Maria Petrenko
Sistra contributor
Maria Petrenko
Local Storyteller & Experience Designer
Santorini, Greece
Maria Petrenko is a local host and storyteller based in Santorini, where she explores the intersection of experience design and cultural identity. By focusing on what she calls 'Trust Architecture,' she examines how a destination can reclaim its narrative in the face of mass tourism, seeking out the authentic layers that remain hidden from the typical visitor.
Profile
Her story
What lies beyond Santorini's postcard image? For Maria Petrenko, the answer is found in the island's contradictions, overlooked histories, and everyday communities. Working across storytelling, experience design, and local hospitality, she explores the relationship between tourism and place identity, and the voices too often missing from that conversation.
“I'd love to explore reaching the true local stories by peeling away the mass tourism, the obvious, the simplified, bite-sized versions.”
Portfolio
Selected work
Writer
Three million people a year visit her home on Santorini. Almost none know her name.
Kadio Sigalas was Oia’s first female shipping magnate. Should her story be remembered, or just recorded?
View work ↗A closer look
Beyond the Postcard
For Maria Petrenko, Santorini is more than a destination. It's a place of contradictions, where an internationally celebrated image of beauty exists alongside the complicated realities of local life.
As a storyteller, local host, and experience designer, Maria is interested in what happens when a place becomes defined by tourism. How does that change its identity? Whose stories become visible, and whose are left behind?
Her work draws on brand storytelling, trust, and experience design to explore these questions, with Santorini serving as both home and an ongoing case study.
She's particularly interested in the women whose contributions to local culture are rarely part of the familiar tourist narrative: from craftswomen and independent entrepreneurs to the people sustaining everyday traditions and community spaces.
Rather than offering another simplified portrait of the island, Maria looks for its complexities: forgotten histories, changing communities, and stories that don't fit neatly into the expected narrative.
Through Sistra, she hopes to document these perspectives, connect with like-minded businesses, and invite travelers to encounter Greece with greater curiosity and understanding.
Looking ahead
What she’s building toward
She is currently building her personal brand and developing an ecosystem of like-minded businesses to provide branding support beyond Santorini.
Connect
Work with Maria
Open to
Maria is interested in collaborating on storytelling, place branding, cultural experiences, and projects connecting independent businesses and local communities.
Follow the thread
Meet more of the women behind the work.
