Remembering Ukraine

Last night, I was one of the panelists at my school's information sessions to recruit for new students. One of the first topics discussed was the International Business Development (IBD) program offered at the school. IBD is an incredible program where students in teams of 4 are sent to various locations in different countries (many in the 3rd-world) and provide free consulting for a 3-week period. During my year, some of the more interesting locales and projects included: one team developed a marketing plan for a cross-cultural Jazz Festival between the US and Cuba (the team got to go to Havana), another team traveled to Senegal to work on Hewlett Packard's World e-Inclusion program to help bridge the digital divide, and one team helped the Mexican orphanage Ipoderac develop a 5-year business plan for its agricultural activities that support the orphanage.

I was lucky to be a participant in the class where my team was sent to Kiev (Kyiv), Ukraine (no team had a choice in the matter - it was luck of the draw and 'fit'). We helped the then number 2 wireless services provider, Kyivstar GSM, write their company business plan which was targeted for future fundraising activities. The experience was phenomenal and one of my most memorable as a student. Ukraine used to be the former Soviet Union's cradle of technology. Much of the Soviet's nuclear knowhow was developed there and it's the home to some of the best technical universities in the old U.S.S.R. With the fall of Communism just a little over ten years ago, we were there to witness a country being 'reborn'. Sure, there were stark reminders of old like the gray, drabby, plain buildings from the Communist-era and a train system that has some of the oldest train cars I've seen still in operation. Yet, I found 'living' there and going to work every day for 3 weeks to be exhilarating. I witnessed 'old Ukraine' like pensioners in the morning sweeping the streets at 7am and seeing beer being sold out of a towable 50-gallon drum or shopping inside a large airplane hangar-sized indoor supermarket. At the same time, the 'new Ukraine' was rising... like downtown where modern hotels and new business offices were interwined with old architecture and new, young, smart companies like Kyivstar were starting to sprout. I was incredibly impressed with the Kyvistar team - they were young, highly, highly educated, and incredibly smart. I recall working with the company's controller - she was probably in her mid to late 30's and was a former civil engineer. She presented to me a financial model of the company that was more detailed, better executed, and more sophisticated than most sell-side financial models that I saw when I was an equity analyst for Merrill Lynch. When I asked her how she picked up such incredible skills, she said she had no formal accounting/finance schooling but merely had the opportunity to shadow an IMF (International Monetary Fund) employee for a year prior to joining Kyivstar. Incredible. For more pictures of Ukraine, see here... http://www.flickr.com/photos/shingwong/sets/72157594254272701/

It's people like Kyvistar's controller and her Ukrainian colleagues who are incredibly intelligent, abled, and hungry that are contributing to the success of many developing countries. I also saw this repeated in China. I'm pretty sure it's similar in many other places around the world.