A desire to bring her country into what she calls “a world of innovation” brought Croatia’s president to Waterloo Region on Monday.

Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic’s visit to the region was part of a four-day trip to Canada.

Her day started with a breakfast at Kitchener City Hall with members of the local Croatian community.

From there, it was off to the University of Waterloo’s Quantum-Nano Centre, where she met with students studying the Croatian language and culture.

“It was interesting to see a president wanting to take initiative to hear out each student inside a classroom,” said one of the students, Isaiah Thompson.

Thompson spent 10 days in Croatia last summer along with friend Paul Bendevis, whose father was born there.

Bendevis, a recent Waterloo graduate, said that he was seeing “the beginnings of a lot of cool things” happening in Croatia’s tech sector, and might be interested in working there himself.

“If God opens the door, I would definitely go,” he said.

For her part, Grabar Kitarovic says she saw a lot of things in the region that she would like to introduce in Croatia – particularly the co-operation between local universities, governments, private-sector companies and NGOs.

Croatia’s economy, its president said, is more dependent on tourism and a few traditional manufacturing industries like shipbuilding – which are showing signs of trouble.

“We cannot compete with huge ships that are built in Asia (for) a lot cheaper than they can be done in Croatia,” she said in an interview.

“We need to … invest more into research and development, but also set up the kind of collaborative effort that you have here.”

Kitchener Mayor Berry Vrbanovic, who was born in Croatia and has met with dignitaries from that country before, was heavily involved in setting up Monday’s visit.

He says “dozens” of governments from around the world have shown interest in places like Communitech, the Accelerator Centre and Velocity – and visits to learn more can lead to local benefits as well.

“It makes the world more aware of our universities (and) our businesses … which only provides additional growth opportunities and additional job opportunities for people in our community,” he said.

In 2011, Statistics Canada found that 4,445 people in Waterloo Region had Croatian heritage.

With reporting by Abigail Bimman