Alumni Spotlight

How to be “Limitless”: Success Story of Daniel Dushmanov

18 May, 2021

As a Politics and Security major, Daniel Dushmanov, 2016, has a strong grip on not only political developments in the region, but beyond that. His professional background includes working in Media and Communications, Public Relations and IT. He is kindly sharing his success story with our Alumni Network.

In 2015, when I joined the OSCE Academy I already received 3 diplomas. The studies at the Academy was a timely step to boost my career and academic growth, and looking back I can surely state that it was the perfect time and place to be at.

First of all, I must admit that I already tried to enter the Academy in the past, but got through only in 2015. In such moments the words of Jack Ma come to mind. He was refused admission to the university many times and I agree with him, that you need to try and look for all available options if you see a clear goal. My goal was to successfully graduate from the Academy and get my diploma. Secondly, without tips and tricks such as fast reading technique or mind maps technique that I acquired at the university it would have been impossible to go through the studies. Third, I am thankful to the staff, professors and my classmates who created  the ‘chemistry’ with a cool learning, creative and engaging atmosphere in the class.
During my time in Bishkek, it was a huge challenge to balance thesis preparation and working part-time for Nazarbayev University. Skills I acquired at the Academy were very useful to me - reading and critically analyzing large amounts of information and its interpretation helped me a lot.

After graduation, I was promoted to the Manager position and successfully organized several major events, such as the Winter Olympic games flame lighting ceremony and many others. As a Marketing and Communication professional, I ran and jointly organized an Open House Day that attracted more than 5 000 visitors. Such kinds of tasks made me work and think in a new way. To manage such big events I used mind maps technique. I highly recommend you find and read Tony Buzan's book. Just read it and you will feel like a hero of the “Limitless” movie, who swallowed the NZT48 pill. This is my secret that I share with you.

In 2018 I was invited to work at the Astana Hub - a new international technopark for IT startups, as a Head of PR, Marketing and Events. It was a novice challenge for me. From budget planning to conceptualizing various projects and working with the Ministry of Digital Development, I was responsible for a multitude of initiatives. In parallel, I began forming my team of employees. I had to quickly study a lot of management literature. Not everything went smoothly, but the tasks that we faced, we performed well. As a result, the Ministry highly appreciated my work at the Astana Hub for the contribution to the development of the innovation ecosystem of Kazakhstan.

During stressful situations I understand that it is very important to think clearly and be able to disengage from the external environment. In that period of life, I remembered nights in the Academy, because I spent a lot of time on the books of self development, management and soft skills. I highly recommend Dan Kennedy, Reed Hastings, Jake Knapp, Leander Kahney.

Another great project that I initiated was no-code learning. I found that every tech entrepreneur faced a problem of building a quick and cheap minimum viable product - an application or website to be shown to potential investors. To hire a programmer is an expensive and lengthy process, and I discovered a new concept of no-code service, for example, Tilda or Bubble.io. Such kinds of web services allow one to make mobile apps like Twitter, Uber or Airbnb without any knowledge of modern coding languages. My idea was supported by the top management and we have trained over 30 people.

In December 2020, I joined “Astana Innovations” JCS as a Head of PR & International Relations. The organisation is actively involved in the development of cooperation between universities, scientific organizations and large technological enterprises, including foreign ones. This is a new chapter in my professional development and I hope to achieve more synergy between various organisations that strive to bring progress in our lives.

In conclusion, I want to say that studying at the Academy was full of romance and intoxicating knowledge. My MA Programme trained me well in analytics and big data processing, how to think strategically and ahead of time, and of course, it gave me valuable networking. Looking back, studying at the Academy gave me a margin of safety and a great boost in my career. As the trendy phrase goes, it accelerated my development in a short period of time for years to come. But everything changes and our knowledge becomes outdated very quickly. We must learn new things every day, as Steve Jobs once said “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

full-news

Back to list

Print version

X