Living a Life of Significance, with Victoria Bulgakova

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Victoria (Vika) Bulgakova is the designer, owner, and maker behind the Swanky Crow jewelry brand and internationally exhibiting award-winning artist. At the age of 42 she left her successful corporate career in New York, moved to Michigan to attend the MFA program in Metalsmithing at Cranbrook Academy of Art, and established her studio practice in Detroit upon graduation. She had no prior metalsmithing experience and no formal art education when she started this journey.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Two major values that drive Vika’s work are beauty and sustainability. Sustainability as a multi-faceted concept pertaining to every aspect of our lives: our personal and professional relationships, our careers, our physical and mental health, our environment, to name a few. How do we make choices that will sustain, nourish, and fulfill us long term?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">And she strongly believes that talent is overrated.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Vika holds an MFA degree from Cranbrook Academy of Art, an MA in Communications and a BA in English from NYU, and Classical Piano degree from Mariupol Music College in Ukraine, her homeland where she lived until immigrating to the US at the age of 20.</span></p> <p><strong>What You Will Learn:</strong></p> <ul> <li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><span style= "font-weight: 400;">What life was life growing up in totalitarian, Ukraine</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><span style= "font-weight: 400;">Why being a political refugee wired Vika to take a stable “survival” job</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><span style= "font-weight: 400;">How Vika applied her English degree towards a corporate career in technology</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><span style= "font-weight: 400;">The difference between genius and talent </span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><span style= "font-weight: 40