Dessislava is the co-CEO of Saint and Sofia, the brand she co-founded with her husband Malcolm Bell in 2020.
She’s also one of Ernst & Young’s Winning Women and Management Today’s 30 under 30. In 2012, Dessislava won the National Business Award for E-Commerce Strategy for Zaggora, her first ecommerce venture.
Saint and Sofia is a passion project for Dessi and Malcolm, designed to deliver better value fashion in a seriously sustainable way. Dessi believes that quality fashion has become too expensive and too many brands are wasteful in their production and packaging. Saint and Sofia offers luxury quality fashion at fair prices enabled by its lean supply chain and direct relationship with its customers.
Dessi has been a contributor to the Huffington Post, Good Web Guide and has recorded Podcasts for Seedcamp, the venture capital fund. She’s been featured in the Financial Times, Sky News, ABC’s Good Morning America, Sunday Times and Reuters.
Dessislava studied at the London School of Economics, graduating with Honors in 2005. Before entrepreneurship, Dessislava worked at the investment bank JP Morgan in the Debt Capital Markets Team from 2006 to 2011. She lives in Chislehurst, South East London with Malcolm and their two young children.
