TED Community » Evangelina Cifliganec

About Me

Evangelina Cifliganec was born in 1981 in Radovish, Macedonia. She spent the first 12 years in her birth town where she finished 7th grade, always with honours scores and a natural interest for knowledge. The same high and somewhat 'geeky' standards in academics continued in her 8th grade when she moved to the capital Skopje. One thing that set her apart most from the others and impressed both peers and teachers was her ability to read and write poetry and prose. She won several local prizes and had small works published in national student magazines.

At the age of 13 Evangelina went to study at The American School in Switzerland, TASIS. Although she had passed exams to study at a prestigious high school in Skopje, she felt fortunate that her parents were willing to send her to experience an international boarding school and to get to know different ways of studying and other cultures, all difficult to afford in Macedonia.

Achieving outstanding results at the international school in Switzerland, at the end of her second year there Cifliganec was more confident with her English and went to study at St. Clare's College in Oxford. Her parents were not prepared to support her as much this time. For the second year of her International Baccalaureate in Oxford she was awarded a scholarship by the Oxford governors. She finished the International Bilingual Baccalaureate with higher subjects in English, Economics and Business & Organization. Oxford was also a place where she received many of the answers she asked and an environment which gave her a feeling of belonging and self-fulfilment.

In 2000 Cifliganec received a place at St. Hugh's College, University of Oxford, to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics, PPE. Evangelina was also interested a great deal in the world's problems and this degree best combined her interests. It was then at Oxford University when she started to most seriously think about the actual work she may do in future and which would make the best use of her abilities. A career as a writer became more and more a first choice for Cifliganec, as new ideas sprang, or perhaps old were being completed. The place at university was not easily earned and she took a gap year to decide. Evangelina used part of the time to work with the United Nations Development Programme at the UN headquarters in New York. The job was inspirational for her but the inspiration was best shown through her writing. She stopped her studies and wrote. From the UN to Oxford she brought the title of her written ideas, Happy Something.

Her original work with relentless search for truth is said to have touched the minds of many, and that makes Evangelina happy.