Name: Daria Leshchenko
Age: 28
Education: Dragomanova National Pedagogical University
Profession: CEO of SupportYourApp
Did you know? Leshchenko was selected to help represent Ukraine on a trade mission to Canada.
Daria Leshchenko has come a long way from her hometown of Zvenyhorodka.
In that Cherkasy oblast city of 18,000, 156 kilometers south of Kyiv, Leshchenko grew up motivated to succeed. That led her to graduate with an advanced business degree at 22, and to the top spot in multinational tech company at the age of 28.
In Leshchenko’s own words, what motivates her above all is “seeing results.”
Since moving to Kyiv in 2006, Leshchenko has become the CEO of SupportYourApp, a multinational company that provides outsourced customer service support for tech companies.
But along the way — rising to the position of CEO before age 30 — Leshchenko has not forgotten about Ukraine.
“In Ukraine we’re very hard-working,” she told the Kyiv Post. “Our benefits are our smart people and our mentality.”
Leshchenko started out in Kyiv as a customer service representative, working in tech. She then set out, with a group of other people, to found a separate company for outsourced startup customer support.
The project “took off,” in Leshchenko’s words, after a trip to Boston.
“I did some networking there and lived there for a couple of months, which let us launch the company on producthunt,” Leshchenko explained, referring to a platform that allows tech companies to market their products.
Since then, Leshchenko recalled, the company has grown to attract clients in 22 countries around the world.
To get to that point, Leshchenko had already marked herself out as a quick learner. At age 22, she was the youngest in her class at Kyiv’s International Institute of Management, a business school where she received a PMD in marketing. She’d like to get a master’s in business administration from a university in Europe.
She said that one challenge in managing the company was the human element.
“We have new clients every month, so when we have new clients we need new employees,” she said, adding that finding the right talent can be difficult. Out of every 100 job candidates, SupportYourApp only hires 10, Leshchenko said.
But at the end of the day, it’s all for Leshchenko and the company to succeed.
“I’m motivated when I’m growing, when I see my successes and am helping my core team and my employees to make their dreams come true,” she said.
