Radar & Learning
Systemic Coaching
Victoria Stoyanova
What I'm currently doing
I work at the intersection of industries, ideas and people. My work is focused on magnifying the impact companies and individuals can have by designing new ways for them to interact and collaborate. In an increasingly interconnected and interdependent world, we need to actively participate in and co-design the broader systems we are part of.
I run Malleable, a systems design practice focused on community architecture, interdisciplinary team design and innovation programs and ecosystems. I have had the chance to work with the BBC, Techstars, EY, Microsoft Ventures, Hyper Island and the Victoria & Albert museum.
"Eventually everything connects - people, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se."
I also run the London chapter of CreativeMornings - a monthly event for the creative community taking place in 180+ cities globally. In my free time I curate interdisciplinary events and host a podcast called The Work We Do. I'm also an adviser at Second Home and mentor at Techstars, Escape the City and Out Of Office Hours. I'm a proud member of incredible forward thinking communities such as Sandbox and The Point People and a Fellow at the Royal Society of Arts and On Being.
I have spent the last decade building communities. It all happened accidentally, as the best things often tend to. I moved to London in 2013 to launch Mother at The Trampery - an experimental collaboration between digital agency Mother and co-working company The Trampery where blue chip companies and tech startups worked together for a year.
In 2014 I joined Startup Weekend (now Techsters) as Regional Manager, which lead to an incredible two-year adventure of building sustainable startup communities around the world.
I then joined workspace Second Home as Director of Community and Culture before launching my own company, Malleable, in 2016.
What interests and excites me
I've become increasingly interested (to not say, obsessed) with the way work is changing. While "the future" of work is a popular topic, I think that it's the present of work that is truly fascinating. So much is changing, but these new phenomenons are so new and marginal that we're lacking the vocabulary to describe them. I'm extremely fortune to be surrounded by ambiguous people who are experimenting with what "work" and "life" means to them. I have started recording conversations with them in the form of a podcast (The Work We Do) as it's the narratives of the present that are creating "the future" of work.
Through these conversations, I've discovered that as a generation, we need to embrace the feeling of "transition" and being in a liminal space. I also found a new term to describe the new types of careers that so many of us are experimenting with: modular. The same way that systems thinking changes how we look at innovation, our careers are also becoming systems were our interest and expertise (modules) can be constantly combined and recombined as in new ways.
Some questions that I'm currently exploring:
What systems do we need to design to support and grow individuals with modular careers?
Can we design a macro layer of interaction between different communities to ensure we're continuously learning from different disciplines and generations?
How can we help large organisations build a more flexible culture that understands and supports the new work ethos that's emerging?