By the time she turns 18, she will have already seen the beaches of Hawaii, the rainy sidewalks of London, the towering skyscrapers of New York City and the rolling hills of Serbia. In fact, Katarina Sapina has already seen a dozen or so more countries and states.
Sapina was born in Seattle, but shortly after, her family had to move back to Serbia. Sapina was raised in Europe until she was ready to enter school at age 5, when her parents took her back to the United States.
“Since I lived with my grandparents who didn’t speak English, my whole family always spoke Serbian to me. It’s my first, and at the time, was my only language,” Sapina said. “My parents knew that I was going to learn English when I started school anyways, so I only knew a few words of it when I started kindergarten. Luckily, I learned English pretty quickly once I entered school so it wasn’t an issue.”
Since she returned to America, Sapina and her family have taken every opportunity to continue to see the world throughout the years, which has allowed her to build up an impressive resume of the places she has traveled to.
“I’ve been to places all around Europe, as well as many different [US] states. I travel pretty much every single summer, because I have family throughout Europe and we like to see them.Traveling is just something I’ve done since a very young age and it’s always been very interesting to me. I love going to new places and seeing new cultures and learning new languages. Throughout my life going forward I want to travel as much as possible and continue to learn,” Sapina said.
Her mother, Gordana Sapina, has actively encouraged her daughter’s passion for exploration, because she sees the value being more cultured creates for her as she enters adulthood.
“To me, travel opens up horizons and it makes you more well rounded. You’re exposed to different cultures, so when I travel I try to take her with me as much as I can,” Gordana Sapina said. “When she gets to see so many different countries and places she gets exposed to so many types of people. You would never experience that stuff if you stayed in California all the time so I think that really helped her in so many ways.”
When looking for a career that could both support that love to sightsee and fit her personality, Sapina had lots of competing ideas to consider before landing on her current choice.
“My whole life I never really had one job that I always wanted to do. When I was younger, I wanted to be a writer, then later a teacher and then in the beginning of high school I wanted to go into law because I was told I would make a good lawyer. As I got older, I realized that wasn’t truly what I wanted to do, it was just what people thought I would be good at. I never really had a passion for it at all, and going to law school after university just sounded horrible. About a year ago, I realized real estate is a better fit for me because even though I’m going to college, real estate is something I can get involved in as soon as I’m 18,” Sapina said.
Real estate’s material benefits are that it doesn’t put a cap on her salary, and it gives her the opportunity to use networking skills to make a living right away, which combined with the flexible work schedule, will allow Sapina to continue traveling as she enters adulthood. Personality-wise, it’s a bit more complex, but the connection between the job and her personality is still uniquely strong.
“You’re working with so many different people as an agent, and I’m prepared for that. Traveling the world so much made me meet all different kinds of people from all different walks of life and cultures that I couldn’t have learned anywhere else, especially not just staying in my bubble,” Sapina said. “I feel it taught me how to interact with different kinds of people and it also has made me more extroverted which gives me a unique advantage as a real estate agent. In that sphere, you have to be very outgoing and extroverted as you interact and I couldn’t have learned to be that way without travel.”
