‘Your experience can be adapted even to extraordinary circumstances’

Welcome to the podcast, Ivan.

You're the CEO of advertising platform MGID and have also led the Ukrainian division of what was then called Group M, ad behemoth WPP's media investment arm.

To start with, I'd love to hear a bit about your route into the industry, as I understand your university degree was in something quite different.

Indeed, it was quite different.

I'm the aerospace engineer, yet I think that still my major helped me a lot in the advertising industry because, uh, in the engineering you learn how to think of the complex matters in a simple way.

So, uh, it helped me a lot and, um, the way I got into the industry was pretty unconventional.

Back in the university, I had my first job in the marketing firm back in 2009, and same year in 2009, I established my first marketing startup.

That's when I learned the hard way that you can, uh, learn out of your, uh, failures even...

Maybe, maybe not more, but not less than out of the success.

So I, I figured that, uh, establishing your own company is the good way, but maybe you, you would wanna go and, uh, acquire some experience.

That's how I, uh, landed in MGID.

I've been with MGID for a little over than 10 years.

Um, I've held, uh, different positions and basically grow, uh, through ranks within the company.

There was a time when I, uh, again, uh, stepped into the startup endeavor back in 2015, and, uh, I was back to MGID in, uh, 2016.

So, uh, it's been, you know, my professional, uh, career path have splitted parts with MGID, but, uh, every time I was getting back to the, uh, my home company.