Education & Continuous Learning

My formal education gave me the commercial and operational foundations I’ve built everything else on. What came after — the qualifications, certifications, and practical learning accumulated since moving into online marketing — reflects a deliberate approach to continuous development rather than a one-time credential.

Formal Education

Tourism Management

College Delta, Sofia, Bulgaria · Sept. 2007 – May 2009

My first qualification was in Tourism Management — a practical, operationally focused programme that gave me a grounding in business processes, client management, and service operations. It was the starting point for a career that took me across several countries and industries before I made the pivot into digital marketing.

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Formally recognised in Germany by IHK FOSA as equivalent to the qualification Kauffrau für Tourismus und Freizeit.

Business Administration (Bachelor’s Degree)

International Business School (IBS), Bulgaria · Sept. 2010 – Sept. 2015

I completed my Bachelor’s in Business Administration whilst working across sales and management roles — which meant the theory and the practice were always running in parallel. The programme covered business strategy, economics, and organisational management, and it’s the analytical thinking from this period that I still draw on when framing SEO work as a business case rather than a technical exercise.

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Formally recognised in Germany by the Kultusministerkonferenz (KMK) — Zentralstelle für ausländisches Bildungswesen, April 2020.

Language Education

Moving to Germany meant learning German from scratch as an adult whilst working — which is a different kind of discipline to classroom language learning. I completed many formal German language programmes before passing at C1 level.

Business German

BW Bildungswelt, Berlin, Germany · Sept. 2020 – Mar. 2021

Intensive German Course — C1 Level

ifa-Akademie, Stuttgart, Germany · Mar. 2021 – May 2021

German is now one of my working languages — I write, present, and run stakeholder meetings in German daily. Czech I speak at a conversational level, developed during the two years I lived and worked in Prague.

Qualification for Foreign Academics — BeuthBonus+

Berliner Hochschule für Technik (BHT), Berlin, Germany · Jun. 2020 – Oct. 2020

A supplementary qualification programme for international graduates entering the German job market, covering:

  • Career development, competency assessment and application coaching
  • Professional German language coaching and business writing
  • Media literacy and online reputation
  • Time and self-management
  • Intercultural communication in the workplace
  • Presentation and communication skills
  • German employment law fundamentals

Modular Qualification — Multimedia Marketing

COMCAVE.COLLEGE, Berlin, Germany · Jul. 2021 – Dec. 2021 · Overall grade: sehr gut (1.3)

A five-module qualification covering the full digital marketing stack, and the formal starting point of my shift into online marketing as a profession. Each module ran 210 teaching units:

  • Marketing & Purchase Decision Processes — marketing management, market research, the purchase decision process, marketing controlling
  • SEM Management — fundamentals of online marketing, SEO/SEM, SEM management in practice
  • Project Management & Coordination — project workflows, planning and control, team communication and leadership
  • Sales Promotion & Marketing — customer acquisition, CRM strategy across strategic, analytical, and operational layers, data warehousing and data mining, sales negotiation

    • SEO Fundamentals

    OMR Academy, Berlin, Germany · Jun. 2022 – Sept. 2022 · 10 weeks

    A structured introduction to SEO as a marketing discipline, covering how SEO fits within the broader marketing mix, keyword and content strategy, the relationship between technical SEO and content, on-page and off-page measures, user signals and KPIs, and core tools and setup. This was the formal starting point of my SEO-specific education, built on top of the broader digital marketing foundation from COMCAVE.COLLEGE.

    Google UX Design Professional Certificate

    Coursera — Google Career Certificates · Nov. 2022 – Aug. 2023 · Approx. 6 months at 10 hours/week

    A seven-course, hands-on programme developed by Google, designed to prepare graduates for introductory UX design roles by covering the full design process end to end — empathising with users, defining pain points, ideating solutions, building wireframes and prototypes, and testing for feedback. Courses completed:

    1. Foundations of User Experience (UX) Design
    2. Start the UX Design Process: Empathize, Define, and Ideate
    3. Build Wireframes and Low-Fidelity Prototypes
    4. Conduct UX Research and Test Early Concepts
    5. Create High-Fidelity Designs and Prototypes in Figma
    6. Build Dynamic User Interfaces (UI) for Websites
    7. Design a User Experience for Social Good & Prepare for Jobs

    View the app prototype →

    Ongoing Learning Since 2022

    Formal qualifications aside, the majority of my SEO development since 2022 has happened through practice, self-directed study, and direct exposure to high-level expertise. I follow Claneo Academy, OMR, SEO Südwest, Lily Ray, and Google Search Central as standing sources for staying current on SEO developments, Google updates, and industry trends — alongside ongoing courses in SEO, GEO, and AIO.

    One of the most valuable aspects of my current role has been the opportunity to work directly with Steffan D. and other experts in the field across a range of SEO projects. Working alongside someone with that depth of practical knowledge — on real problems, in real time — is a different category of learning from any course or certification, and it’s shaped how I think about both technical SEO and strategy in ways that are difficult to quantify but easy to see in the work.