“I feel great about joining Procurement Lawyers, because after fleeing from war in Ukraine, our law firm in Kyiv lost many assignments. This was because the state registrars stopped working and business ceased to go on with the activities. More than half of our staff moved abroad and some of them moved to Western Ukraine where it is safer. So far, we have only 3 people left in Kyiv out of 30.
Getting job with Procurement Lawyers brought some feeling of stability. This helps me to distract from the horrible news from Ukraine and gives feel a bit of normal life. Also, this new work happens to be interesting. I closely investigate procurement procedures in Ukraine. I hope to bring knowledge about procurement procedures which we expect to start and develop soon.
I got my higher education in law back in 2001. Since then, I have studied English and concentrated in my international career. One of my first jobs was as lawyer at Telecom company and after that I joined KPMG as tax and legal advisor. Thereafter I worked in an American IT company and finally in 2013 I started my own business with few legal work directions such as contractual work, immigration, tax advisory and in some cases litigations. In 2016 I united with my future partner, and we started to hire more people. So, by 2021 we had around 30 people.
Our business developed pretty good, despite of pandemic and other shakes in Ukraine such as ongoing war in the east, which started in 2014. We had few big clients like international companies, and a lot of small businesses. But the best part in our work were people. We all became friends, had very positive atmosphere - a lot of laughs. I deeply miss them all! They all were women - in 2020 three men joined us.
The war from this year made us to be scattered around the world. We still have our common group in Viber, where we share personal news. But it became obvious, that it is for the moment completely unclear, whether we can get back together again and when. All we have now is hope and huge support from all over the world. Such support came to me unexpectedly when I liked the post in LinkedIn, where some unknown told me that there was a company looking for to hire a lawyer from Ukraine. Then Marita Iskala wrote me. I told her about my experience, and we had an interview. And here we go - I was accepted. I hardly could believe that the company that never saw me in person, sent me some new and expensive equipment to Spain, where we stay now with my 4 years old daughter. My husband stayed in Kyiv. He is not military, but men are prohibited from leaving the country.
One of my hobbies is playing tennis, which I did at least twice a week in Kyiv. Hope to find opportunity to do it soon again. I also love philosophy; I am interested in history of different religions and specific of different nations. I started to travel not earlier than 2010. This is when I visited Europe for the first time. My parents both are engineers, but we lived very modest - all four of us with my sister in one room apartment in Kyiv. So, I couldn’t afford to travel before I started working. But since 2010 I have visited several European countries, also India, Brazil and Sri Lanka. Traveling has become my passion.
At Procurement Lawyers I’m focusing on researching legal aspects of procurement procedures in Ukraine. You would be amazed how Ukraine has progressed. In 2016 the online system Prozorro was introduced, which I personally know a bit. The system was started on volunteering basis and now it is admitted of being one of the best also internationally. I have now started translating documents into Ukrainian. In the future I will be supporting also in tenders etc.”