In an Art gallery, specifically in the Gallery of Jan Koniarek in Trnava, an interesting woman, who was tall, thin, elegant and completely rapt in exhibition, take the attention. At first, we didn’t dare to interrupt her, but in a while, she seemed to notice our hesitating and give us a little smile, so we pluck up courage and asked started talking to her.

Marketing manager Zuzana, 33, studied at the University of Economics, Faculty of Company Management, and now works as a marketing manager in one of Slovakia’s biggest company concerned to audit, tax and insurance, KPMG.

When she started her career there seven years ago, she worked in marketing team and her main task was expressly concerned about organizing events. She planned every party or every dinner, especially summer and Christmas parties for whole company, meetings for the company staff as well as all the trips for each department. She never thought that one day she will became the head of marketing department.

“I’m a hard worker, I’d say even a workaholic, and no matter how low I start, I always want to go higher and higher,” she says. “I’m rather patient, and was raised that way. But I have never dreamt about career as big as I have now, because no one from my family ever had big career, or the ‘right’ contacts, so I’m kind of proud of myself.”

Zuzana´s work is now oriented more to communication with media. She decides which information to give to reporters about the company jobs, and is also responsible for creating the marketing plan. Zuzana says that one of the most important things you need to become a marketing manager is to be responsible, creative, communicative and know everything about company you work for. You need to have an orientation in the media and public life as well.

After telling everything about her very successful job, there was definitely time for asking if everything in Zuzana´s life went as easy as her career. For the first time, she took a deep breath, and seemed to hesitate if to tell something more personal about her life.

Zuzana is not the only child in her family, but the first to attend university. This fact brings a flush of pride to their parents. When Zuzana left home to study economics at the university, she took along her parents’ hopes and dreams. Her parents posed as the modest background for her for the whole life: her father worked as a car engineer, her mother as a dressmaker.

But at the time when Zuzana reached 22, she learned she was pregnant and this medical report made her very upset. Especially the fact she was unmarried.

“At that time, I felt like I failed,” she says. “My parents weren‘t angry, but disappointed – and that was even worse. During the first month of my pregnancy, they didn’t even speak with me. But then they slowly started to cope with it.”

At least, with help from her parents and the father of her child, Zuzana didn’t give up. “After my daughter was born, my parents seemed to be very happy,” she says. “They were buying gifts for her, helping to look after her when I was in school. It was a rather beautiful time in my life. Without my parents, I couldn’t achieve what I achieved.”

When looking back to that period, Zuzana seems happy to have triumphed over those difficulties. She’s says she’s a stronger woman for it, with a nine-year-old daughter, Adriana, to show for it.

“When I was younger I was thinking that I should fullfill dreams of my parents, to become a successful, educated woman,” she says. “There was a lot of stress put on me. But now I see that my parents were hard on me only because they knew that I’m strong enough. Now I know that I can have both – a successful career, as well as the beautiful family.”

Zuzana has also gained wisdom from the experience.

“Life has its ups and downs, which we need to accept and learn from every experience we had – both personally and professionally,” she says. “For the future, I want to raise my daughter the best I can, and I will support her as my parents did support me, in every way. I also want to continue in my job, because it brings me a lot of satisfaction.”