Tina Ruseva is the CEO of Mentessa, an AI-powered platform for skill-based learning and collaboration, and the initiator of the Big & Growing conference, the largest event focused on the future of work in the DACH region.

You often speak about the Future of Work. What is one belief about work and leadership that you think needs to be challenged more urgently?

Leadership used to be based on two things: knowing more than the people around you, and holding the power to decide. Neither holds up when everyone has a smart assistant in their pocket that can think and act on your behalf. If AI can answer any question, research a topic in seconds, draft a diplomatic email even when you're angry, brainstorm different ways through a problem or formulate a go to market strategy — then knowing is no longer the bottleneck. Judgment is. Execution is. Community is. The belief I'd most urgently challenge is that the person with the most answers should lead. When answers are cheap, the rarer thing is knowing which one is worth acting on. What becomes harder is uniting people around a common purpose, organizing effort in one direction, giving them confidence in the lack of certainty, building a community that supports each other rather then individuals competing. 

Many people associate leadership with certainty. In your experience, what role do vulnerability and self-doubt play in becoming an effective leader? 

Honestly? The more I know, the less certain I feel — and I've stopped apologizing for that. For a long time I thought doubt was the thing I had to hide to be taken seriously, especially as a woman in rooms full of men who sounded sure. Now I think it's the opposite. My doubt means I'm actually looking at how hard the decision is, I am actually willing to create the best possible outcome. So the leaders I trust aren't the ones with all the answers — they're the ones who can say "I don't know yet, but we're going to move anyway, together." My job isn't to pretend I can see the whole road. It's to get people moving when none of us can see it, and to give them strength when they stop believing in themselves. That's being a connector, not a controller. And you can't connect from behind a mask. You can only do it form a place of vulnerability.

You work at the intersection of business, policy, and societal change. How do you stay optimistic and action-oriented when progress feels slower than the challenges we face?

Honestly, I think you have to be optimistic about the future — otherwise, what's the point? It is a choice. Two things help. The first is people: I make sure to stay close to people from very different backgrounds and views, because that's the only way to keep yourself out of a bubble. Life is rich and people incredibly different and resourceful. It's hard to be pesimistic when you are constantly revealing to yourself how many more solutions are out there than you would ever have thought about yourself alone. The second is data. I read a lot of history and biographies, or listen to podcasts such as "No such thing a s a fish" or "Hörsaal" — because looking back or forward with science is the fastest way to remember how far we've actually come. A hundred years ago, women in Germany couldn't vote. Roughly a third of all children used to die before the age of five. Global life expectancy has more than doubled in a century! So when progress feels unbearably slow, I remind myself that it almost always does in the moment — and that it's people who decided not to accept the world as it was who moved it. I'd rather be one of them than one of the people who gave up early.

Throughout your career, was there a moment when you consciously chose growth over comfort? What did that decision teach you?

Many times. And I'd be lying if I said I never regretted it in the weak moments — I have. But those decisions always paid off in the long run: with more opportunity, more confidence, and more results. The one I think about most: after my first startup, I went back to the workplace as an employee, and I had five genuinely wonderful years. Six weeks of vacation each year, real work-life balance, time for my family and my hobbies. It was comfortable in every way. And then one day it hit me — I'd become an entrepreneur in the first place because I watched my mother be one. She was my proof that it was possible. And if I wanted my daughters to have that same role model, I couldn't give it to them from the sidelines. I had to get back on the playground. So I did. What it taught me is that comfort and growth rarely live in the same place — and that the most important things I've built, I built because someone was watching me decide.

The conversation around success is changing. How do you personally define success today compared to ten years ago?

Success used to be about external validation — pay, the things you could buy with it, the title on the door. Then we walked straight into a collective mental health crisis and the overload with the perpetual disruption, and I think a lot of us rewrote that definition. For me, success today is much simpler, and much harder to fake: are you healthy? Are you at peace with yourself? Are you surrounded with people you actually like, and — only half joking — do you have great plans for the weekend? The people I look up to now aren't the ones with the most impressive titles. They're the ones who are genuinely well. That used to look like settling. Now I think it looks like winning.

What does #lovewhatyoudo mean to you — especially in a world where work is becoming increasingly fast-paced and constantly connected?

I'm over 40 — and let's be honest, this is the age where a lot of people quietly give up on loving their work. A lucky few still light up when they talk about their jobs. The rest are disappointed, and frankly they have every right to be, given how we still work and lead in most workplaces. So for me, #lovewhatyoudo isn't a slogan — it's resistance. It's refusing to let the pace and the noise strip the joy and curiosity out of an ordinary working day. It is not naive to smile, and it is not weak to be friendly. And in a world that's always on, always faster, I've come to believe the real practice isn't loving what you do, it's loving how you do it - with grace, courage, and at your best.

As someone who moves between leadership roles, conferences, and everyday life, what are the essentials in your bag that help you feel prepared and confident throughout the day?

Honestly? The New Work bag changed my life. People who know me know that I just didn't carry one — I never believed it was worth lugging a bag around all day. They were always either too big and heavy, or so small you couldn't fit more than a phone. So I went without and carried the phone in my pocket, constantly missing a charger, a pen, and other useful things at events or on business trips.

Women have always been the ones who carry things — and I don't just mean the water bottle and the backup lipstick. We carry the schedules, the emotional weather of a room, the thing everyone else forgot #mentalload. We're expected to have it all and hold it all, often without anyone noticing the weight. So when I finally found a bag that fits my actual life — sunglasses, water, lipstick, everything in its place — knowing you have what you need, it felt almost symbolic. Something designed for a woman who moves through the world on her own terms, instead of asking her to shrink her life to fit it.