A psychologist who went
into public administration —
and back.

I graduated in psychology from the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade in 1989. Twenty years later, when I had to decide whether to continue in clinical practice or join the team that was then building a new human resources management system in Serbia's state administration — I chose the second path.

From 2003 to 2020 I worked at the Ministry of Public Administration and at the Human Resources Management Service of the Government of Serbia — for the last fourteen years as Head of the Personnel Selection Department. It was a generational reform: the introduction of competencies as the foundation of recruitment, structured interviews, electronic applications, the automated vacancy-filling system. What is standard across Serbian public administration today — had to be conceived, legislated, and rolled out across hundreds of institutions.

In 2020 I left the civil service and founded C&C — Coaching and Consulting. Since then I have worked as an expert on international projects (KPMG, EY, Council of Europe, UNDP, ILO, SCTM), as a professional coach, and as a psychologist in private practice.

What connects these three roles is one thing: people, not systems. Systems exist so that people inside them can do good work. When I work on a competency framework for thousands of civil servants, I think about how a specific person — in a specific municipality, in a specific role — will be assessed fairly. When I work with someone in coaching or counseling, the principle is the same: the model isn't what matters, the person across from me does.