In my view, the only intelligence worth defending
is critical, dialectical, skeptical, desimplifying.
Susan Sontag | 1975
“Why?” and “What if?”
The two questions that govern most of my life. Simple, essential — yet dangerous.
One demands meaning, the other predicts consequences. One searches for reason. The other invents futures. Together, they can shape almost everything: decisions, relationships, ambition or fear.
I grew up in Poland, one of the “mandala countries” - circulating between hope and doubt, renewal and destruction, collapse and reinvention. I was born shortly before the Chernobyl disaster, and only a few years before communism fell in this part of Europe — and my country regained, for the first time in decades, the chance to become truly responsible for what it might become.
It took me years to realize that what once felt difficult or unstable was also formative. That environment shaped a mindset of openness, a constant search for improvement and change, an attentiveness to innovation, and a habit of critical thinking and never giving up.
My professional path has moved across sectors and disciplines. I have worked in international major labels within the phonographic industry, including EMI and Warner Music. I have been part of non-governmental organizations fighting for human rights, art, and sensitivity toward a better world. I have also worked within governmental institutions responsible for strategic decisions, research, and insight. Academically, I pursued a PhD investigating the complex relationships between personal human values, music, and the economy. My journey has been diverse, challenging, and deeply inspiring. And when it finally led me to the fields of foresight, trendwatching, critical thinking, and speculative as well as critical design, the dots began to connect.
In my research, I draw on a range of methods: statistical analysis and psychometrics, discourse analysis, critical theory, and qualitative approaches to gathering and interpreting data. My aim is to provide data-driven, strategic solutions to the complex challenges of our world — to contribute to the design of future social, cultural, and economic change. What fascinates me most is the question of how we can understand today — and the past — in order to meaningfully influence tomorrow.
