Business consultant talks about life in Kyiv and helping promote democracy in Ukraine
Ivan Lozowy immediately recognizes me as a journalist outside the entrance to Coffee House because of the notebook in my hand. He is a quick thinker and fast talker, betraying his New York upbringing with the direct, urgent stream of facts and analyses tumbling off his lips.
The legally trained consultant arrives in a white shirt and suit but no tie, a mix of laidback formality that allows him to speak eye-to-eye with a member of Parliament and earn enough trust for the MP to feel comfortable sharing private information.
On the lookout
Although he has a law degree from New York University and mastered international and European law at the University of Paris at Assas, Ivan has spent the past four years in Kyiv as a business consultant.
He goes on to explain that he provides information to western companies considering major deals with Ukrainian businesses and businessmen. Working for Western consultancy firms AI Information Network and Amber Global Consulting, the self-proclaimed “private detective” compiles confidential reports for clients whose identity he does not even know.
Having lived in Kyiv since 1991, Ivan has plenty of friends in the business community.
“I know a lot of people… and they have no qualms about telling me everything that they know,” he says candidly. Early experiences working in the Ukrainian government taught him how to gain access to information. As a freelance journalist, he flashes his press pass from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to draw attention to his queries. Lozowy is creative when it comes to collecting material and will resort to “any way I can that’s legal,” he says.
“My advantage is double – I know the western world approach and mindset, and I know the Ukrainian business environment very well. That allows me to address precisely what the western client needs in terms of information, but get information that otherwise is inaccessible,” he says.
Movement toward democracy
Ivan Lozowy first set foot in Ukraine in May 1990, traveling with an analyst from the Heritage Foundation, where he was working as a research assistant.
“It was 2 months after the first semi-free elections, and we met, like, everybody,” he says, listing prominent players in the country’s independence movement.
In early 1991, Lozowy met Mykhailo Horyn, then Chairman of the Secretariat of Rukh, the Popular Movement of Ukraine, in Washington, D.C., and arranged for him to give a lecture about building an independent Ukraine.
“I asked him if I could come to work for Rukh,” recalls the savvy go-getter, and Horyn agreed. On March 10, 1991, Lozowy was back in Kyiv for good.
“I knew I wanted to come over here but those two brief visits told me only one thing, which is that I didn’t know what the hell was going on. I barely knew the language, it was a very strange place,” says Lozowy, who is grateful to have arrived with a language base of “Diaspora Ukrainian.”
He worked for Rukh until the party split apart in 1999. In 1995, he was among the founders of the Institute for Statehood and Democracy, an NGO, developed on Rukh’s initiative, devoted to public policy research and sharing democratic values and the idea of Ukrainian statehood.
“Right now it’s an institute that unfortunately… I run myself,” Lozowy admits. “There should be a board with sponsors. I should be responsible to somebody, but nobody sponsors it; nobody helps unless I ask.” Officially executive director, he handles both raising money and implementing projects.
Ivan admits that the Institute – which used to analyze legislation, encourage policy debate, and publish articles drawing attention to issues like Ukrainian language and censorship – has not been very active in the last 4-5 years. It is currently located in a one-room office and staffed by two locals.
“At our peak… we had 6 people working here besides myself,” says the director.
What’s next? “I have to restructure. I definitely am going to streamline the board of directors… and move to the post of president,” Lozowy says, adding that he needs to find a talented executive director and rewrite the charter. He hopes to start building a solid foundation with money from private sources in Ukraine. He stresses the need to “make it clear that the position of the Institute isn’t going to be purchased at the expense of the donations that are made.”
Change of state
In addition to his roster of professional activities, Ivan has a wife and two daughters, aged 4 and 8. Although his mother, who still lives in New York, encouraged him to teach his daughters English, the girls attend Ukrainian school. “I figure the main thing is for them to study well,” he says, adding that this is the one of the most important values his parents gave him.
Ivan is unique among Kyiv’s international citizens in that he’s technically no longer an expatriate. He was sure he wanted to change his citizenship shortly after independence and began researching the procedure in 1993. However, he admits, “I wasn’t in a hurry because this was a momentous decision. I knew that if I changed, I would never go back… It would simply be too embarrassing.”
In 1997, when he finally took an oath of renunciation at the U.S. embassy, Lozowy recalls getting strange looks from his witnesses. The ambassador simply wished him, “Good luck!”
Ivan’s siblings, who remain in the U.S., do not share his passion for Ukraine. “Where it comes from, I don’t know,” muses the American-born Ukrainian. “I explain to Ukrainians that I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s no less real – the need to be here.”
He is still sharply critical of widespread corruption here.
“It’s amazing to me that the country’s even progressing as it is. It’s a sign of two things. One is good fundamentals, educated workforce, raw materials. And secondly, how far the economy plunged after the Soviet collapse that we’ve seen growth at all,” he says wryly.
When talking about Ukraine’s potential for development, Ivan notes, “I think the fact that is underestimated by a lot of people in Ukraine and outside is the national factor, this very strong deep and bright undercurrent that flows through this country.” He hopes to bring out his argument in a scholarly book on policy for Ukrainians. Stopping to recall how the path his life has taken is intertwined with the major events in the formation of this young country, Ivan smiles inwardly and says, “I don’t get a high out of it, but I feel that I should.”
