People of ZELENKA – Daniela Skačanová

Daniela is an experienced project manager who puts her wide range of abilities and skills to work as the leader of our English department.  She recently celebrated five years at our company. And boy was it a change for her at the start!

“On that Sunday I moved from Košice in Slovakia here to Zlín in the Czech Republic, and then right on Monday I started at Zelenka. So my first impressions from the new job were mixed with impressions from a new city and a new country. They were some big changes, but fortunately they all turned out to be positive.”

Daniela’s fond recollections of her beginnings are also thanks to a friendly team that made them easier. “The team that I joined had a fantastic leader, Pavla Oharková. Her approach made my training period easier. I was also surrounded by great teammates, who are now my very good friends. Going to work soon became also spending time with friends. What more could you ask for?”

❓ Was everything really so sunny right from the start?

It was a challenge. I had to improve at handling stress and at multitasking and at the same time enter almost intimate relations with my
computer, which was not exactly my strong point before. But let’s not go overboard, when it comes to my PC, I am still its No 2. The most
important person for my computer is our IT guy Jiří.

❓ In what positions have you worked for Zelenka?

I started out as a junior project manager. After about a year I started helping my team leader Pavla with training new hires, and I gradually
became her go-to person for everything. At the beginning of 2021 when she started her parental leave, I stepped in to lead the English
department, which I’m leading to this day.

❓ As the head of project team, you have a number of tasks and responsibilities. Which ones do you enjoy the most?

Easy question! It’s the actual leading-the-team. I’m happy when my management solutions ‘make life easier’ for the people under my wing.

❓ Do you consider “making life easier” to be your greatest work accomplishment, or would you choose something else?

To be specific on that, I’ll have to go back to 2021. At the end of the year a client turned to us offering cooperation on translating movie and
TV subtitles in their own translation tool. They had a number of requirements, and the most important for them, of course, was our ability
to handle large volumes in short deadlines. We didn’t do subtitling much at that time, and we basically didn’t know the tool itself at all. So
I took it on and reaped the full fruits of my experience in project management. Not only did we successfully launch cooperation with this new customer, we also brought many of our translators a new supply of attractive work. After a while our sales representative and I visited this client in Zagreb, and the meeting was very pleasant, even cordial.

❓ One can gain a lot from experiences like that and use such opportunities to change and grow. Do you have any sort of motto on your road through life?

I don’t have one specific motto that would capture my whole life philosophy. But out of the general phrases you hear, I like ‘live and let live’, because it calls for us to be tolerant and aware of both our own living space and that of people around us. Recently as I was watching John Wick 4, besides a lot of other great quotes, I was really interested by the phrase ‘How you do anything is how you do everything’. The authors of this phrase were not, of course, Hollywood scriptwriters (I guess that’s why it’s so good).

❓ You’ve worked on subtitles for movies and shows, and it’s a phrase from John Wick that caught your ear. Are movies and shows  something you enjoy in your free time too?

Yes, definitely! I’m a faithful fan of a number of films and TV shows, subscriber to streaming services, and a ‘couch potato’. But I also love
fantasy literature, which I sadly have less time for than before because of my job. Last but not least I’m trying to dust off my violin playing - I studied violin as a child. But that’s a very long journey.