'No One Taught Me To Be A CEO In Wartime': A Ukrainian Under 30 Speaks Out

Plus: Live Coverage Of The Russian Invasion Of Ukraine

This week I’ve had a few conversations with Ukrainian Under 30s as they watch their worlds unravel. One, Olga Kravchenko, the cofounder of Musemio, is in London while her team and her family shelter in Ukraine. Her mother, grandmother and 10-year-old sister have sought safety in an underground parking garage in their hometown of Kyiv. The scariest thing for her: “connection dropping.”

Kravchenko has largely paused business operations of her VR company, which helps children engage with museums, in order to ensure her team’s safety, but she remains resolute: “The only thing I can do is continue running the business and making sure that we have work when the war is over.”

Read on in the Inside Scoop section below. 

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The Inside Scoop: A Ukrainian Under 30 Speaks Out

At 3 a.m. on Thursday, Olga Kravchenko awoke to learn that her hometown had been invaded by Russian forces.

As CEO and cofounder of Musemio, the Kyiv-born 27-year-old has dedicated herself to bringing history to children by transforming museums around the world into VR experiences. And while she now lives in London, her family and five-person team is largely based around Kyiv. Her family, including her grandmother, spent the night in an underground parking garage.

“The scariest thing that I can imagine happening now is the phone connection dropping and not being able to reach them,” says Kravchenko. “No one taught me how to be a CEO at wartime, especially when your team is remote.”

During the pandemic, her company’s revenue soared six-fold, its roster grew to include spots like the London Transport Museum, and Kravchenko herself earned her way onto the 2021 Forbes Under 30 Europe Arts & Culture list. Now, she’s figuring out how to get her team to safety. 

“This is the scariest experience anyone could live through,” she says. “I asked people to switch on their empathy levels to the very maximum and understand that we don’t know what’s going to happen in the next hour.”

To manage, Kravchenko is avoiding the news and focusing on communicating with her inner circle, distracting herself by running Musemio. “I’m still in confusion mode, but my hopes are the conflict won’t last long and we’ll be able to come back to the norm,” she says. 

Her message to the business community: If you have Ukrainian employees or business associates, keep working with them through this crisis, and have some flexibility. "What we need most right is the support of the Ukrainian economy or support of founders and our families in Ukraine who are living through the biggest nightmare I could ever imagine."

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