Family, colleagues and friends gathered on Wednesday to pay tribute to Jadranka Pejanovic, an N1 journalist who suddenly died at the age of 39, leaving behind a husband and two and a half old daughter Dunja.

Jugoslav Cosic, N1 Programme Director, said that when he first met her “she looked like she discovered own Atlantis. That’s how strong her encounter with journalism was. It looks like she put aside all the years of education and preparation for a different profession and strongly engaged with the other, completely new.”

Cosic added that whatever Jadranka did she did with the huge amount of love, energy and dedication and reached the top in everything.

In his goodbye to Jadranka, Brent Sadler, the Chairman of the N1 Editorial Board, had this to say: “Jadranka was a remarkable young woman whose warmth and personality are unforgettable. Jadranka was intelligent, she was extremely talented, she was kind, and whenever I saw her, she was always a breath of fresh air. She was our star at N1. Jadranka was quite simply, as a colleague told me yesterday, one of the nicest people you could ever meet.”

“We can never forget her. She will always be in our hearts,” Sadler said.

Jadranka’s close friend Jelena Radulovic talked about her as a person who always smiled, even during difficult times, who protected her colleagues and comforted them with endless love.

“I used to say that everyone should have at least one friend like Jadranka in a lifetime,” Radulovic said.

Jadranka Pejanovic graduated from Arts Academy in Belgrade. She played in several theatre productions, a puppet theatre, and several movies and series.

She stepped into the world of television from the theatre in 2008, joining the TV B92 news desk where she anchored the news and a morning show and co-authored the documentary film Untold Stories about the life of the late Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic.

Jadranka authored the show Scena (Scene) on N1 TV, covering the culture scene in Serbia and the region.

She also authored the show Net Context.

Jadranka made scores of interviews with the most prominent people in cultural and public life and was the author of several documentary reports in the series Not Investigated (Neistrazeno).

She covered the 2014 floods in Serbia for CNN, and Sadler passed on the television's deepest sympathy to Jadranka's family and N1.

Pejanovic’s funeral is scheduled for Thursday at 1 pm at Belgrade’s Bezanija cemetery.