For the first six years, I never took a vacation. I was friends with the people I worked with, Friday turned into Sunday. It was a lifestyle – she admits.

Together with the G7 agency (part of Leo Burnett) she wins award after award for viral advertising campaigns. She introduces to the Polish market, among others, youth prepaid telephony Heyah: stickers, billboards and graffiti with a mysterious red paw flood the streets. Guerrilla marketing combined with a television budget is a success: in eight weeks, the brand unknown to anyone attracts a million users. "This was my springboard for further career", she admits.

"I have turned off the fear of change"

After a decade and achieving the maximum of what she wanted, Michalska leaves the agency and becomes the marketing director at Polkomtel. And again she finds herself at a moment of dynamic development, this time not in the creative industry but in telecommunications. In the year when Michalska starts working at Plus, Adam Glapiński, today's president of NBP, takes over as CEO. Michalska brings creativity and courage to the conservatively managed company, at that time with a significant share of the State Treasury's capital.

Then, on the client's side, she co-creates unique Polish commercials featuring the Mumio cabaret. The duo of quirky salesmen conquers Poland. This is the last breath of television as universal and mass entertainment, and at the same time with intelligent humor. Soon, user-generated content will dominate the media space, and short ad-sketches with absurd humor performed by Mumio will be replaced by clips on YouTube. In 2007, when Michalska joins Polkomtel, YouTube alone, the leading 2.0 medium, used as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000.

After five years, Jowita Michalska leaves Polkomtel, which was bought by Zygmunt Solorz as a result of the largest European transaction in 2011. Michalska completely changes the industry and at the urging of her former boss joins the Polish Energy Group.

– I am excited about what is new, I have absolutely no resistance to changes – she declares in the conversation.

She has been working there for two years and for several more she does not stay anywhere longer than a year. She is constantly revolving in the corporate world, but she is already setting up her first foundation, which will become the project of her life in a few years.

"I really wanted to be a mom, it was the dream of my life."

– Until my daughter was born, I didn't have such awareness of the choices I make, I rather chose from the available options. But when Jagoda came into the world, I completely redefined myself – says Michalska. – I think time works in favor of women, who with age understand themselves better, become more assertive, better understand their talents and needs.

She is increasingly fascinated by technology and its possibilities, and she lacks a sense of mission in her current job. A new idea for herself is slowly sprouting in her – a philanthropist. After a year, she knows that she will never return to the corporation. Finally, she puts everything on one card, reinvents herself for the second time and in 2014 establishes the Digital University Foundation. Having a lot of contacts from her previous career, she painstakingly builds another brand, this time her own.

Change is not easy. As a marketing director, she spent the company's money, suddenly she has to earn it for her own actions. In the corporation surrounded by a support system, she returns to the starting point: she has to write a presentation for herself, arrange a meeting. Some old acquaintances forget about her existence overnight, friendships are verified. When she no longer represents a large corporation, her emails often remain unanswered. But Michalska does not give up, after a year the Foundation begins to get back on track, and she pays herself the first salary, although incomparably lower than the one she had before.

She starts with educational projects for schools and workshops for business. After 9 years, Jowita Michalska is everywhere, she emerges as a leading popularizer of technology in Poland. She speaks at several conferences a year, is happy to give interviews, engages in countless initiatives and employs a total of 25 people in the foundation and the company, almost all women. She becomes Businesswoman of the Year, receives the title of Digital Shaper, finally she establishes the Tech Disruptor award for the most promising innovators. Among the jury members are investors and entrepreneurs: Sebastian Kulczyk, Supreet Singh Manchanda or Leesa Soulodre.

When I ask her how to gain respect in an industry dominated by men, she says it requires courage and self-confidence. She tells me that the corporate world she grew up in was surprisingly equal, only in the tech industry does she notice a significant lack of women in high positions. But she is not afraid to be one of the few women in the room. She has a thick skin, she reacts to mansplaining with calm:

– Of course, sometimes it happens that some man thinks he needs to tell me what blockchain is, and after the second sentence I already hear that he doesn't know himself, but this happens less and less often – she laughs.

"What interests me most in people is the intellectual code"

Michalska does not hide her private life. On Instagram, she posted a picture with her partner along with an intimate post: "I always chose interesting men, but all my previous relationships were difficult and required a lot from me - sacrifices, neglecting my needs, giving up my ambitions... (...) But now I have a friend with whom I like to spend time". Her partner is a Greek, a distinguished physicist, she says proudly, an expert in earthquakes and above all, he impresses her intellectually.

"In my life, it's a bit like I pull all the strings myself."

Michalska likes to have everything under control, and juggling so many balls, she has every minute planned:

– I'm in a long-distance relationship and for it to work, we have a shared Excel sheet, written out until the end of the year, where and when we can meet.

She meticulously takes care of her health: gets up at 5 am, meditates, takes cold showers, regularly checks her health, supplements, follows a planetary diet and trains according to an individual plan.

– Genetic tests showed me, among other things, my sensitivity to coffee. I know exactly how many cups of coffee I can drink, until when it is healthy for me, and when it will disrupt my sleep quality - she says.

She follows the increasingly popular in the USA longevity movement (longevity). Its advocates, such as Andrew Huberman or David Sinclar, believe that appropriately selected behavioral protocols, pharmacology, and advanced diagnostics can stop the internal biological clock, or at least radically slow its pace.

Michalska often interjects Californian start-up jargon during the conversation: work-life integration, holistically, biohacking. She is the Polish ambassador of Singularity University, co-founded by the controversial futurist and promoter of transhumanism ideas from Silicon Valley, Ray Kurzweil. He predicted that by 2045 people will be able to connect with machines and achieve immortality thanks to technologies such as brain-computer interfaces.

The Singularity group promotes the philosophy of its founder, who believes that progress in fields such as biotechnology and artificial intelligence will radically change our understanding of humanity. The flagship program of Singularity University for leaders, which takes place in a luxury hotel in California, costs 65 thousand zlotys and promises a "transforming change" in 5 days. Kurzweil himself belongs to the eccentric group of ultra-rich residents of Silicon Valley promoting immortality, and in the meantime cryogenics, co-creating the transhumanist movement. The evangelist of the group is the well-preserved 73-year-old artist Natasha Vita-Moore, whom Michalska invited a few years ago to Poland for the Masters&Robots conference.

In a 2015 text, Aleksandra Przegalińska called them a sect, professing technology as a new secular religion. Voices critical of the cult from Silicon Valley point to the unevenly distributed technological progress, to which most of humanity does not have access due to lack of resources or time. Hence the mission of Jowita Michalska: she deeply believes in education and building awareness among people. Disciplined and persistent, she does not accept excuses:

– When it comes to time, I am ruthless: look at your calendar, go through all the things you do during the day. There is definitely something there that can be thrown out. If someone tells me they don't have time, it means they don't want to – she argues.

Being a mother of a teenager and the president of Digital University, she still has time to write. She is just finishing her first book about the future of education, she wants to teach. Future-oriented, she doesn't look back, she is just reinventing herself for the third time: as an author.