Born and raised in Ukraine, I moved to Paris almost five years ago, a city that reshaped how I see the world, and one I still call home while finishing the second year of my Master's at HEC Paris. Music was a constant growing up, thanks to my mother, a musician, and Paris later turned that early exposure into a genuine passion for art. I have become a regular at its galleries and exhibitions ever since.

My path into venture wasn't a straight line. At Ilion Water Technologies, a French deeptech startup reinventing water filtration, I worked side by side with engineers, bridging R&D and commercialization while the company closed its pre-seed round. At Ÿnsect, an agro/food-tech scaleup breeding insects as an alternative protein source, I joined the Corporate Finance team at Series D and saw, up close, how capital moves at scale. These experiences together pushed me to seek the full picture, which I found at Partech's Investor Relations & Business Development team.

What pulled me toward BlackWood was a fascination with founders and the technologies they build. It's the same instinct that, back in my Bachelor's, led three classmates and me to start a microgreen farm in a basement, going restaurant to restaurant with a box of greens in the middle of COVID. It didn't work out, but it taught me how much momentum and the right team really matter.

Outside of work, I still sit down at the piano now and then, chase Parisian exhibitions whenever I'm back, and bake cakes.