Blagica (blah-gee-tsa) is an Emmy award winning entrepreneur, speaker and digital advocate. With a career spanning 15 years, she’s been on the forefront of the ever changing world wide web.
Blagica began her career at Giant Step, one of the first digital agencies in Chicago. While at Giant Step, Blagica assisted brands like Maytag, Energizer and Purina with their web activities. From there, she went to a brand new site looking to disrupt the travel category. That company was Orbitz, where Blagica joined pre-launch and was one of the first members of its in-house eMarketing team. After a dot com break studying French in Lyon, Blagica came back to the U.S. and joined one of the top lead generation and couponing companies, CoolSavings. While at CoolSavings, Blagica caught the entrepreneurial bug.
For three years, Blagica balanced consulting projects and speaking engagements while testing her chops with two of her own self-funded startups. In addition to these activities, Blagica was a member of the NBC5 Street Team, where she was awarded an Emmy for her New Media work. Blagica also spent time with the Chicago 2016 Olympic Bid Team, teaching them the principles of social media and digital marketing.
Blagica came back to the corporate space as the Vice President of Strategy for Edelman Digital. Here she led strategy for large brands such as Quaker, Kraft, Kimberly-Clark and True Value. After Edelman Digital, Blagica’s love of technology came calling. She joined Motorola Mobility (Google) as the Global Director of Social Media. Her work with Motorola was recognized by Crain’s Chicago Business as one of the top 10 Chicagoland companies ‘doing social media right’.
Today, Blagica is the principal behind Zlato Digital, a social media and digital marketing consultancy. She is also a Co-Chair of the Cook County New Media Council.