Behind the scenes – Alen Kubat

Alen joined Civitta as a Junior Consultant, working from the Bosnia and Herzegovina office that opened and grew rapidly this summer.

I have a bachelor’s degree in International Relations and European Studies, and I’m finishing my master’s in Peace and Security Studies.

From there, my path included an internship at the International Organization for Migration, a month-long US programme where I was one of ten selected from Bosnia to study strengthening local communities through democratic values, and a nine-month traineeship at the Centre for Security Studies.

After a stint as a project coordinator elsewhere, I found my way to consulting – and to Civitta.

Honestly, I didn’t expect to like the job this much. I’ve always been a realist about people who say they “love” their work, but here, it genuinely went above my expectations – it plays to my strengths while giving me room to grow.

The clearest surprise has been how much weight a junior’s opinion actually carries. In most places I’ve worked, being a junior or an intern put you in parentheses: easily replaceable, valued mainly for output rather than perspective.

Here, when the team came together for the office opening, they actively asked for junior input on live projects and future ideas for the company. I’d genuinely never experienced that before, and it made me far more enthusiastic about staying long-term.

I’ve also sat in on strategy meetings, and our associate partner, Perica Vrboski, sat me down early on to ask what fields I was interested in and what kinds of projects I wanted to work on. I’m actually included in decisions about my own work, which went beyond what I expected.

It’s been interesting to see how quickly trust with local stakeholders can be built. Even though the Bosnia office has only been open a bit more than half a year, stakeholders have already started reaching out to us rather than the other way around – partnerships forming without us having actively pitched for them.

After I joined, right after our manager Mustafa Mujkić, we were still a small, mostly remote team for a while, without a full picture of what was coming – which was, if I’m honest, a bit lonely.

Everyone else in the company had their own established office and community, and we didn’t yet. So when the rest of the team finally arrived and we all met in person, it felt genuinely freeing.

You finally connect the faces to the names from the group chats and calls, and that makes you want to do the best work you can – not just for the company, but for the people you’re doing it alongside.

It’s human nature to want to be liked, especially in a junior role where you’re trying to make a good impression and show you’re professional and efficient – particularly with how unstable the job market feels right now. My real fear going in was simpler: just being myself is a risk in a professional environment, because there’s always a chance people won’t respond well to that.

That risk paid off. In the three months I’ve been here, I’ve never once felt “less than” or treated as just a junior – which, having worked since I was 17 – I don’t take for granted. I’ve had jobs where a junior or intern title was used to justify overworking someone or letting deadlines slide unfairly.

At Civitta, you get to know the person behind the position – their lives, their families, their aspirations – and that’s what makes you want to do the job well, not just for the company, but for the people you’re doing it with.

Being young, I think most of us want a challenge and want to prove our capability as early as possible, and I’m no different. What I appreciate about Civitta is that it actually gives you the privilege of choosing your direction, rather than deciding it for you.

Right now, what matters most to me is being included in different types of projects across different fields, so I can figure out where my own interests genuinely lie – and so Civitta can see that too.

That said, I’m genuinely open to anything – including working longer-term in another international office. Another thing about Civitta is that no idea is dismissed here, which makes it easy to picture myself growing well beyond where I am now, whether that’s in this office, a new sector, or a new geography entirely.