Natalija brings a passion for teaching and drive to help students realize their potential. Through student centered and active learning, she tries to leverage each student’s strengths while helping them to recognize where support may be appropriate in achieving their individual goals. She brings to the classroom a tool chest of strong fundamentals but also a practical ability to apply those tools to solve real issues that arise with real businesses. She has taught business concepts and accounting to a wide variety of students from retired grandmothers to materials engineers at such institutions as Santa Barbara Business College and UC Santa Barbara.
She has worked in several fields, from auditing non-profit and government organizations to materials development in photovoltaics, as well as several with startups in the tech and arts sectors. Having earned her Bachelor’s degree from UC Santa Barbara in Economics with minors in Philosophy and Political Science, Natalija spent several years as a cost accountant, auditor, and business advisor. She earned her Master’s degree at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management in the fields of Political Economy of the Environment and Corporate Environmental Management, continuing to PhD studies in Economics and Materials development at the University of California Santa Barbara and the University of California Los Angeles.