DAVID ŠKVAŘIL Role: People and Customer Care, Partnerships Area: Finance Employer: Fondee;  former: Future Port, Air Ventures, BCG, MALL pay, Alza What can I help my mentee with? how to be active outside of school  outline what different roles in companies look like self-development    LinkedIn profil

David picked up a lot of extracurricular activities right after starting his freshman year at UCT. As he says himself, he had this twisted idea at the time that studying was not enough and he wanted to try everything that tempted him. He joined the student associations IAESTE and ESN and found a part-time job in a recruitment agency. "It just seemed important to me to do something, so I picked up quite a lot quite randomly. I figured I'd somehow make it work, and if I didn't, I'd at least give it a try and see what I enjoyed." Of his student activities, he most enjoyed being involved in IAESTE, working with companies and organizing the fair; he stayed in the association for three years. But at the same time, after completing his freshman year at FPBT, he realized that he was more attracted to other fields and transferred to CTU, where he studied economics.

During his studies, he completed an internship at a marketing agency and then tried out the things he had learned in practice at Alza, where he focused mainly on online advertising. Another role he tried was as an ambassador at the Boston Consulting Group. He organized various events to help promote the company to students. At the same time, David started working at a small investment fund that looked for start-ups that made sense to invest in. It was mostly about working with data and communicating with people from startups. Another student position was as a coordinator in healthcare and finance for Future Port Prague, a technology festival at the Prague Exhibition Centre. David began to enjoy the field of finance, so his next experience was first working for Skip Pay and then for the investment platform Fondee, where he spent 3 years.

"The fact that I've changed so many different environments wasn't because I had a grand plan of what I wanted to learn. As a student, you really have a lot of options and it only costs you a little bit of time to try them out. So I tried things that appealed to me and where I could learn something new, and that made me realize what I really enjoyed, what made sense to me at the time, and where I really wanted to work." David currently works as a Business Developer / Delivery Manager at the start-up grid.online, which focuses on more efficient use of urban logistics.

He knows both sides of mentoring himself and says he has moved along his own path and learned new things through it. He looks forward to being able to help his mentee in the same way, plus he enjoys meeting new people who are tuned in to the same way he is.