9×90 Episode #35

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About this guest

For those of you who do not know Minister Tashkovich, he:

1. Led Macedonia to fully ratify the Stabilization and Association Agreement with the EU, becoming the first country in the world to do so. This milestone enabled foreign companies to operate in Macedonia’s special economic zones and export into the EU duty‑ and tax‑free, leveraging a flat 10% corporate and personal income tax.
2. Conceived and facilitated the launch of British Airways’ Skopje–London route, which became BA’s most profitable intra‑European service. Beyond that, he brought Wizz Air to Macedonia, creating the first low‑cost carrier connections that ultimately created over 1,200 jobs by positioning the country as a regional travel hub.
3. Pioneered the early development of the Internet in Europe and North America (1984–1994). Tashkovich acted as a key early “routing” expert, helping connect international users across academic networks and shaping the nascent global web infrastructure.

About this episode

Gligor Tashkovich served as the Minister of Foreign Investment for the Government of the Republic of Macedonia, one of just 23 officials elected by the citizens to run the country.

His ministry uniquely intersected with all other ministries in matters related to foreign investment.

Under his leadership, Macedonia became the first country globally to fully ratify a Stabilization and Association Agreement with the 28-member European Union, enabling companies to establish manufacturing operations within Macedonia’s four special economic zones and export duty- and tax-free into the EU.

Coupled with Macedonia’s low wage rates and a flat 10% corporate and personal income tax, this created a compelling and competitive environment for businesses aiming to expand into Europe without the burden of higher wages.

Gligor’s expertise spans oil and gas pipeline geopolitics in the Caspian and Black Sea regions, early development of the Internet in Europe and North America (1984–1994), and international business development across more than 15 industries.

In this episode we dive into a few of the many ways that he has changed the world as we now know it.

Transcript

This transcript was generated by AI and edited by ChatGPT

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Adi Soozin:
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of 9×90™. Today we have a very special guest with us: Minister Tashkovich. He’s held numerous international leadership roles, and I think it’s safe to say he has the Midas touch. You’re about to hear how he’s created serious economic value across multiple sectors and governments around the world.

Let’s start with this—I’ve heard you were involved with Cornell in setting up the internet. Can you tell us that story? Because so many people credit Al Gore, but it sounds like you actually have the real behind-the-scenes version.

Gligor Tashkovich:
Thanks, it’s great to be here. Yes, let’s talk about that. First, let me clear up the whole Al Gore situation because it confuses a lot of people. That famous quote from him spread way too far—almost tragically so.

Here’s what really happened: Senator Gore was chairman of the Senate committee that legalized the internet. Before that, it was just this amorphous, undefined thing. There was no legal framework around it. So when he said he “created” the internet, what he actually meant was that he helped give it legal standing.

Adi Soozin:
Ah, got it—so kind of like what’s happening now with AI. It existed, but we had to go through a legal and regulatory process to define what it actually is.

Gligor Tashkovich:
Exactly. So let me walk you through how I got involved. I’ll skip some of the background for time’s sake and jump in midway.

I had a bit of a run-in with Cornell’s computer science department over some ethical issues I uncovered by accident. It was one rainy afternoon—early February 1984, I still remember—and I stumbled upon some unethical practices while working on the university’s computer system.

I ended up doing an independent study for credit on computer ethics and abuse policies. I started reaching out to universities, research labs, and corporations across the country. That’s how I discovered this emerging thing—what would eventually be called the internet.

Adi Soozin:
Okay, so Cornell was one of the first to connect?

Gligor Tashkovich:
Yes. I believe City University of New York was first, then Yale, followed by Penn State, and then Cornell. From there, it expanded outward.

Back then, the network used a “store and forward” system. So when you sent a message, you could literally watch it hop from node to node—Cornell to Penn State, to City University of New York, to MIT, and so on. It was like watching your email physically travel across the country.

Adi Soozin:
Wow.

Gligor Tashkovich:
And this was before email addresses were standardized. Today it’s simple: username@domain.com. But back then, if you were sending something across different networks, you had to specify the entire route—including the gateways between networks.

Cornell sat on multiple networks, so a message had to be routed through different systems. And it was often late-night system operators—picture the stereotypical Doritos-eating sysadmin at 3 AM—who were writing the code to make those connections work.

Adi Soozin:
Okay, so this was all very manual and technical.

Gligor Tashkovich:
Very. So I ended up becoming the first international internet answer person. If someone in, say, Australia wanted to email someone in Germany but couldn’t figure out the routing, they’d reach out to me. And I did it all for free.

Before the internet as we know it, there were all these different networks—funded by different agencies. The Department of Energy had ESNet. The National Science Foundation had CSNet, which connected computer science departments. Then you had BITNET—short for “Because It’s Time”—and of course, ARPANET from the Department of Defense. Running parallel to ARPANET was MILNET, the military’s network.

But here’s the thing: networks didn’t talk to each other continuously like they do now. Some systems only synced once a week or even once a year. You had to know how often two systems communicated and include all that in the message address. Some of these addresses were three lines long.

Adi Soozin:
My God. And today, people get upset if their data doesn’t render in under two seconds. I built a software company, and I remember the pressure of speeding up queries to the database. But you’re over here trying to figure out when the nodes will even talk to each other.

Gligor Tashkovich:
Right? So, I maintained a publicly accessible database that was constantly updated—sometimes daily—so others could route their messages properly.

Eventually, I convinced Dr. Ken King—who became a mentor and sadly passed about a year and a half ago—to hire me. I pitched it like this: “It’ll make Cornell look good if I’m the internet answer guy.” And he agreed.

I ended up being the highest-paid student on campus—paid just to sit in front of a computer and help people around the world connect.

Adi Soozin:
I just want to pause here. Because that combination of self-advocacy and technical knowledge is incredibly rare today. So many young engineers are doing major projects for free because they don’t know how to advocate for themselves. But you communicated your value and got paid accordingly. Where did that come from? Was it something you learned from your parents? Or school?

Gligor Tashkovich:
That’s a great question. And honestly, some people around me would say I’ve lost that skill now—but back then, it just came naturally. It probably helped that Dr. King was approachable. I literally said, “Do you think I can get paid for this?” and he said, “Sure, how much do you want?”

I asked for $6.50 an hour—which was a lot for a college student in 1984—and he said yes.

Adi Soozin:
That’s wild. And honestly, if we could bottle that skill—of self-advocacy and value-based pricing—and teach it to young professionals, I think it would transform the economy.

Gligor Tashkovich:
Possibly. As we discussed earlier, my parents were real estate entrepreneurs, focused on luxury estate development. They worked from home, so I was around that environment 24/7. Whether I was directly involved or not, I was constantly exposed to negotiations, planning, and problem-solving. So I probably picked some of that up through osmosis.

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Adi Soozin:
You really do pick up so much along the way without even realizing it. There are moments when I’m sitting in a real estate meeting, thinking something is just common knowledge—and then I’ll say it out loud, and the room goes silent. They look at me like, “Wait, how do you know that? You’re decades younger than the rest of us.” And I’m like, “What do you mean? I learned that when I was 12.” And they say, “That’s not obvious.”

I think a lot of it comes from growing up in a family office built around real estate. Even with negotiations today, I’ll walk into a room—again, the youngest person by decades—and instinctively know how to structure or push a deal. And I’ll leave, and my friends will say, “How did you get them to agree to that?” And I’m just like, “That’s the standard.” They’re shocked and ask, “Who taught you that was the standard?” And honestly, it’s what I absorbed growing up.

So I’d love to shift gears and talk about your family’s real estate story. Because people who didn’t grow up in that kind of environment are always fascinated by it. Is it okay if we dive into that?

Gligor Tashkovich:
Sure. My parents actually met at Cornell University, where my brother and I would also later graduate—we hold six degrees among the four of us. My father’s background is especially interesting.

My grandfather—who I was named after, though I never met him—was a leader of what would have been considered the Democratic Party in the South Balkans during the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, roughly between 1925 and 1948. He owned a civil engineering firm and completed major infrastructure projects—parliament buildings, aqueducts, dams, bridges, and more. In 1937, he was elected to represent Macedonia in the federal parliament in Belgrade.

When World War II broke out, he was arrested multiple times—first by the Bulgarian occupying forces. The first time, his followers broke into the prison and got him out. The second time, his parents—my great-grandparents—traveled from southern Macedonia to Sofia, Bulgaria, and secured a private audience with King Boris, pleading for his release. The King agreed.

The third time, though, his captors didn’t want him to be found. He later told my parents he was moved through about 30 different prisons over the course of the war—sometimes held for a couple weeks, sometimes a month.

Adi Soozin:
My gosh.

Gligor Tashkovich:
After the war, he still had contacts outside Yugoslavia who provided intelligence about troop movements. When the Russians were advancing, he escaped—first to Bulgaria, then to Istanbul, then to Alexandria, Egypt. In Egypt, he became a broadcaster for Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, beaming messages into Yugoslavia. These organizations have recently been under political scrutiny, which is unfortunate because they do such meaningful work.

In New York, there was a group called the International Rescue Committee (IRC)—I think they’re still on 42nd Street—and their website is rescue.org. It was founded in the early 1930s by some of the wealthiest American families, specifically to help leaders of democratic movements in Europe who faced imprisonment or execution at the end of WWII. They located around 40 or so of these individuals, including my grandfather, and helped them get to the U.S.

I never knew the full story of how my grandfather made it to America until I was cleaning out my step-grandmother’s apartment after she passed away. In the back of a closet, behind piles of clothes, I found a filing cabinet with this oversized red velvet—or maybe padded—passport case. I opened it and found a passport issued by the Royal Kingdom of Albania, via their Cairo embassy, granting my grandfather passage to America under an Albanianized version of his name.

If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I would have never believed it. It felt like something out of a novel.

Adi Soozin:
That’s incredible.

Gligor Tashkovich:
He later remarried in the U.S., and his new wife’s best friend was married to Dr. David Gravitch, Eleanor Roosevelt’s personal physician. Eleanor Roosevelt was the first U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, and she actually wrote a letter to Marshal Tito, the leader of Yugoslavia, requesting political pardons for my father and his brothers. That’s how they were allowed to come to America.

Adi Soozin:
Wow.

Gligor Tashkovich:
The family my grandfather married into was part of New York’s Gilded Age elite. Whenever the Museum of the City of New York does a Gilded Age exhibit, they include six-foot-tall portraits of my ancestors. Their mansion on Fifth Avenue at 67th Street is long gone—replaced by a bland white-brick building.

They were the co-founders of Bear Stearns in the 1950s and also founded Stern’s Department Stores. So my father arrived in the U.S. not speaking any English. He was living with his grandparents in Bitola, Macedonia, when he got the notice: he had three days to say his goodbyes. They put him on a KLM flight to Amsterdam and then to New York.

I don’t know if you’ve ever flown KLM, but in business class they hand out these little ceramic models of Amsterdam row houses. They still do it. We still have the one from that flight—it represents his escape to freedom in 1958.

Adi Soozin:
That’s powerful.

Gligor Tashkovich:
He joined his new stepmother—whom he’d never met—and she applied to universities on his behalf, including Harvard and Cornell. Cornell accepted him. He arrived barely speaking English, but while at Cornell, he met my mom—she was selling tickets to the international student ball.

That’s how it all started.

Adi Soozin:
So your dad became an architect?

Gligor Tashkovich:
He wanted to. But under New York State law, you have to be licensed to call yourself one. There’s actually a front-page article from December 1974 in The New York Times real estate section about him. He refused to get licensed because he said, “If I’m just an architect, I lose control over the quality of workmanship and the materials used.”

So instead, he branded himself a “designer-builder.” He occasionally got threatening letters from the licensing board, but they couldn’t do much because he never claimed to be an architect. He just kept designing and building incredible estates.

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Gligor Tashkovich: I was supervising every aspect of the projects—sometimes juggling five at once.

Adi Soozin: Yeah…
pause
Fun. I can tell you—I remember several times growing up when my father was caught in lawsuits because engineers decided to cut corners. To your point about having no control over materials, I recall one major hospital project. He was the architect, and someone decided not to include a critical beam or swapped out structural materials. Then the roof collapsed. He’d be sitting in court saying, “This wasn’t my decision. I drew the correct plans. You didn’t follow them. Why am I even here?” All because someone else cut corners.

Gligor Tashkovich: There you go.

Adi Soozin: So your father was very smart to anticipate that and protect himself from the liability.

Gligor Tashkovich: Yeah, exactly. If you Google his name—Vuko Tashkovich—and then search for “Vuko Tashkovich homes” or “houses,” and click on Google Images, you’ll see some spectacular estates.

Adi Soozin: Fun!

Gligor Tashkovich: There are about 50, maybe 53 or 58 of them.

Adi Soozin: That’s very neat. But let’s get back into your story. We’ve talked about your background, but this part is incredible—you lobbied British Airways to begin service to Macedonia, and it became their most profitable intra-European route.

Gligor Tashkovich: Sounds like something you’d do—turning raw opportunity into massive profit.

Adi Soozin: Yeah! One master to another. I think this is amazing. Walk us through what that was like.

Gligor Tashkovich: Wow. That was a long time ago—1999. Actually, I started in 1994. It took me five years to convince them.

Adi Soozin: Five years?! I don’t know if I’d have the patience!

Gligor Tashkovich: It wasn’t daily, of course. So here’s how it happened: British Airways flew to Sofia, Bulgaria. The only Western airlines that flew into Skopje, the capital of Macedonia, were Austrian Airlines and Edelweiss, which was a vacation charter airline owned by Swissair at the time.

Gligor Tashkovich: Those flights were expensive. Macedonia was the third poorest country in Europe, so only consultants, diplomats, or wealthy businesspeople could afford them. Most Macedonians couldn’t.

Adi Soozin: Right.

Gligor Tashkovich: A ticket into Macedonia was double or triple the cost of flying into Sofia. So when I was traveling, I’d fly to Sofia and drive three hours over the mountains into Macedonia.

Adi Soozin: That makes sense—better use of time and money.

Gligor Tashkovich: Exactly. I got to know British Airways well because I flew New York–Sofia roundtrip several times a year. Over the years, I’ve done more than 270 transatlantic roundtrips.

Adi Soozin: That’s impressive. How many countries have you been to?

Gligor Tashkovich: I think 111.

Adi Soozin: I’ve been to 50. I have a long way to go.

Gligor Tashkovich: You’ll catch up—I’m older. In time, you’ll get there. Now, back to British Airways. I wanted Macedonia to have first-world connectivity—London, Paris, Amsterdam, maybe Frankfurt. Zurich and Vienna were still third-tier airports at the time. Today, they’re first-class, but back then they had only two terminals each. Now they have eight or more.

Adi Soozin: Wow, yeah.

Gligor Tashkovich: I chose British Airways because I knew them well. Eventually, I found the right person there. They said, “This sounds great, but we need data to build a business case.”

Gligor Tashkovich: So I hired people to stand in airports, talk to travelers, and gather data on where they were going. It took years to collect multi-year data—how many passengers were going to New York, Australia, Germany, etc. I presented the findings to BA to prove there was demand for one-stop connectivity from Macedonia.

Gligor Tashkovich: And then… they didn’t even have the decency to tell me they were moving forward with the plan. I found out through a press release.

Adi Soozin: Oh my god.

Gligor Tashkovich: I thought, “Are you kidding me? You’re launching service without even talking to me?”

Adi Soozin: Wait. Tell everyone—what was your title at the time?

Gligor Tashkovich: At that time, I wasn’t in government yet. I was just a 25-year-old kid with a fancy business card. The first President of Macedonia, Kiro Gligorov—a contemporary of my grandfather—appointed me as Macedonia’s Economic Development Representative.

Adi Soozin: But you later oversaw economic policy and even air traffic, right?

Gligor Tashkovich: Yes, but that came much later, in 2006–2008. This story happened in the mid-to-late ’90s.

Adi Soozin: Got it. Still, here you are doing all the work—and they go ahead without even looping you in.

Gligor Tashkovich: Yeah. Just an energetic kid in the room. Kind of like you.

Adi Soozin: Hey, youthful enthusiasm moves mountains.

Gligor Tashkovich: It does! Anyway, I found the name of the route manager from the press release. There were only a few decent hotels in Skopje back then, so I called around and found out where he was staying. I told him, “You’re crazy. You’ve never even stepped foot in this country. You have no connections here. This place runs on relationships—how are you going to pull this off?”

Adi Soozin: Oh wow.

Gligor Tashkovich: I told him, “I’m flying there now. When you hit a wall—and you will—call me, and I’ll fix it.” Sure enough, a few days before the inaugural flight, he called me in a panic. The service was supposed to launch Monday—it was Wednesday. He said, “I can’t make this work. If you can fix this by Monday, we’ll fly. If not, we’re scrapping the route.”

Adi Soozin: No pressure!

Gligor Tashkovich: I told him, “I’ve waited five years for this. No way I’m letting it die now.”

Gligor Tashkovich: First issue? They didn’t know Skopje Airport was slot-controlled. We had tons of military flights due to NATO’s bombing campaign in Kosovo and Serbia. Diplomats, aid workers—everyone was coming through. BA thought, “It’s just Macedonia. We can fly whenever we want.” But no—this airport was maxed out.

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Adi Soozin:
Yeah, god, yep.

Gligor Tashkovich:
They had to take whatever time we could send a plane. But the guy said, “There are no slots. I can’t bring a plane in here.” So, I went to see Mr. Yanu. He might still be alive today, but probably barely. He had a bad eye, was contemptuous of most people, and honestly, kind of looked a little menacing — like someone who might crack a smile only to hit you with a baseball bat. I walked into his office.

I knew him because at that point he was the director of civil aviation, but before that, he had been head of Palair Macedonian Airlines — which no longer exists. I got him onto all the international computerized reservation systems — you know, the five major ones globally: Worldspan, Sabre, Amadeus in France, and others. I remember carrying literally two feet of contracts for him to sign, so his airline could be listed and travel agents worldwide could sell tickets on his flights.

Otherwise, he only had about a dozen Macedonians in the diaspora selling tickets for him — all cash business. So in exchange, I got free air travel on Palair Macedonian Airlines. That’s how I got to know Mr. Yanu pretty well, and he respected me for helping him out. It cost him nothing and made him more money.

Fast forward, he’s now director of civil aviation. I’m in his office and I say, “So, I heard you gave the British Airways guy a hard time.” He said, “Those idiots, they have no idea.” He never had anything nice to say about anyone. Then he took this huge fanfold printout — like a long, thick schedule — and literally threw it at me across a big circular table. He said, “If you can find a place for your plane to land and take off, you’ve got it. This is the schedule — every minute of every day, every aircraft coming in and out of Skopje Airport. Find a slot, it’s yours. We don’t have one.”

I told him, “Computers are only as smart as the people who program them.”

Adi Soozin:
My gosh. Same with AI today.

Gligor Tashkovich:
Exactly. Often not properly understood. So I said, “I will find the slot.” I sat there at the desk — he went about his business — and I went through every page, every schedule. After maybe an hour or three, I found a slot: the plane could come in at 7 PM and leave around 8 or 9 PM. With a slight delay, it could work. He agreed, said, “It’s yours.”

I told British Airways, and they said, “To make the slot control work, we’ll have to pull back from Skopje airport and sit on the tarmac for an hour to ensure a slot at Gatwick when we land.”

Adi Soozin:
Okay.

Gligor Tashkovich:
That’s how it worked for the first six months — the autumn flight season. There’s a fall and spring timetable for airlines, so we just started the fall schedule. All flights to the UK had a scheduled one-hour delay because of this.

Adi Soozin:
Yeah, my gosh.

Gligor Tashkovich:
Because of the war and the bombing campaign over Kosovo and Serbia by NATO, Skopje airport was busy with military aircraft, diplomats, and negotiators. Despite that, the route became the most profitable British Airways intra-European route for about five years — full of high-paying diplomats, consultants, military attaches, and so on.

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Adi Soozin:
I think it’s funny… some things only a young person can pull off. Older decision makers often get jaded or betrayed, so when a young person comes in with fire and vision, they sometimes give you the benefit of the doubt because they see your intentions as genuine — motivated by economic empowerment, not destruction.

Gligor Tashkovich:
What did I get from British Airways? I hoped for free flights, but no. I did manage to get free chauffeur car service from Gatwick to Heathrow — I think I got that five times. That was it.

Adi Soozin:
That’s hilarious. That’s basically what I’m doing in real estate now — people wonder how I get these deals, but it’s because they see my goals as genuine and aligned. It’s interesting how you used the same kind of strategic moves to create one of the most profitable intra-European routes for an entire airline.

Gligor Tashkovich:
Let me jump ahead a bit. In November 2007, I was in a hotel suite in Budapest meeting with top executives of what’s now the third-largest low-cost carrier in Europe — Wizz Air. I brought Wizz Air to Macedonia.

What was significant is we negotiated for them to base planes in Macedonia and employ local Macedonian staff as flight attendants and ground crew. For the first time ever, people could travel across Europe for €25 one way. Before, they couldn’t afford €400 tickets — now they could afford €25.

I’m very proud of that. Every Macedonian I know has flown with Wizz Air and seen parts of the world they never could have before.

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Adi Soozin: Okay, we’re back from our brief break. You mentioned creating 1,200 jobs. Can you walk us through how you did that?

Gligor Tashkovich: Sure. So, I was the Minister for Foreign Investment in Macedonia. It was the sixth-ranked position in the country — after the Prime Minister and four deputy prime ministers, each representing a different coalition partner.

Adi Soozin: Okay.

Gligor Tashkovich: And, at two different points during my term, I was actually the most senior person physically present in the country because everyone else was traveling. So, I was effectively in charge on the ground. It was pretty funny. Unlike in the West, where there’s always a clear handover of power when someone leaves — memos, office transfers, etc. — none of that happened there. People just left without coordination, and suddenly I was the only one left.

Adi Soozin: (laughs) So they just left you there like, “Hello”?

Gligor Tashkovich: Exactly. “Hello, guess I’m in charge.” (laughs)

Adi Soozin: So, you were going to walk us through your experience with this track?

Gligor Tashkovich: Yes, yes. The job itself — do you want to hear how I got it first, or just how I achieved the results?

Adi Soozin: Let’s start with how you achieved the results, then we can go back to how you got the job.

Gligor Tashkovich: Okay. I had a choice when assembling my team: hire junior, energetic, visionary staff, or take on the existing government bureaucrats — which, honestly, were just that: bureaucrats. The process of attracting foreign investment typically takes four to six years, but the government was working on a four-year term at best. And in a parliamentary democracy like ours, the opposition could call a vote of no confidence, collapse the government, and wipe out all progress.

Adi Soozin: Yeah.

Gligor Tashkovich: Power transitions, which are routine in the West, were not guaranteed there. So I knew I had to move as fast as humanly possible. That meant working what I called “Wall Street hours”—14 hours a day, Monday to Friday.

Adi Soozin: My gosh.

Gligor Tashkovich: Due to time zone differences with the countries I was courting, I’d work from 10 a.m. until midnight. On weekends, it was noon to midnight. When I traveled, which was more than half the time, I’d have 10 to 14 meetings a day. Early on, I went to them; later, I got smart and had them come to me. It was grueling, but I loved it.

Adi Soozin: Wow.

Gligor Tashkovich: I felt like the kid in grade school who won every pancake breakfast ticket, every flower seed giveaway, every magazine subscription prize — but on a much bigger stage. So, I decided to build a younger, energetic cabinet because the older bureaucrats would have clocked out sharp at 4 p.m. every day, no matter what.

Adi Soozin: Okay.

Gligor Tashkovich: I told everyone interviewing, “If you want to leave at 4 p.m., this isn’t the job for you. When I’m here, we work until 10 or midnight. We’ll work around the clock to get this done. When I’m not here, or you’re not traveling with me, you can work fewer hours — maybe until six or seven. Just text me when you’re done, and I’ll give you permission to leave.”

Adi Soozin: Mhm.

Gligor Tashkovich: We also needed at least one and a half people manning the phone 12 hours a day for incoming calls. I emphasized that we were going to make this fun. You’d travel the world, stay in great hotels, learn how to fly, go through customs and immigration — these were people who, in their 20s, had never left the country before.

Adi Soozin: My gosh, yeah.

Gligor Tashkovich: Every six months, the Prime Minister would call me in and give me a list: January, February, March, etc., with two columns — me and my counterpart. “I want you to go to these countries each month.” I’d go back to my cabinet, hold a staff meeting, and ask, “Who wants to go to Finland? Africa? Whoever signs up is responsible for organizing a full three-to-five-day visit — flights, hotels, agendas.”

Adi Soozin: Okay.

Gligor Tashkovich: We did that, and I met with about 1,400 C-level executives in 40 countries. Some countries I visited 10 to 15 times — Austria and Turkey, for example. Of those 1,400, I convinced 300 to visit Macedonia.

I remember early on, maybe a month or two in, hosting a top executive from an Italian or maybe French water company at a restaurant on Mount Bodnau — a converted church with amazing views. He took a phone call outside, and I overheard him say, “You’ll never guess where I am… Macedonia.” He explained, “They want us to do business here, and they’ve been very nice to us.”

Adi Soozin: Yeah.

Gligor Tashkovich: That was key — VIP airport service, car and driver waiting on the tarmac, interpreters, a full agenda, luxury cars. After their meetings, they’d get debriefed by the Deputy Prime Minister, then fly home after a day or two. If I was in town, I’d take them out to dinner. They were flabbergasted — they said they’d never been treated like that in any other country. They loved it, thought we were terrific.

Adi Soozin: That’s incredible.

Gligor Tashkovich: I told them, “Great, tell your friends.” So we had 300 visits over two years.

What I’m most proud of is that my cabinet was the first multiethnic cabinet in the country’s history — Serbs, Albanians, Roma, Macedonians, even a Canadian. My chief of staff was ethnic Albanian, which was historic because he wasn’t from my ethnicity.

People talked about that for two years. I told them, “You’re building the future of your country. You have to learn to work together. There’s too much political rhetoric keeping you apart.” And I watched them hand off assignments, cover for one another — it was magical.

We were a dream team — problem solvers par excellence — in a country where bureaucrats ruled the day but left promptly at 4 p.m.

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Gligor Tashkovich: No matter what crisis was happening, I was very, very pleased about that.

Gligor Tashkovich: In fact, in those first couple of months, there was a front-page photo of the government building at two o’clock in the morning with one light on. The headline read, “Minister Tashkovich is working for you.”

Adi Soozin: My gosh. Wow.

Gligor Tashkovich: I remember that well… Before January, when I started, the hours I worked were intense. I was literally trying to do everything. I never pulled an all-nighter during six years at Cornell, but in this job, I found myself pulling all-nighters frequently because so much was coming at me and I had to stay on top of it all. Finally, in January, when I came back from Christmas break, I said, “No, we have to structure this differently because I can’t survive.” It was really crazy.

Adi Soozin: Yeah, wow.

Gligor Tashkovich: So that’s how I managed it. Out of those 300 people who visited, I think about 30 actually invested.

Adi Soozin: So from 1,400 down to 300, then down to 30.

Gligor Tashkovich: It’s a funneling process. But it worked.

Adi Soozin: Yeah, that’s incredible. And you have three securities licenses, right?

Gligor Tashkovich: Let me add one more aspect here, sorry.

Adi Soozin: Mhm, okay.

Gligor Tashkovich: Back then—and I believe it restarted in the last year or two—there was an annual survey done by the World Bank and IMF called Doing Business. The website was doingbusiness.org, though I’m not sure if it still is today. They had to pause it after 2018 due to a bribery scandal, but I think they’re trying to bring it back.

Gligor Tashkovich: The survey ranked countries on about 13 to 15 characteristics, such as how quickly you could open a new business, resolve contract disputes through the legal system, declare bankruptcy, or get electricity to your building.

Adi Soozin: Okay, got it.

Gligor Tashkovich: Countries competed on these metrics. When I came to Macedonia—which was the third poorest country in Europe at the time—guess how many days it took to form a new company?

Adi Soozin: How many? When you started?

Adi Soozin: I’d guess maybe a year or two… 42 days?

Gligor Tashkovich: No, no. It was 42 days at one point, but when we finished the reforms, it took just four hours.

Adi Soozin: Four hours? Wow.

Gligor Tashkovich: Yes. In some U.S. states, it’s similar.

Adi Soozin: That’s the U.S. People often ask why there are so many startups here — because you can start a company in a few hours.

Gligor Tashkovich: Exactly. But in New York State, until fairly recently, the media controlled the process. I remember it took me six weeks to form my company there in 1997.

Adi Soozin: Why so long?

Gligor Tashkovich: Because of a publication requirement. To activate your company, you had to place an ad in an authorized newspaper stating, “I’m starting a company; anyone with objections, speak now.” Of course, nobody read it. It was a free ad for the newspaper. After publication, the media sent you a letter confirming you’d met the requirement, which you then sent to Albany to get your license.

Adi Soozin: My gosh, that explains it.

Gligor Tashkovich: So yes, we cut the time to four hours in Macedonia. We became number one in the world, tied with New Zealand and Singapore. I was really proud. It didn’t happen overnight—we had to respect bureaucracy and whittle away at requirements in stages, going from 42 days, to 10 days, to 5 days, and so on.

Gligor Tashkovich: Ultimately, the issuance of the tax ID number was the official act of forming a company. Once you had that, you could open bank accounts and do everything else. So, four hours was our benchmark. That’s no longer the case today, but it was a major achievement.

Adi Soozin: That’s incredible. You see countries worldwide struggling with slow growth or financial issues, and a huge part of that is bureaucracy stopping innovative people from starting companies. Solve that, and you solve half their problems.

Gligor Tashkovich: Exactly.

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Adi Soozin: So, you were also Executive Vice President of Government and Media Relations when you worked on a $1.75 billion oil pipeline project?

Gligor Tashkovich: Yeah, probably about $2.3 billion today.

Gligor Tashkovich: Here’s some history: In 1992, Bill Clinton won the presidency with the famous slogan “It’s the economy, stupid.” He turned inward, focusing on America’s economy and pulling back from the international engagement of President Bush before him.

Adi Soozin: Okay.

Gligor Tashkovich: Around that time, the Bosnian War started (1992–95). Bosnia and Herzegovina is a multi-ethnic, multi-confessional state like Macedonia, but larger. My father, watching from New York, realized America needed a reason to care about Macedonia’s territorial integrity. The region was volatile, and the situation could escalate like Bosnia if ignored. It was like playing with matches.

Adi Soozin: Yeah, totally.

Gligor Tashkovich: So he came up with an idea: an oil pipeline connecting the Black Sea to the Adriatic Sea, running through Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Albania, supplying high-quality Caspian crude oil to America. This would give America a strategic reason to care about the stability of Macedonia and the pipeline countries.

Adi Soozin: Do you know the war strategist Edward Luttwak?

Gligor Tashkovich: I do, from Maryland.

Adi Soozin: He had this famous idea: instead of attacking your enemy directly, you fund their enemy to weaken them. It sounds like your father’s idea gave America a reason to get involved indirectly in the region.

Gligor Tashkovich: Yes, exactly.

Gligor Tashkovich: The project originally aimed to supply refineries in Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Albania—though many of those refineries were shut down. The idea was to provide feedstock to reopen them. For various reasons, it never moved forward—not because of problems in Macedonia or Albania.

Adi Soozin: Okay.

Gligor Tashkovich: There’s even a law in all three countries governing how the pipeline—called AMBO, after Albanian, Macedonian, and Bulgarian Oil Corporation—would be built, constructed, and operated. The problem was always upstream in the Caucasus region between the Caspian and Black Seas. Political and economic instability there kept the project from advancing. The pipeline itself is very profitable.

Adi Soozin: Yeah, but financing was the issue?

Gligor Tashkovich: Exactly. Banks were unwilling to finance a steady stream of oil from that region.

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Gligor Tashkovich: The risk with oil transportation through the Bosphorus was just too high financially because the whole system could be shut down at any moment. But to give you the big picture, the Bosphorus Strait divides Istanbul—and Turkey itself—into two parts: the European side and the Asian side. Navigating the Bosphorus takes about 105 minutes from end to end, and during that time, supertankers make about 14 course corrections.

Adi Soozin: Wow, that’s intense.

Gligor Tashkovich: Yeah, these supertankers are roughly the size of one or two football fields. When you turn the wheel on those ships, there’s a delayed reaction before the entire ship actually turns. You have to avoid oncoming traffic, cross traffic, rocks, whirlpools, and even floating restaurants. Turkey still lives in fear of accidents in the Bosphorus. Since then, they built a radar network and strongly recommend that tankers pay around $50,000 to bring a Turkish captain onboard to navigate through the straits.

Gligor Tashkovich: It works—there haven’t been any major disasters there in probably 20 years. But still…

Adi Soozin: Mhm…

Gligor Tashkovich: Our pipeline would have taken the pressure off all of that, allowing oil to flow straight across the Balkans—cheaper, faster, and with less risk—rather than through the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara, the Dardanelles, past pleasure crafts and Greece, out to the open Mediterranean and Gibraltar.

Adi Soozin: That reminds me—in the U.S., we also have harbor pilots.

Gligor Tashkovich: Exactly. It’s basically a harbor pilot for the straits.

Adi Soozin: Totally logical to say, “You’re great at your job, but we need a local pilot to guide you.”

Gligor Tashkovich: Mhm.

Adi Soozin: Okay, let’s switch gears—I know we’re almost out of time, so let’s cover this quickly. You more or less adopted a homeless couple?

Gligor Tashkovich: Street homeless, yes. To clarify for your listeners: you can be homeless and still have a shelter to go to at night. But street homeless means literally living on the street, with nothing at all.

Adi Soozin: So you took them under your wing?

Gligor Tashkovich: Not legally adopted, just to be clear. But yes.

Adi Soozin: I understand you’re turning their story into a movie soon, but there are a few parts I want to highlight. One is that they didn’t want a handout—they wanted a hand up.

Adi Soozin: I love that because many philanthropic efforts just give handouts without teaching people how to help themselves. They should be giving a hand up—teaching people how to fish, not just handing over fish.

Gligor Tashkovich: Exactly right.

Adi Soozin: You helped them navigate the system and gave them the confidence to keep going after being rejected dozens of times.

Gligor Tashkovich: Yes.

Adi Soozin: And there’s an interesting part where you mentioned the gentleman, Joseph, would cunningly foil Nikki’s plans for self-improvement. After she was free of him, she was able to grow into her own as a successful artist and poet.

Gligor Tashkovich: Briefly, yes. They both had a complicated dynamic.

Adi Soozin: Did you want to share a bit more about that? I notice you consistently identify who the blockers are, and once they’re removed, you help people reach their full potential.

Adi Soozin: Like with the cabinet you formed—finding young people, inspiring them to reach their potential, and benefiting an entire nation. Later, you applied the same tenacity to helping healthy people who just needed resources and guidance to succeed.

Gligor Tashkovich: That’s brilliant. I want to point out they had only an eighth-grade education, which is a big barrier. Navigating the streets of New York and accessing services requires at least a GED, which they didn’t have.

Gligor Tashkovich: They lived on the southeast corner of 57th and Madison for years after Hurricane Sandy. They had many problems, were massively codependent—which I didn’t even understand at first—and suffered from mental illness. But they were high functioning enough for us to work with.

Gligor Tashkovich: One day, I came around the corner dressed like this, carrying a salad bag, walking to my office about 100 feet away. Nicole got up from an overturned USPS mailing box, blocking my path. This is a major intersection near the Trump building, Tiffany’s, Bergdorf Goodman, and the IBM building.

Adi Soozin: Mhm.

Gligor Tashkovich: Nicole, short, about 52 years old, pointed at me without touching me and said, “I don’t want your money. I want your brains.” I thought, “That’s a new pickup line.” She told me how they’d hope someone put $2.34 in front of them so they could buy overpriced craft macaroni and cheese from Duane Reade, then get free hot water from Starbucks to make lunch.

Gligor Tashkovich: They were both on methadone from past opiate abuse and had to travel up to 125th Street every day to get it, then return to their corner. They actually had “spotting rights” to that southeast corner, which police respected—even though it was surrounded by luxury stores.

Adi Soozin: Wow.

Gligor Tashkovich: This was around 2014, about two years after Sandy. They knew they were entitled to services but couldn’t get them. They asked for someone smart to advocate for them.

Adi Soozin: Mhm.

Gligor Tashkovich: I took Nicole aside and told her, “You have to have skin in the game. You must never lie to me.” And she never did, for the four years we worked together. Second, “You must promptly return any missed calls or texts.” I said, “If you can do those two things, I will get you anything you want.”

Adi Soozin: I love that—setting clear, reasonable boundaries and expectations, especially because in my experience, homeless people often tell you what you want to hear just to get help.

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Gligor Tashkovich: Yes, exactly.

Adi Soozin: Otherwise, you end up emotionally or financially drained, doing everything for them like they’re toddlers—putting the entire burden on you—and yet they never really progress because they aren’t taking ownership.

Gligor Tashkovich: Right, right.

Adi Soozin: But you had them take ownership. They became co-creators in their own journey to get help.

Gligor Tashkovich: Exactly. Nicole, Morg, and Joseph came with me everywhere. We ran errands together.

Adi Soozin: And beyond just getting them help, you also fought for them legally.

Gligor Tashkovich: Yeah. Over those four years, we had six court hearings—and won five of them. I was proud of that, especially since I’m not a lawyer. Nicole used to introduce me as her lawyer, but I kept reminding everyone, “I don’t have a law degree!”

Adi Soozin: (laughs) That’s funny.

Gligor Tashkovich: But honestly, for this particular group, just showing up makes a huge difference. So many miss their court dates because of life’s chaos—no watch, no alarm—so they get ruled against by default. But if you show up and actually care…

Adi Soozin: That alone often tips the scales.

Gligor Tashkovich: Exactly. Showing you care usually means you win.

Adi Soozin: That’s incredible. Minister Tashkovich, thank you so much for your time. Is there any story I haven’t asked about that you’d like to share?

Gligor Tashkovich: (laughs) We could talk for hours. Maybe there’ll be a part two—I don’t know, we’ll see.

Adi Soozin: After your film comes out, we can definitely do a part two.

Gligor Tashkovich: Speaking of which, since this channel often features product pitches, I’m currently looking to raise $400,000 for the film with Pangia Entertainment.

Adi Soozin: $400,000 to produce the film—who’s producing it? And do you have a script ready?

Gligor Tashkovich: What you have now is the treatment, which we need to expand into a full script. The funds will go toward hiring a scriptwriter and producing a sizzle reel. Then we’ll pitch it to studios like Lionsgate, Sony Pictures, Netflix, Amazon—the big players who would actually make the movie.

Adi Soozin: Got it.

Gligor Tashkovich: So the money’s for turning the treatment into a script and creating the sizzle reel.

Adi Soozin: Great. And just to share with the audience, you hold three securities licenses—what are they?

Gligor Tashkovich: Yes. One is the Securities Industry Essentials (SIE) exam. Then I have the New York State license, and a Series 82 license for private placements and private companies.

Adi Soozin: So you definitely have the financial knowledge to recognize a wise investment.

Gligor Tashkovich: I hope so!

Adi Soozin: Ladies and gentlemen, you have both an investment opportunity and plenty of history lessons here. We’ll embed more info about the film on our website as it becomes available.

Gligor Tashkovich: Thank you.

Adi Soozin: Thanks so much for tuning in. See you all back online soon. Bye!

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