Marsela C. Parra Roswall is a successful brand design specialist and a valued member of our Advisory Board. Her creativity, professionalism, and passion brought to life Career Club DK’s new logo. Not only is she talented but has an inspiring story to tell. We have had a chat with her about building a life and a career in Denmark, resilience, and how the new Career Club DK logo was born.
Where do you come from and what motivated you to come to Denmark?
I’m Colombian by birth, Spanish by adoption, and Brazilian by heart. I moved to Denmark in 2009 from Barcelona, where I was studying for a Ph.D. in Engineering. I met my husband in Barcelona – he is Danish – and we decided to move to Copenhagen when the economic crisis exploded in Spain in 2008. The decision was not easy for me, and I assumed that it would be for a small period to test if I liked the country. A month after my arrival, I was already married, and this small period has extended for 11 and a half years and two children.
I remember arriving in August, leaving Barcelona at 35 degrees, and arriving here with 17 that felt like 10. My husband told me that it was one of the coldest summers and autumns in many years. I guess he meant: “We Danes say the same thing every year.” The bigger challenge for me was that I did not speak English or Danish when I arrived. Can you imagine a Latin girl unable to speak a word all day until her husband came home? Poor man!
You are an experienced marketer and brand designer, what is the drive behind your specialization?
I’m originally a Transport Engineer, and I worked for more than 10 years on this. But I always knew that I did it more for my family because I was creative from a very young age. When I started to soak in the Danish culture, I realized that I needed to listen to the person I love the most: myself and to study what made me happy. So I put Engineering away and started from scratch. I found my comfort between strategy and creativity studying Marketing and Design, and I specialized in Branding.
Currently, I work with my personal brand Marsela Roswall Branding, where my motto and my greatest inspiration is Building Brands & Helping People. I have developed four areas based on the design. I love working with the verbal identity of both commercial and personal brands to create a coherent, aligned, and consistent visual identity making brands unforgettable. I help people to define their image and their style. I work editing books, magazines and creating covers. And the last area is interior design, where I create spaces based on culture, colors, and minimalism.
Tell us about your experience of building a career in Denmark?
It has not been easy to build my career in Denmark, I knocked on many doors that never opened, and some opened to say that I either did not have enough experience or was overqualified. I had mixed emotions with this situation and more when I didn’t even get an answer. At the beginning of the Covid, I lost my job, and it was very hard for a few months. I suffered from the impostor syndrome and felt that I was falling apart. But when you fall, you reach a point where you only have to get up.
So I decided to take all the experience and creativity that I had and start building my brand, beginning with the most important thing: believing in my talent and being born as an entrepreneur. This process has brought me a lot of learning and interesting projects where I have created a close bond with my clients, which is incredible.
You are the creative brain behind our new and sparkly Career Club DK logo! Tell us a bit more about the process, what inspired you and how does it reflect on Career Club DK?
Yes, it’s me, and I’m excited to say it! Before going into details, I would like to clarify that a brand designer is more than a person who just designs a logo. To design a logo that reflects the purpose, values, and message of a brand, it’s necessary to check if the verbal identity is coherent, consistent, and aligned.
So the process began by analyzing all the factors involved in verbal identity, including key questions such as: Why does the brand exist? What do we do? How do we do it? Who are we? What makes us different? and Who is part of the community. When all this is clear and well defined, the process of visual identity begins.
The answer to the previous questions is what I take as the main inspiration to “translate” them into the visual identity. In addition, I look for keywords and look at what it visually shows me on the internet to see what is associated with those words, creating a mood board. Then the creative part begins, where I try colors, thicknesses, and typography that I feel match the essence of the brand.
I love the Career Club DK briefcase because it represents the place where we can carry our work, skills, strengths, tools, and ambitions. Our slogan “Stronger together” is the literal representation of our mission: empowering our community. A simple and sophisticated logo created with a lot of love!
What does Career Club DK mean to you and how it can help other aspiring women?
I met Nischa Don Maak, the Career Club DK Founder, through a mutual friend, and the empathy that generated the idea of being part of this incredible community was immediate. So I wrote a message to Nischa to find out more about it. We had a virtual cafe, and she gave me valuable advice on how to search for a job more efficiently in Denmark. When I became a member, the first thing I thought was, “they will need a rebranding to deliver their message better,” so I thought of a creative person. Suddenly, that thought came true when Nischa called me to be part of the Advisory Board, and she asked me if I wanted to redesign the verbal and visual identity. For me, that moment was to certify that if you dream it, you can achieve it.
Career Club DK has allowed me to connect with many women and our multiculturalism, that perhaps in my day to day I would not know them. Professionally, I have had the challenge of helping to tell the history and purpose, and above all, learning about networking, enhancing my skills, and know-how to sell myself better, which is very necessary. So I would invite all the women who are not here yet to join because Career Club DK is one of those communities that you do not regret being a part of.
What is your advice to all women building a career in Denmark?
I believe from my experience that the best advice I can give is to expand your network. You never know when a person from your environment becomes a key helper to develop your career in the country. On the other hand, if they are looking for a job, it’s essential to find a balance between a CV that shows your personality and at the same time complies with the standard format the Danish professional culture has.
Finally, I would say that if you want to build a successful career, it’s important to have knowledge of Danish and be able to communicate, even if it is in a simple way. This advice I also give myself. After all, I need to re-learn it since I have been losing it because in my last 6 years in Denmark, I have studied and worked only in English. Still, I consider it necessary to speak the local language as a professional plus.
Is there anything else you are passionate about at the moment?
As a good Scorpio, I’m a very passionate woman. I wondered why I had so many passions for many years while many people around me only had few. And I also did not understand why I could change passion so easily when I felt that I could no longer learn about a subject. For many and myself, I was a “weirdo.”
A few months ago, I discovered the term Multipotential Person, and my mind exploded when I understood why I felt as I described above. I’m multipotential because I can vary my passions or interests throughout my life, and I don’t need to spend a lot of time with each of them and not even leave one before moving on to the next. So if you have felt like this, look for information about multipotentials and discover this magical world!
At the moment, my passion is to contribute from my areas of expertise, learn about mindfulness and increase my network internationally in the new Social Media channel Clubhouse. I’m also learning more about digital marketing. I’m passionate about dancing and enjoying my home, which I managed to decorate from scratch with a lot of love after a difficult time of lockdown.
I always love to meet new people. So, just check my social media, send me a message, and we can have a cup of coffee or a glass of wine… I promise a nice conversation 🙂
Marsela C. Parra Roswall is a Career Club DK Advisory Board Member & a Brand Design Specialist and Marketer. Connect with Marsela on LinkedIn, Instagram @marselaroswall, or visit her online portfolio (under remodeling, ready soon) on www.marselaroswall.com
Author
Martina Popadakova
Advisory Board Member at Career Club DK
Profession Content Developer
Website www.empowerment-journey.com
Connect with Martina on LinkedIn!
