July 27, 2026
Dasha de Varga's CV, read top to bottom, looks like a series of unrelated jobs. Café and hospitality. Bar work through the busiest service you can picture. Selling motorcycle parts and accessories on a shop floor. Assessing claims at a health insurer. Training and supervising a retail team. A spatial design degree somewhere in the middle. It is exactly the kind of history the ladder-shaped view of careers tells you to apologise for.
We think it is the opposite of a liability, and Dasha's path into UX design is a clear case of why. She recently graduated from Mission Ready and now works as a Technical UX/UI Designer on a financial intelligence platform, designing accessible, user-centred experiences for real users. The winding road she took to get there is not a detour from that job. It is the training for it.
The one constant across all those roles was people. "I've always been fascinated by people," Dasha says. "Even as a kid I was constantly curious about how people think, why they behave the way they do, and what makes some experiences feel effortless while others feel frustrating."
That curiosity first led her to study spatial design at university, where she wanted to create spaces where people felt safe, comfortable and connected. Her work explored how history and cultural narratives, particularly taonga, could be woven into contemporary spaces. But by the end of the degree she noticed something that stayed with her. She was spending more time learning design tools than understanding the people she was designing for.
So rather than enrol straight into another qualification, she went and got real world experience first. Over the next few years she worked across hospitality, welding and manufacturing, jewellery, insurance, retail, customer service and leadership. "At first glance those roles seem completely unrelated," she says, "but every single one taught me something about people, communication, problem solving, and how different environments shape human behaviour."
That is UX work described almost word for word, long before she had the title. When she finally discovered UX design, everything clicked. It pulled together the things she already loved: understanding people, solving complex problems, creativity and technology.
Dasha is refreshingly honest about the gap that most graduates feel and few talk about. She left university with a solid design foundation and still did not feel prepared for the working world.
"I had learned the theory," she says, "but I hadn't had enough opportunities to experience what working in the industry was actually like."
That gap is the reason she chose Mission Ready over another course. The programme is built around real industry experience: live projects, collaboration with companies, mentorship from working professionals, and actual business problems to solve. Dasha spent her time working alongside developers, stakeholders and clients on work that mattered, rather than handing in assignments and hoping the theory would translate.
The mentors, she says, made the difference. "They genuinely wanted us to succeed, and were always there to challenge us, support us and share their experience. Having people who've already walked the path you want to take makes such a huge difference." The people learning alongside her mattered too. Classmates became a support network, and the whole environment was built around people wanting each other to grow.
The biggest thing Dasha gained was confidence, and she is aware of how that sounds given the name. "It almost sounds cliché," she says, "but by the time I graduated I truly felt mission ready. I felt confident stepping into the industry because I'd already experienced what it was like to work in it."
That confidence is what carried her into her current role, where the curiosity about people that started everything is now the core of the job. Looking back, she does not frame the programme as a line on a CV. "I honestly haven't regretted a single day," she says. "It changed my life in such a positive way, not just because of the skills I gained, but because of the people I met, the connections I made, and the opportunities that followed."
Dasha's message to anyone eyeing a career change into tech is simple. "If you're passionate about it, just go for it. It can feel intimidating, especially if you are changing careers or entering the tech industry for the first time, but it is absolutely achievable. You don't need to know everything before you start. That's exactly what the programme is there to help you with."
Her story is a reminder that the diverse, sideways, does-not-look-like-a-plan history so many capable people carry is often the very thing that makes them good at this work. The zig-zag did not disqualify Dasha from a career in UX. It is the reason she has one she loves.