Arina Shakurova works as a Mechanical Designer. Her way of working is all about learning with enthusiasm, driven by genuine love for acquiring knowledge. Arina feels the most like home when being in the nature, and her biggest goal in life is to learn how to speak to people’s hearts.

"What makes being a mechanical designer truly fascinating is the moment when your digital creations come to life in the real world. Currently, I'm working on a project where our client is building the product in their lab. Witnessing a mere 3D model from a screen becoming a tangible, functional machine is breathtaking.

Laptops, which engineers use to design products and create technical drawings typically have rather small screens. Therefore, many times I couldn't precisely imagine the size of the machine I had designed. But when I step into the lab, see the machine being built in its full scale and know my input made it happen – I feel all the effort was worth it."

"That’s a pretty fun story actually. During my school years, I was on a philology path, immersed in history, literature and languages. Even though relatives around me, my father, aunt and both grandfathers were all engineers, it definitely wasn’t on my radar.

When I decided to leave my homeland and move to Finland, I found myself at a crossroads. Only two bachelor's programmes were available in English: engineering or business. I decided I could tackle the latter on my own. Engineering seemed more appealing since it opened new horizons for me. It was a way to shape the world and make a concrete impact. That's how I ended up in the path of a mechanical designer. Life, it seems, has its own way of leading us back to our roots."

"One of the greatest skills I have learnt from my colleagues is to be brave to talk aloud my opinions. This has not always been second nature to me. I used to hold back, doubting whether my ideas, as a relatively young team member, would hold weight among colleagues with years of experience. However, my colleagues were the ones who encouraged me to break free from self-doubt and share my thoughts without hesitation.

I find it so important that in Huld you’re not seen as “only an employee”, but also a person. Therefore, you can both develop as a professional and as a human."

"I’m proud of us all being different. We all have different personalities and different skills. And that’s what makes us a well-balanced team – we endorse each other's strengths and cover each other's weaknesses. Even under a rough schedule we always stay supportive and try to share knowledge with each other."

"I actually have a dream I’m now working on. I don’t want to open up much about it yet. But broadly speaking, I want to build a place where people will be able to grow physically, mentally and spiritually, and connect with their families and other people.

I still feel anxious about cherishing such a huge dream and sharing about it. But as I said earlier – I am learning to be brave and share my ideas!

In the beginning, I didn’t know how to even start working on it, but now I’m taking steps towards the end goal, little by little. And as Walt Disney once said: If you can dream it, you can make it. And that’s what I will do."