1991 Mentors

Business consultant, entrepreneur, and a results-driven mentor. More than one generation of entrepreneurs has been shaped under his guidance. CEO of FeelGoodLabs Business Accelerator.

He helps promising Ukrainian teams build successful startups.

Author of the Life Hack Day Ukraine programme, where the majority of ideas were successfully implemented. He has extensive experience in the Polish market and actively mentors teams in the right direction.

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Co-founder & PR at Fison. Co-founder and Marketing Director of the startup DataScoring.

Deputy Mayor of Dnipro, adviser to the Minister of Infrastructure of Ukraine, and adviser to the Mayor of Lviv.

Yanika Merilo is a member of the international reform team in Ukraine. She has nearly 20 years of experience in IT and over 10 years in the investment sector, and is an evangelist and driving force behind many e-government projects in Ukraine.

Yanika began her career in 1996 as a programmer and progressed from working at Olivetti to founding her own outsourcing company with clients such as Microsoft and Nokia. Since 2004, she has been managing investment companies and funds.

She has also been the founder of the ICT Competence Centre, Managing Director of the Ukrainian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (UVCA), and Director of Innovation for Lviv. Over a short period, Lviv became a hub for major e-government projects, including the introduction of electronic citizen identification, e-services, MobileID, and ID cards.

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A product manager, founder and lead curator of the pre-acceleration programme Experiment 42, co-founder of the civic organisation Startup Odessa, coordinator of startup activities and the startup scene at the annual international conference Black Sea Summit, curator of incubation programmes for the EGAP Challenge of the East European Foundation, and a regular mentor for Open Data 1991 incubation programmes.

An international expert in the development of open data at the governmental level. Head of the open data division of the project "Transparency and Accountability in Public Administration and Services". For the past 2.5 years, she worked at the Open Data Institute in London, where she founded and led several international projects under the Open Data for Development programme — Open Data Leaders Network, Responsive City Challenge, and many others. She focused on creating innovations based on open data, and supported and mentored startups from the EU and Malaysia.

Art Director and co-founder of List. Presentations Design, as well as co-founder of the Ukrainian startup Myhelix and a participant in the incubation programmes 1991 Open Data Incubator, Startup HUB Poland, and Startupbootcamp Digital Health Berlin.

• Helped attract an investor for the startup Myhelix
• Works with Ukrainian and American entrepreneurs on investor presentations
• Created advertising presentations for Fedoriv and Grape Ukraine
• Teaches presentation design at Projector School

A tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist focusing on cybersecurity, privacy, and medical technology.

She graduated from Cornell Tech with a Master of Laws degree in Technology and Entrepreneurship and has worked with, amongst others, Pfizer, Amazon, and TrustArc. After co-founding and serving as Chief Operating Officer at health tech and security startups, she pivoted her career to venture capital, leading an early-stage accelerator for cybersecurity companies supported by USAID.

Halyna currently leads cybersecurity and healthcare portfolio development for Munich Re Ventures.

She has advised over 150 companies across 30 countries, scaled teams from 3 to 300 people, and managed transactions from seed stage to $500 million USD, from Eastern Europe to Silicon Valley.

Director of Business Development at Mastercard in Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, and Central Asian countries. Yuriy is an expert in payment innovations that improve the lives of city residents and visitors alike. Yuriy joined the Mastercard team in 2012. He became one of the driving forces behind the rollout of the company's revolutionary payment technologies and solutions in Ukraine, such as the launch of Mastercard contactless payment technology on public transport, the first NFC wallets for smartphones, and the Masterpass digital wallet platform, which can be used to pay for parking, fuel, and more. Some of the solutions launched under Yuriy's leadership are unique on a global scale, such as MetroPass, which allows a payment card to be used as a subscription or travel pass for the metro.

An IT entrepreneur with over 12 years of experience in the payments industry. He has expertise in enterprise software development, building architectures and technological infrastructure for financial services, and PCI DSS security policies and methodologies (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard).
Author of eight patents in the fields of payments and information security.

He graduated from the Institute for Problems of Artificial Intelligence (2008, specialisation in "Artificial Intelligence and Automated Decision-Making Systems. Software for Automated Systems").

He validated his degree at Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic (Vysoké učení technické v Brně, 2012). He emigrated to the Czech Republic (since 2011).
He has founded several fintech companies incorporated in the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, and Ukraine.

He has participated in the development of services including Interkassa, MoneXy, WebMoney Note (WMnote), "Payment Systems", Hroshi 2.0, EUPSP, Zen Assets, PayPlug.in, and SDK.finance.

Co-founder and Chair of the Association of Electronic Business Participants of Ukraine (AEBU, 2008–2014).
Mentor at the GrowthUP technology startup accelerator (since 2013).
Chairman of the Board and co-founder of the Bitcoin Europe Association (since 2014).
Co-founder of the regular meetup for fintech startups, Fintech Startup Crash Test (since 2016).

Author of interviews on business television channels (Pershyi Dilovyi, UBR), in print publications (Korrespondent, Hroshi), and online outlets (AIN, Liga, IT Expert, MoneyNews).
Speaker at leading industry events, seminars, and forums (iForum, UaMobile, Bank Online).

Taras has 18 years of experience in banking, finance, and fintech. He was responsible for retail product development at Nadra Bank, Delta Bank, and Alfa-Bank Ukraine, managed the electronic business development division at Alfa-Bank Ukraine, and served as Business Development Director at Portmone.com.

In 2010, he founded the project Bank Online (bank-online.com.ua), which became the largest conference and events platform for the financial sector in Ukraine, hosting conferences such as Fintech Ukraine, FinRetail, FinSales, and Card Business, among others.

Co-founder of Fintech Cluster (fintech-cluster.com).

Denys is the founder and managing partner of the investment platform highcastle.co.

Executive Director of Mount Point and a licensed insolvency practitioner in bankruptcy proceedings.
In 2000–2001, he headed the legal department of the State Tax Service of Ukraine in Mykolaiv Oblast.

Denys has experience in company management in Ukraine and abroad, property management, and investment attraction.

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Denys has over 10 years of experience in FinTech. Co-founder of Interkassa, W1, and PayMaxi. He has worked with Webmoney, RBKMoney, and Monexy. Winner of Space Apps Challenge Kyiv 2017. Areas of expertise: web development, systems architecture, design thinking, and agile. Open Data Evangelist.

Ivan Istomin, CEO of PayForce. Development of digital platforms (web/mobile/NFC) for banks and insurance companies. White label mobile wallets for retailers.

Previously served as Deputy Chairman of the Board at FIDOBANK.

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Fintech expert, partner at Adecco, co-owner and CEO of Fintech Solutions LLC.

Since 2004, Anastasia has worked in banking, including Ukrsibbank BNP Paribas, UniCredit Bank, and Oschadbank. The projects delivered by her team are still considered innovative breakthroughs and have since been replicated in several countries across the CIS region.

From 2012 to 2016, she led the business development group at Visa in Ukraine.
In March 2017, she joined as a partner at the world's largest international human resources management and outsourcing company to implement global projects in the financial sector across nine countries.

In September 2017, she became co-owner and CEO of Fintech Solutions to deliver training and consulting projects in the fintech sector.
In autumn 2017, the book "Digital Era" was published, co-authored by Anastasia alongside 35 of the most influential Ukrainian and international experts. The book covers topics such as blockchain, cryptocurrencies, fintech, insurtech, APIs, artificial intelligence, and more.
Anastasia is also an author of articles on fintech topics and a speaker at international conferences.

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Andriy Alekseyenko specialises in marketing for startups. He currently provides consulting services to startups, with clients including YouTeam and Weblium. Co-founder of HankLeads.

Previously worked at the strategic agency Aimbulance, where he conducted analytics for clients such as Pepsi, MasterCard, and Axe. He managed the marketing department at TechMagic. He is a certified specialist in Google Analytics, Google Ads, and Inbound Marketing (HubSpot). He has lectured at Projector.

Areas of expertise: strategic planning, content marketing, analytics, email marketing.

Fintech evangelist. Economic and financial journalist, editor, and publisher with 20 years of experience. Participant in leading international events on fintech and innovation.

Founder of Future Communications Lab, publisher of the Ukrainian fintech and digital economy publication Future Magazine. Editor of the British fintech publication The Fintech Times (London). Partner at Fintech Solutions and team lead of the Fintechstars project (fintech education).

Insurtech leader in the Ukrainian market, ideologist and co-organiser of Ukraine's first insurtech conference InsurancNEXT'UA (jointly with the Ukrainian Federation of Insurers). Member of the NBU working group on developing the national financial literacy strategy for 2020, as well as the concept for fintech development in Ukraine.

A 2014 graduate of London Metropolitan University (MSc Strategic Marketing | Digital Communications). Kate has established relationships with major fintech hubs such as Level39 (London), Startupbootcamp (London), Lattice80 (Singapore), Huge Thing (Warsaw), LHOFT (Luxembourg), and Barclays Rise (London, New York). She is acquainted with organisers of the world's leading fintech events.

He has over 15 years of successful experience in the financial sector. Author of the ecosystem map and catalogue of FinTech Ukraine.

Chairman of the Board of the Ukrainian Association of Fintech and Innovative Companies. He previously served as Head of the Electronic Finance division of the USAID Project "Financial Sector Transformation".

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Maksym Nefyodov has significant experience in investment and corporate finance. He began his career as an analyst at the Kyiv-based M&A boutique Golden Gate Business and went on to hold the position of Senior Associate in the investment and banking division of Dragon Capital, Ukraine's largest investment bank.

Prior to his appointment as Deputy Minister in February 2015, Maksym Nefyodov was Managing Partner at the private equity fund ICON Private Equity, managing investments in Ukraine, Russia, and Europe totalling approximately $1 billion USD.

His current responsibilities include public procurement reform, the elimination of technical barriers to trade, foreign trade regulation, and donor coordination.
Maksym Nefyodov holds an economics degree from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. He is fluent in Ukrainian, Russian, and English.

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Operations Director of the SaaS programme at the European B2B accelerator Startup Wise Guys.

Andriy runs a blog on data analysis and visualisation at Textura.in.ua. Co-author of a data visualisation course on the Data Science Master's programme at the Ukrainian Catholic University.

Founder of Quadrate 28

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Works at the Public Health Centre of Ukraine. Founder of DonorUA. President (corporate title) at the All-Ukrainian Youth Public Organisation Association of Young Donors of Ukraine.

Iryna began her career in international companies 10 years ago and obtained her International MBA in 2014. She has worked in marketing, sales, and trade marketing at companies such as L'Oréal, Colgate-Palmolive, Johnson & Johnson, and Sushiya, before joining the strategy team at FEDORIV. She is an independent strategy consultant and an active proponent of design thinking. CEO of the startup Zirity, which allows users to try on glasses online.

Expert in open data and coordinator of OpenUp Ukraine initiatives.