Anna Vital is founder of Adioma, information designer and a visual journalist at Funders and Founders. She visualizes the lives of people, companies, and ideas. Her dream is to create a visual encyclopedia of interconnected infographics. Anna holds a Juris Doctor and a Bachelor’s degree in Linguistics. She speaks Chinese, English, and Ukrainian. She applies her visual thinking method in helping people visualize their own ideas, using her infographic making tool.
Anna Vital’s Biography (Expanded)
Anna was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine in 1986. Her parents were street entrepreneurs.
She started learning English at 13 by listening to BBC radio. She first came to the U.S. at 15 as an exchange student.
In 2003, she appeared as a contestant on Ukrainian national TV show for gifted students “LG Evrika”.[1]
She won the all-Ukrainian English language competition in 2004, taking the 3rd place.[2] The same year she was accepted to Brigham Young University (BYU) with a full tuition scholarship.
She then attended BYU from 2004 to 2008, graduating with a degree in linguistics. While at BYU she started her study of the Chinese language.[3] Shorty after, she attended Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China. While in Hangzhou, looking for opportunities to speak Chinese, she starred in a Chinese talk show episode about marrying foreigners. The show was broadcast on Zhejiang Qianjiang City Channel in 2006.[4]
Vital then volunteered at a private orphanage run by the China Care Foundation in Baotou and Beijing.
In 2007 Vital won the Chinese Bridge language speaking competition, winning a nomination from the Chinese embassy in the U.S. to compete in the Chinese Bridge in China.[5][6]
Vital also attended Nanjing University as part of the Chinese Flagship program and worked at Beiten Burkhardt law firm in Shanghai and Kyiv.
She then began her studies in law in San Francisco, California. During law school she volunteered as a video blogging host, interviewing dozens of early startup founders.
She graduated from University of California, Hastings Law School in 2011 with a Juris Doctor degree. After law school, Vital organized panels with startup investors. The venture was titled Funders and Founders, later becoming an event and media company.
In 2012 Vital appeared as a commentator of Silicon Valley startup scene on the Sunday night news episode on television channel Ukrayina.[7]
Vital began organizing a series of bi-monthly startup demo shows titled Life 3.0 where she used infographics to communicate her vision of entrepreneurship.[8]
She launched a Kickstarter campaign to publish her infographic book “Becoming an Entrepreneur”. It did not succeed.[9]
In 2013 Vital lived in India and Malaysia for a year, giving a series of talks about entrepreneurship, which she illustrated with her infographics. This was the time when the idea of visual writing tool was born.
In 2014 Vital started unifying her visualization methods into timelines and grids with glyph icons and text, later transformed into first Adioma infographics. Vital is a proponent of using visual analogies to make the connection between the known and the unknown information.
Vital’s infographics frequently appear in Entrepreneur Magazine, Fast Company, Inc. Magazine, Business Insider, Market Watch and VentureBeat.
Her infographics were named in the top 10 best infographics of both 2013 and 2014 by Entrepreneur Magazine.[10][11]
Vital’s infographics have been translated into different languages. Her work is frequently discussed on Reddit.[12]
In September 2016 Vital launched Adioma, visual writing tool and infographic maker to help people create infographics using her visual writing method. [13]
References:
- LG Evrika Description (In Russian), GameSHOWS.RU
- All-Ukrainian English language competition 2004 award ceremony photo, Anna Vital’s Facebook profile, 2004
- BYU Chinese Flagship Video, Brigham Young University, 2007
- Episode of Anna’s staring in Chinese talk show, Zhejiang Qianjiang City TV Channel, 2006
- Interview in CRI Online (in Chinese), China Radio International, April 2007
- “Olympic Games approaching, foreign students struggle to learn Chinese”, plchinese.com, 2007
- Anna Vital’s interview on Ukrainian TV Channel “Ukrayina”, 2012
- “Metastasized software and Life 3.0”, TechCrunch, July 2012
- “Becoming an Entrepreneur” Infographic Book, Kickstarter, Feb 2013
- Entrepreneur’s Top 10 Infographics of 2013, Entrepreneur Magazine
- Entrepreneur’s Most Popular Infographics of 2014, Entrepreneur Magazine
- Discussions around Vital’s most popular work on Reddit: [1] , [2], [3], [4], [5]
- Anna’s interview about Adioma at #Amplify, San Francisco, nov 2016
Additional Resources:
- “This entrepreneur wants everyone to do a startup” (in Spanish), Exame, August 2014
- “How To Make Infographics In a Nutshell”, YouTube Video, 2015
- “Why It Is Easy To Start Your Own Startup”, Incitement Talks, Kuala Lumpur, 2012
- Anna’s infographics on Funders and Founders blog
- Anna Vital on social media: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram
- Anna Vital’s personal website: www.anna.vc
- Adioma, Infographic Maker, adioma.com
Updated: Feb 1, 2017