She’s Next Talks with Dorina Lluka Davies

For 25 years, Dorina Lluka Davies built a successful career in Kosovo’s civil society, shaping policy and empowering youth. Yet, her most recent venture began not in an executive office, but in her parents’ garage, wrestling with a power drill and discarded car tyres.

The pivot came during the quiet reflection of the pandemic. Pregnant with twins, Davies found herself confronting a profound question: “what kind of world are we going to leave to the children”? She explored recycling but discovered it often releases toxic chemicals, calling it “the best of the worst”. Instead, she turned to upcycling—the safest way to extend a product’s life—and founded her startup, Simply Green.

In Kosovo, where roughly two million used tyres end up as massive land pollutants, Davies saw an untapped resource for furniture. She spent a year learning to build seats from scratch, strictly designing them so they wouldn’t look like old tyres and trigger local stigmas around second-hand goods.

As she navigated this new sector, she uncovered a stark gender disparity: out of nearly 800 active furniture businesses in Kosovo, only three or four were owned by women. Davies views this gap through a strict economic lens. “If women don’t contribute, you actually are having less money,” she argues, noting that women also bring vital creativity and detail-oriented innovation to design.

For Davies, being underestimated is powerful fuel. “If someone says to me I cannot do [something], that’s the wrong thing to say to me because I will do everything… to approve that I can,” she says. “I don’t like people putting me on the box”.

Having survived the Kosovo war at age 14, Davies understands resilience. She approaches business challenges like the “fourth rose” in a parable, which, when pruned by a gardener, doesn’t cry out in victimhood but instead asks, “I wonder what lesson is trying to teach me”. It’s a creative mindset she urges all female entrepreneurs to embrace when facing setbacks.