Nataliya Bugayova, who served as chief of staff for Economy Minister Pavlo Sheremeta, has been named as chief executive officer of the Kyiv Post by newspaper publisher Mohammad Zahoor.
Bugayova, a native of Severodonetsk in Luhansk Oblast, will replace Jakub Parusinski, who has held the job since Sept. 1. Parusinski will be studying for a master’s in business administration at the prestigious Insead Business School in Singapore.
“Jakub Parusinski did a nice job as CEO at the Kyiv Post in a very difficult time when the advertisement budgets of the Ukrainian and foreign entities in Ukraine dried up due to the EuroMaidan Revolution and war in the east,” Zahoor said. “Jakub introduced the Legal Quarterly to add some new revenue sources and succeeded in cutting down the subsidies from my pocket to a lower extent than his predecessor CEO.”
Zahoor noted that, with Bugayova’s appointment, “for the first time in the history of the Kyiv Post” the top position is held not by an expatriate but “by a young, talented, ambitious, Harvard-trained, native Ukrainian woman.”
In naming Bugayova, Zahoor said that “first of all I wanted to break the stereotype among the Kyiv Post employees and the expat community that the CEO and chief editor’s posts at the Kyiv Post are somehow attached to expats only and, secondly, I have faith in Nataliya that she will bring new blood and ideas to the newspaper and under her leadership the newspaper will attain its goal of breaking even financially by the end of this year.”
Parusinski, a native of Gdansk, Poland, was the first non-American to serve as CEO of the Kyiv Post. Other CEOs under Zahoor’s ownership have included Americans Michael Willard, who served from July 2011 through August 2013, and Jim Phillipoff, who held the job from July 2009 to July 2011.
Zahoor, a British citizen, bought the newspaper on July 28, 2009, from American founder Jed Sunden, who started the newspaper on Oct. 18, 1995.
Parusinski joined the newspaper in September 2011, coming from investment bank BG Capital, where he worked as a financial analyst.
“Over the past three years, the Kyiv Post basically became my life. Nothing can match the thrill of hunting down stories, the pressure of a deadline, the intense campaign each Thursday night to put out the best paper possible. I have immense respect for my colleagues; it was a great privilege to do battle by their side,” Parusinski said. As for the switch to the business side, he described it as “a very different kind of challenge. The Kyiv Post currently faces two main challenges.
“Firstly, it has to deal with the consequences of a global media crisis – to essentially build a new web-based business model from scratch. I would say we’re halfway there, with a diverse set of revenue streams, but still a lot to do on the online side,” he said.
“The second is specific to Ukraine, where media have never really been a business. Oligarchs and various political forces have used media as PR machines or tools to achieve political aims, not looking at expenses. As a result, the ad market is heavily distorted and many costs are inflated. It’s an uphill battle when you’re one of the only ones without big subsidies, and I don’t see much change taking place just yet,” Parusinski added.
Press freedom has improved since the EuroMaidan Revolution, Parusinski said, but the media sector “is still suffering from years, if not decades of mismanagement, political manipulation and various forms of pressure. There’s a big problem with professionalism. That’s why the Kyiv Post founded the Media Development Foundation, a non-governmental organzation simed at helping media outlets, particularly in the regions, raise their level, become more sustainable, and serve social needs better. I will continue to work closely with MDF to reach these goals.”
Besides working in the Economy Ministry, Bugayova was a project manager at billionaire Rinat Akhmetov’s Foundation for Effective Governance, where she spearheaded a journalism training program called Impact Media. She is a former Kyiv Post staff writer with a degree from Taras Shevchenko’s National University and a master’s in public policy from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Besides business writing, Parusinski also served as lifestyle editor and then chief editor for four months until his promotion as CEO. During his nearly year-long CEO tenure, the Kyiv Post had its best financial performance since the global recession that started in 2008.
Parusinski was also instrumental in helping Ukrainians on the Kyiv Post staff launch a nongovernmental organization called the Media Development Foundation, which works to strengthen the journalism profession in three ways: investigative journalism, student internships and training programs.
The Kyiv Post’s roster currently includes 32 people, including 19 in the editorial department and 13 on the commercial side.
Kyiv Post chief editor Brian Bonner can be reached at [email protected].
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