Iryna Markina

Director of Sales – Private joint-stock company “USH Insurance Company”

Warsaw, Poland, Iryna is originally from Ukraine and currently living in Poland. With 16 years of experience in sales and management, she is leading a sales department at a Ukrainian insurance company. As someone with a thirst for knowledge, Iryna was looking for professional development opportunities when she came across UNITAR’s Bolstering Livelihoods training programme. Describing her participation in the training at this point in her career as “invigorating”, Iryna has inspired her colleagues by applying the newly acquired digital skills to transform her working approach, which has created concrete business outputs. 

“The programme has reshaped how I approach my work. I’ve integrated new tools and techniques into my daily tasks, which has improved my problem-solving abilities. The knowledge I gained has made me more adaptable and better equipped to handle the challenges of today’s business environment.”

The courses on Data Analytics and GIS enabled her to work from a more data-driven perspective, which improved her efficiency and gave her greater confidence in tackling complex problems. In her final project as part of the training, Iryna conducted an analysis of the Ukrainian insurance market and examined the impact of the 2022 military actions. This helped her identify market trends and determine which insurance companies were likely to exit the market due to the challenging economic environment. With such information, she proactively recruited experienced agents from these companies, who brought in new clients, contributing to a 12 per cent revenue growth despite a reduced range of insurance products. This strategic move allowed her company to maintain and even increase business volume in a time of significant market contraction. Client retention also improved because the company was able to provide more customized products based on data-driven insights. 

Despite some initial scepticism and resistance to change, concrete improvements in business outputs have inspired Iryna’s supervisors and direct reports to be more data-driven in decision-making. This support, together with the existing infrastructure at the company has allowed Iryna to apply her skills and knowledge to the company’s advantage. However, she also recognized persuading colleagues who are used to traditional decision-making approaches is a process and that gathering data under increasingly difficult geopolitical circumstances can be quite challenging. 

Iryna considers that the course has the potential to provide Ukrainian women with key skills in the finance, technology, and insurance industries. As a professional in a senior leadership position, she recommends the programme organize mentoring activities to stimulate exchange between junior and senior professionals.

Natalia

Psychologist

Mikolaiv, Ukraine, Natalia is a Ukrainian psychologist who moved to Poland in June 2022. There, she worked as a career counsellor at a livelihood centre for Ukrainian refugees. In October 2023, Natalia signed up for the first phase of the UNITAR Bolstering Livelihoods training programme, specializing in Data Analytics, to complement the skills required for her job at the time and to look for potential new employment opportunities. While Natalia has now moved back to Ukraine and has her private practice, she was able to integrate the knowledge and skills learned during the programme in her previous job.

While working as a psychologist, Natalia realized the importance of IT skills. In her daily job, her main responsibility was to provide counselling support to clients. However, she also needed to provide management support in terms of entering and analysing data and generating reports. For this, the Excel and statistical analysis skills gained during the programme came in handy. Before attending UNITAR’s training, Natalia had very basic Excel skills and mostly used Excel to work with text. After the training, she knew how to work with numbers using Excel formulas, had a better understanding of statistical principles and was able to generate reports from the available data alongside her leadership. These skills were very valuable in helping her team gather insights on their clients’ demographics and treatment progress, which helped the team to cater to and adjust interventions to meet the specific needs of the clients. Natalia’s newly acquired skills in data analytics also filled an important gap in her team because most of the other psychologists did not have these skills. 

In the field of psychology, practice is important but so is research. Psychologists rely on data to make sure their approaches are evidence-based and in turn, through practice and continuous research, contribute to the pool of evidence that informs good practices in the field. Therefore, working with data is a valuable skill for psychologists to work more effectively and to contribute to the growing body of research in their respective fields. For the final project as part of the training, Natalia conducted a small study on the happiness index of the population of Ukraine to understand the different factors that affect Ukrainians' happiness, using secondary data and analysing it with the data analytics skills she acquired during the programme. Natalia believes this has been a good experience to prepare her for future research, that would contribute to her professional growth. 

Natalia values the learning from the programme and the advantages it gave her over other team members in her past job. She only wishes the programme would have been longer to have enough time to digest each of the modules covered during the first phase she attended.

Mariia Markina

Chartering broker, Seazam Maritime Ltd

Warsaw, Poland, At the time of joining the programme, Mariia was working in the maritime shipping industry as an Operations Project Manager, coordinating complex logistics processes including searching for suitable shipping carriers, managing and ensuring safe and successful transports of cargoes. She signed up for the Cybersecurity track, as she realized the importance of data security in the shipping industry where a high amount of clients’ information is involved.    

Right after the training, Mariia was able to apply her knowledge and skills in cybersecurity directly in her work by implementing stricter cybersecurity protocols for managing data and communications. She initiated the use of two-factor authentication for a project management system, which enhanced secured access to information about cargo, shipping routes, and clients. Mariia also collaborated with the IT department to create regular backups of key data and monitor systems for potential threats. These measures helped prevent operational downtime and increased trust from clients and partners.  

Three months ago, Mariia started a new job as a chartering broker, working for a company specializing in ship chartering that organizes international maritime transportation in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. She continues to apply cybersecurity knowledge in her current role to protect data related to transactions, contracts, and commercial proposals. One example includes implementing secure communication channels for negotiations and document exchange with clients. This is especially critical in an environment where confidentiality and the speed of information transfer directly affect the outcomes of business deals. Additionally, Mariia worked with IT specialists to implement a Client Relationship Management (CRM) system that incorporates modern data protection methods, which helped streamline client management processes and minimized the risk of unauthorized access to commercial information.  

Mariia stressed how important it is to get support and commitment across different departments for cybersecurity measures to be implemented effectively.  For this, she initiated a cybersecurity training programme for her colleagues where she shared information and showed specific examples of how cybersecurity measures can help the company prevent data leaks and reduce the time needed to eliminate cyberattacks, which have recently become an issue with Ukrainian shipping companies.  

Having participated in a few different training programmes, Mariia was particularly impressed with the Bolstering Livelihoods training programme. For future improvement, she suggested the inclusion of a larger pool of companies at the employment forum, more internship opportunities for inexperienced participants and a more rigorous filtering process to make sure participants have equal levels of knowledge at the start of the programme.