Our Team
Vladka (Kocheshkova) Sokolova
Co-founder and Managing Director
To Vladka, translation is more than a passion, it is a vocation. She acquired a Bachelor’s degree in English philology and a European Master’s degree in Translation.
After graduating, she spent two years in China, teaching at high schools. Then she worked as a lecturer at a Bulgarian university, until she felt her calling again, and returned to translation. She established long-term relationship with major LSPs and today she is proud of her success as a linguist.
She is very fond of the team and believes that teamwork is key to success. Vladka states that acquiring talent for the company is a major asset. She also draws inspiration from the unlimited business possibilities and highly values the sense of freedom this credo offers in terms of development.
In her free time, Vladka likes to watch old classic movies with her 13-year-old daughter. On Sundays she applies her talent to translating Christian Orthodox literature. She loves her cats, a grey British Shorthair and a white Scottish Fold.
To cap this summary, we’ll dub her these three things: a heavy drinker of green tea Chinese style, and old-fashioned romantic who dislikes the word ‘romantic’, and a sore loser at chess.
Ivan Sokolov
Co-founder and Director of Operations
Ivan has a Bsc in Automation Management and, before founding VIAX with Vladka, he worked as an IT specialist. In addition to his managerial functions, he oversees all technical aspects of our work, and he does so comfortably from the height of his 192 cm. (He’s the tallest in the office and perhaps in the whole building.)
Ivan is a perfectionist, so he’s often focused on what we need to improve. But that doesn’t keep him from being proud of the team he and Vladka have assembled, and of the company’s progress so far. In his free time, Ivan plays for an amateur football team. He also loves metal, so if you’re looking for a birthday gift for him, he’ll be happy to get some band merch or something for his guitar. His humour easily distracts us when our faces are buried in our monitors, and his efficiency guides us through every challenge at work.
Stefaniya Chehlevska
Marketing Director and Business Development
Stefaniya is one of the solid pillars in VIAX’s foundation. She works on various language-related services, does research and develops the VIAX portfolio. She loves the challenge of transmitting the client’s message in a creative way. At VIAX, she truly appreciates the management’s numerous ideas that are yet to be explored.
Before getting on board the VIAX ship, she worked as a marketing manager in several international companies. Stefaniya has degrees in English Studies, International Business and Marketing, and Digital Marketing. She has travelled to quite a few places, from numerous European countries to the UAE and China on yearly visits.
Outside her work in the company, she is training to be a dry-stone waller and is one of the founders of the Dry Stone Walling Association of Bulgaria. In her spare time, she enjoys the pages of a good society and culture magazine, constructor and balance games, automata toys, and building complicated LEGO structures with her son.
Vasil Pavlov
Project Manager
Vasil loves poetry. He says he is a ‘candidate for a poet’ because he published his collection of verses on his own. However, he is proud he has several poems published in renowned literary periodicals. This of course means that we have to include a few direct quotes from him in this summary. Here’s a favourite: “Having years of experience as an editor and a journalist under the belt, I have a sharp, if bespectacled, eye.”
Vasil has a Master’s degree in linguistics and a qualification to teach Bulgarian language and literature, as well as Russian language and literature, from the University of Shumen. The university, according to many of his attendants, is the heir of the Preslav Literary School, the gem of Bulgaria’s medieval enlightenment. It developed the earliest version of the Cyrillic script and gave rise to some of the most popular Bulgarian writers.
Vasil was a journalist for the final years of local newspapers in our city, before the Internet took over. Shortly afterwards, he entered the translation industry as an editor. In the next few years, he encountered a flock of CAT tools, a beehive of issues you could have with them, and a high tide of deadlines. The conquest continues now at VIAX, but on the project management side.
Maya Golemanova
Project Manager
Maya is undisputedly at home at the office. This doesn’t mean she can’t balance work and free time; it’s just that her work is well done and topped with a cherry: her smile. She’s one of those people who come to work early, have tasty snacks all over their desk, and leave a cardigan on their chair in the evening. She says she likes her colleagues, the ambience they create, and the office itself.
Maya is an experienced project manager. She gravitated naturally to the industry, having studied English since the age of 6. She holds a bachelor’s in English philology and a master’s in American culture and society. After studying in Germany for two years, she returned to Bulgaria and continued as an English teacher and freelance translator.
She has three cats. Each of them was going to be just a foster until another home was found for her… and each of them ended up staying forever. Maya also helps animal rescue organisations and has been a proud vegetarian for 20 years. Since childhood, she has been fascinated by Native American cultures; in fact, that was the first push for her to get into English as a child.
Ekaterina Markova
Project Manager
Katya is the newest addition to our team. She says she chose VIAX because here she could use the skills from her training and from her work abroad, and because she saw this as an opportunity for a job she would enjoy. She’s glad that VIAX welcomes young people and sees their potential, whether or not they have experience in the exact same field.
Katya studied in a specialised tourism high school, preparing to work in the hotel industry. Then she earned a master’s in international business. She was a student well-travelled: she did several European international exchange programs and worked in the USA in the summers. After graduating, she worked in tourism with French clients, then in accounting. Now with us, she has proven to be a quick learner, very resourceful and kind. Even the most experienced among us can rely on her help.
In her free time she practices yoga. She looks forward to a time when she will be able to travel freely again, setting her sights on Asia next.
Plamena Nikolova
Project Manager
Plami did not choose her career in localization. The career chose her. For the last 20 years, it has been her sweet spot handling multiple languages at a time, allocating tasks to professional linguists and monitoring the whole end-to-end localization process. Challenges are a part of the game, Plami states, and she loves figuring out how to overcome one.
She appreciates the VIAX team, the smooth in-house collaboration, and the sense of belonging. As a psychologist of communication-to-be, she knows just how important bonding within a team is. And once you have found bonding in any area of life, it is pure gold.
With a BA in Tourism, Plami loves the opportunity to observe other cultures and to communicate with natives across the globe. It goes without saying that she loves a good travel across borders, although she has not lived abroad.
Her heart is full of love for music and dance. There was even a time when Plami was a part of a professional Malambo dance team here in Varna. Now she attends salsa and bachata classes, while performing lady style choreographies at salsa festivals. For more details on the best Latin dances around, take our advice and just ask her.
She believes that kindness, good manners, and a positive attitude are pivotal in life. Combine this with some Latin dancing and you will be happy – she can promise you that!