Meet DeepL: Bringing a builder mentality to marketing, with pride

DeepL’s Global Lead, Brand Engagement, is a marketer with an appetite for building: teams, strategies, AI-first workflows and businesses. During his five years with DeepL, Eustachy (Stan) Bielecki has seen the business grow from an early-stage startup with an embryonic marketing team, to a global tech business. One that’s advancing AI research for language and innovating new solutions for enterprises worldwide. To celebrate Pride month, we sat down with Stan to talk about the importance of being true to yourself, the value of cultural curiosity, and how authenticity enables creativity, energy and the ability to make an impact.

Tell us about yourself.

I'm Stan, Polish-Ukrainian, based in Berlin. I’ve been at DeepL for five years, having joined in 2021 when our marketing team was very new and very small. That gave me the chance to help build things from scratch — from first social posts, first CRM setup, first sales pitch decks and customer case studies — and follow this all the way through to where we are now. I’d joined from early-stage startups, and that’s exactly what DeepL was. I got to wear a lot of hats, both leading teams and working as an individual contributor, which has really suited me. It’s been a wild ride, and I’m still loving it.

Right now, my role focuses on brand-building, and how that comes to life through social media, thought leadership, content marketing and more. It’s about making sure we have a strong, authentic point of view and narrative in everything we put out. And as an AI-first business, it’s exciting to explore how we can scale production without losing the flavor and perspective that differentiate DeepL.

What does "finding your voice" mean to you?

Honestly, it's been an evolution. I've always been a bit of a quirky one. I’m extroverted and say what I think, which has won me good friends and some enemies, too. Earlier in my career I kept trying to adjust, tone it down and fit the room. The more I've grown, the more I've realized that being yourself is the best foundation. It’s the only way you can do great things. That’s why I try to be the same person at work as I am outside it: good energy, positive attitude, a sense of humor and high intensity. 

DeepL operates across many countries with very different cultural contexts. Does that shape what inclusion means for the business?

When you grow globally the way that DeepL has, you need real commitment to understanding and respecting cultural nuance. There’s much more involved in reading a room when expectations vary depending on where you are. High-context cultures like Japan, China, Brazil and France interpret signals differently from low-context cultures like the US, Germany and the Netherlands. If you want to be effective in how you communicate and collaborate, you need to put in the work to understand that. 

“The Culture Map” by Erin Meyer, who spoke at our first DeepL Dialogues event a couple of years ago, is a fantastic resource for this. When you put in the effort, you can see the difference in how people respond and the confidence they gain from establishing common cultural ground. I try to live this principle, daily. When you’re moving between calls with people from Tokyo to the United States, adapting to context becomes instinctive. It's one of the most valuable skills I’ve developed during my time at DeepL.

What signals did you pick up on during the hiring process that told you DeepL might be a place where you would feel comfortable being yourself?

A lot has changed as DeepL’s grown, but what’s stayed constant within the company’s DNA is a sense of ownership and autonomy. I love getting things done. The company has always had a “builder” mentality; if you identify an unsolved problem, take ownership of it. That was true when I joined, and it's still true today. 

With AI, this bias toward action is even stronger. We can build and own so much more, and we don’t need to be limited to the strict requirements of a job title.

What advice would you give to someone working up the courage to be out at work?

Being out at work is a deeply personal decision, and every situation is different. An individual’s background, family, location and financial situation all play a part. What I can say is, there's nothing better than being true to yourself. That's the one thing that makes everything else fall into place. I tell people to keep that top of mind when they’re trying to balance what it will take to get there, with what they will gain when they do.

What parallels do you see between breaking down language barriers and the fight for LGBTQIA+ expression and visibility?

They’re both areas where we’ve achieved great things, but there’s still so much to do. Both involve working to fundamentally shift expectations of what’s possible, and how people should be able to express themselves. It’s the progress we’ve made that enables this. Marsha P. Johnson, Stonewall, the Christopher Street Liberation Day parades: They’ve all helped to make the freedoms we have today possible.

The big difference, of course, is that we’re not likely to see language barriers return once we’ve solved them. But the LGBTQIA+ community is very aware that rights aren’t guaranteed just because we have them now. Progress shouldn’t make us complacent, and that’s one of the reasons this month matters. Every June, we honour the people who fought for a different future, and we continue to march loudly and proudly for a better tomorrow. Not just for our community, but for everyone. Pride matters. Happy Pride 2026!