Who I am
… a communications and marketing professional based in Nottingham. My background is psychology, design, and marketing. My work is campaigns, brand, and content, built to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed. I studied how people think so I could design things they'd actually respond to. Currently: running the full communications function for a University of Nottingham wellbeing team that reaches 250,000+ students a month. Previously: e-commerce campaigns for Reiss, Victoria's Secret, and Burberry Kids at NEXT plc.
Time since coming to UK:
Not from here
I grew up in Bydgoszcz, Poland, and moved to Nottingham at 18 to study at the university. I didn't know anyone. I spoke English well enough. I kept my heart and mind open. I figured it out.
That particular experience, arriving somewhere new, building a life from scratch, learning to read a culture you weren't raised in, has probably shaped how I communicate more than any module I studied. You notice things differently when you're not from somewhere. Also - I love people watching.
What's assumed, what's said, what's left out. What makes something land or not land. That noticing is genuinely useful in any job, but even more so in comms and creative jobs.
I speak Polish natively, English fluently, German to an advanced level, and Spanish increasingly competently - daily lessons, with intent. Barcelona is the plan.
More than hobbies
My creative interests are promiscuous and I make no apology for it.
Photography feeds the composition instinct, which feeds the graphic design. Reading magazines, actual print ones, feeds the copywriting. Clay sculpture teaches you that form has to be earned. You can't think your way out of a bad decision with clay; you feel it. Painting is the only thing that genuinely turns the professional brain off. Interiors are a spatial design problem I've never stopped finding interesting. Rollerblading and dancing are the only contexts in which I stop analysing what I'm doing and just do it.
And it was like that since I remember it. As a kid, I always jumped from one hobby to the other - keyboard playing, skating, and whatever else my young mind could think of. I was very lucky to have parents who could make that happen, even if I was self taught with everything. But it also comes with a risk - not achieving top results in one specific area, just being good on average across the board. But that only helped me with being diverse, resourceful and flexible.
I try to create more than I consume. Deliberately. The commercial work stays honest when there's something else happening alongside it.
hobbies
work
my inspirations
my inspirations
my inspirations
my inspirations
Bang & Olufsen
Design / Product
A product that looks this considered makes you believe it sounds better before you've heard it. The form is the argument. B&O proves that aesthetics aren't decoration (or the only goal); they're a commercial position. Next to some Apple products, I consider their designs a great study on the principle - less, but intentional.
Uniqlo
Design / PR
The discipline of doing fewer things extraordinarily well. And building your image on it. Every season I look at their product line (and magazines!) I find something that teaches me about reduction and intention. It’s equally interesting to me how it went from being un-cool in Japan, to being so desirable in Japan and beyond. A lesson to be studied for sure!
Devil Wears Prada
Film / Career Advice
Not the fashion film everyone thinks it is. To me, it’s a story about the pursuit of excellence -what it demands, what it costs, and how it shapes you long before anyone knows your name. It’s about showing up fully for a role even when you’re at the very bottom, and understanding that reputation is built quietly, long before it’s rewarded.
I think often about something Anna Wintour once said: that chasing early success can be dangerous because it robs you of the time to learn the craft, understand the behind‑the‑scenes work, and most importantly, be mentored. Having someone to learn from can give you a head start that no shortcut or quick burst of attention ever could. She encourages young professionals to seek out mentors, work with people they admire, take their time, be direct, and prioritise the team over the individual. Mentorship, in her view, is a two‑way exchange that shapes both sides.
And in many ways, that’s the real wisdom I take from The Devil Wears Prada: beneath the couture and chaos, it’s a film about learning, guidance, and the people who push us toward our best work.
People who shape how I think
Steve Jobs
Not for the myth. For the understanding of human nature.
Were his ways of working justifiable? Probably not. But surely his admiration to excellence, precision, and the legacy he left behind are to be studied for generations. Not settling for the lowest hanging fruit has become my new northern star after reading his biography. At least for me, it’s better to be a bit crazy rebel who believes change is possible than going with the flow and being passive to changing circumstances. What is the merit in that?
The idea that a product should be a coherent experience from first touch to last use or that the packaging is part of the product, the retail environment is part of the product, the typeface in the manual is part of the product. That level of control is what I aspire to in brand design, even when the budget is 0.001% of Apple's.
Anna Wintour
Anna Wintour inspires me because she embodies a kind of disciplined creativity that feels increasingly rare. Yet she never stops emphasising the fundamentals - work ethic, clarity, mentorship, and taste.
What I admire most is her insistence that mastery takes time. She talks openly about the value of learning the craft from the inside out, absorbing the unglamorous parts, and surrounding yourself with people who challenge you to be better. It also shows to me how taste is a muscle that can be trained with the right exposure. Her leadership style: direct, decisive, but deeply invested in developing talent, reminds me that excellence isn’t just about personal achievement; it’s about elevating the people around you.
Wintour’s philosophy has shaped how I think about my own path: stay curious, stay committed, and don’t rush the process.
Rihanna
Jobs is about total creative control and world-building. Wintour is about disciplined taste and the long game of mastery. Rihanna is about insight as disruption. She didn't enter beauty knowing more about cosmetics than the incumbents. She knew her audience better. She knew what is lacking and what people need and want.
Fenty Beauty becoming a billion-dollar brand in under two years is not nothing. She inspires me because of how she built it. She entered a category she didn't grow up in, identified a gap the existing market had collectively agreed to ignore, and made that gap the brief. Forty foundation shades at launch wasn't inclusive marketing tick box but audience insight from market research and SM reviews. The beauty industry knew deeper skin tones existed. They'd just decided, decade after decade, that those customers didn't constitute a market worth designing for. She proved otherwise in about 48 hours.
What I take from that isn't just the disruption story, it's the methodology underneath it. Start with who isn't being served. Design from their reality. Surround yourself with people who know the craft better than you do, and give them enough trust to do it properly.
