About me
Etien
Consultant and speaker on applied artificial intelligence
Etien Yanev is a consultant and speaker on applied artificial intelligence. He is Course Director at Informa Connect Academy, where he leads four-day public courses for international audiences in Dubai, Istanbul, Riyadh, Madrid, London, and Doha. He has trained more than 25,000 professionals across 50+ companies in Bulgaria and internationally, teaches at New Bulgarian University, and is the author of "A Compass for Digital Marketing." In 2025, he was named to Bulgaria's Top 100 Talent list by Career Show Index, in the Consultant category.
What I
I help companies make artificial intelligence part of their teams' everyday work. I don't implement systems, and I don't create dependency on an outside vendor. The work is designed so that once the training ends, people can carry on themselves.
My core work is corporate training and rollout programs for mid-size and large companies. Alongside that, I give keynote talks at conferences and corporate events, teach at university, and I run an AI community of 200+ active professionals.
How I work
My trainings aren't presentations about artificial intelligence. They're working sessions where the team works on its own tasks, documents, and processes.
The reason is practical. Training built around generic examples looks interesting in the room and is forgotten within a week. Training where someone solves a real problem of their own, in front of their colleagues, sticks and gets repeated. That's why every training starts with a conversation and an audit of where things stand, and ends with a follow-up session.
Roles and directions
Community
The community
In 2024, I founded "From Zero to AI Hero," Bulgaria's largest AI community. It runs monthly sessions, publishes breakdowns of new tools, and maintains a library of prompts that actually work. Participants in my corporate trainings get access to it.
Visit the AI community →The book
A Compass for
Digital Marketing
In 2023, I published "A Compass for Digital Marketing," a practical guide for startups and established businesses that brings together the core strategies for building a digital presence.
The road here
I was into technology before it became a career. As a teenager, I reached Bulgaria's national championship in the football simulator Pro Evolution Soccer and represented the country at the ESWC world finals in Paris.
From there I moved into digital marketing and communications in the tech sector, including at Atos and Payhawk. In recent years I've worked almost entirely in applied artificial intelligence.
- PES
- Digital Marketing
- Atos & Payhawk
- Applied AI