From the Ashes of War to the Brownstones of Brooklyn | Aleksandra Scepanovic
Good Life Project
Jonathan Fields / Acast
4.5 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 12 February 2019
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Aleksandra Scepanovic was born into a nation soon to be at war.
Growing up in then Yugoslavia, she found herself entering adulthood in the middle of the Bosnian war. While she lived in the relative safety of Belgrade (at least in the early part of the war), she left to head into the heat of the war zone, on a quest to discover not just the highly-filtered stories being reported by a state-controlled media, but the truth on-the-ground.
Scepanovic joined local media efforts, became a reporter, then editor and analyst, where she spent years documenting and sharing what happened as her country divided itself, became decimated from violence, leaving so many lives destroyed and entire areas riddled with broken “Swiss cheese-like” buildings. The experience left her not only longing for truth, justice and peace, but also with a belief in architecture as a symbol of perseverance and the human need to rebuild and move on.
Aleksandra eventually made her way to New York, where she discovered a love of design and pursued a degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology. That program awakened her inner eye for detail, and also invigorated her passion for architecture and interiors. Blending the experience of seeing a brutal war destroy so many homes with her renewed passion to help people find and create beautiful homes, she co-founded Ideal Properties Group (https://ipg.nyc/), which has now grown into a leading residential real estate firm in New York's Brooklyn neighborhoods.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | My guest today, Alexandra Sapanovich, was born into a nation soon to be at war. |
| 0:08.8 | Growing up in then Yugoslavia, she found herself entering adulthood in the middle of the Bosnian |
| 0:14.0 | war. |
| 0:15.0 | And while she lived in the relative safety of Belgrade, at least in the early parts of |
| 0:18.1 | the war, she also felt like she needed to leave and head into the heart of the war zone |
| 0:23.3 | on a quest to discover the truth. |
| 0:25.8 | Not just the highly filtered stories being reported in a state-controlled media, but |
| 0:30.4 | the truth on the ground. |
| 0:32.0 | And she joined local media efforts, became a reporter, then an enter and analyst, where |
| 0:36.6 | she spent years documenting and sharing what was actually happening. |
| 0:40.6 | As her country literally split into pieces, became decimated from violence, leaving so |
| 0:46.2 | many lives destroyed and entire areas riddled with what she describes as Swiss cheese-like |
| 0:51.3 | buildings and neighborhoods. |
| 0:53.1 | And that experience left her not only longing for truth and justice and peace, but also |
| 0:58.3 | with a belief in architecture as a symbol of perseverance and the human need to rebuild |
| 1:03.7 | and move on. |
| 1:04.7 | Alexandra eventually made her way to New York where she discovered a love of design and |
| 1:09.6 | pursued a degree at FIT, that's fashion institute of technology here in the city. |
| 1:14.4 | And that program awakened an inner eye for detail and also kind of reconnected to her |
| 1:19.9 | passion for architecture and interiors and the idea of home and blending this experience |
| 1:25.7 | of seeing a root award destroys so many homes and homesteads and places that people called |
| 1:31.8 | and felt their home with a renewed passion to help people find and create beautiful |
... |
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