Name: Sviatoslav Sviatnenko
Age: 22
Education: sociologist; Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Maastricht University
Profession: Borsch Ventures director of business development
Did you know? Mahatma Gandhi’s quote “Be the change that you wish to see” is Sviatnenko’s favorite one.
The information technologies industry in Ukraine is developing at a rapid pace, barely affected by economic turbulence after the EuroMaidan Revolution.
Investors haven’t stopped putting money into Ukrainian tech companies and Sviatoslav Sviatnenko, 22, may be among the reasons. Despite having an opportunity to live and work in the European Union, he decided to come back to Ukraine, for one simple reason: “I am a Ukrainian.”
“I would probably never forgive myself if I hadn’t tried to contribute to Ukraine’s development during this critical period,” Sviatnenko told the Kyiv Post. “In spite of war, Ukraine is a country of opportunities.”
During the EuroMaidan Revolution that brought President Viktor Yanukovych’s kleptocratic regime to an end, Sviatnenko took an active part in telling the world about the motivation and values shared by the activists.
He was editor of a small online blog beyondthe.eu, whose slogan remains “Thinking Europe outside the Union.” He wrote an opinion piece called “Ten Western Myths about the Ukrainian Crisis,” which was widely shared among Ukraine’s embassies in about 100 countries.
Sviatnenko said that during his master’s studies in the Netherlands, one lecturer was keeping up with news about Ukraine by watching the Kremlin PR outlet Russia Today. “In the West, there used to be misunderstanding of what was going on in Ukraine,” he said. He wanted to set the record straight.
In 2014, he was working as an analyst in a Canadian mission observing the elections in Ukraine. He coordinated the work of roughly 200 observers in the field and helped to develop an innovative mobile election observation application.
Now Sviatnenko is the director of business development at Borsch Ventures, an investment arm of high-tech company KM Core, which invests in eFarmer, UaRpa, Polyteda and works closely with at least seven other IT companies in Ukraine and beyond.
In addition, Sviatoslav sits on the working group of nonprofit SME Digital Agenda of SME Europe (Small and Medium Entrepreneurs of Europe), representing the voice of Ukrainian innovative business in Brussels.
Currently, he’s obtaining a Ph.D. in Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, where he studies the role of technology entrepreneurs in Ukraine, their values and social origins to continue developing Ukraine.
