← All writing

Gerton Bejo

Gerton Bejo is the founder and CEO of Vatra, a branding and digital agency in Tirana, Prishtina, Skopje and Belgrade, and founder of Pathcode, a development and digital production company. He invests in early-stage EdTech, InsurTech and CreativeTech. UK-educated in design and communication and a former lecturer at Hastings College of Arts and Technology, he has served more than 550 brands over twenty-five years and mentored a generation of designers and creative directors.

Gerton Bejo is a designer and entrepreneur who has spent more than twenty-five years helping brands in the Balkans find their voice. He is the creative force behind Vatra’s identities, communication strategies and campaigns, and the agency’s founder and CEO: Vatra is a branding, design and digital marketing agency with offices in Tirana, Prishtina, Skopje and Belgrade. He is also the founder of Pathcode, a development and digital production company working across Albania, Kosovo and Serbia.

Gerton was educated in Great Britain, where he studied 2D and 3D design and communication, graduated in design and advertising and later specialised in art history. He went on to teach and lecture in design and communication at Hastings College of Arts and Technology, then a campus of the University of Brighton and today part of East Sussex College Hastings, while working with leading creative companies in London, before returning to Albania with a clear idea: that the region deserved the same standard of design and strategy he had seen in the UK.

In 2003 he founded Vatra in Tirana with little more than the computer he had bought as a student in London, at a time when few businesses saw the need for a logo, let alone an agency. Over two decades the agency has grown into one of the reference creative studios of the Balkans, serving more than 550 brands and connecting them to a market of some 55 million consumers across Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Serbia. Gerton has long argued that the region should be treated as one common market. For years he has also mentored young people in design, and Vatra has become an academy for creatives: designers and creative directors who started there now work across Albania and abroad.

Four years ago he founded Pathcode to build what agencies alone could not: software, platforms and digital products. Pathcode develops and holds the intellectual property of several proprietary platforms, bringing Vatra’s understanding of people together with engineering. As a venture investor he backs early-stage founders in EdTech, InsurTech and CreativeTech.

Gerton writes and speaks about creativity, copyright and the role of artificial intelligence in creative work. His view is simple: technology is a tool, and the people who lead it will be those who keep their human vision. He has spoken at Digital Day in Belgrade, Future2Tech and INNVEST Summit in Tirana.

Writing