Maria Milusheva is the Chief Creative Officer of Bulgaria’s largest communications group, the founding mother of its first femvertising agency, a brand building lecturer, a TEDx speaker on female anger and, generally, a difficult woman.

Selected as the only Bulgarian in Cannes Lions’ See It Be It programme, she didn’t stop there – and brought it home. Thirteen events, 71 speakers from six continents, all travelling to Bulgaria to talk about women, power, invisible labour, glass ceilings and cliffs, and what it actually takes to build a career when you don’t have a wife at home.

She also launched the Balkans’ first femvertising conference, The XX Factor, and initiated the first national study on Bulgarian women, unsettling enough to earn a recurring segment on national television.

She has declared boredom a personal goal. She has not yet achieved it.