Editor’s Note: The Kyiv Post held Best of Kyiv awards from 2000 to 2010, but occasionally resurrects the awards to honor people in the community. This year, in celebration of our 20th year of business, the newspaper widened the awards to include all of Ukraine and chose five people as Best Expat of the Decade, five others as Best Reformer and five more as producers of the Best Ukraine-Produced Mobile App. The winners were selected on the basis of online voting, feedback from the community, editorial choice and concrete achievements that benefited Ukraine.
Expats of the Decade
George Logush,
president of Kyiv School of Economics
Ukrainian-American George Logush has made tremendous contributions to education and civic life through leadership of Kyiv School of Economics, one of the first Western-style professional graduate programs in Ukraine. Logush was also the vice rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University. He has also contributed to bringing investment and Western-style corporate governance and talent management to Ukraine during his leadership of Kraft Foods.
Jorge Intriago,
EY partner
Ecuadorean-native Jorge Intriago, an EY (Ernst & Young) partner, is the “people’s choice” as expat of the decade, winning more online votes than anyone else for his 20 years of service in Ukraine, where he’s been an adviser to many high-level officials in the nation. He’s also been instrumental in the success of the European Business Association for a decade. He is active in civic life as well. contributing generously to charities organized by the Kyiv Lions Club to benefit orphanages and hospitals. He is the first to admit that his advice on transparency in privatization mostly fell on deaf ears in the Ukrainian government. “They were not listening to much of what we were saying, but we kept on nagging every day,” Intriago said. He’s proud of Ukraine’s successful accession to the World Trade Organization in 2008, which he worked on with former Economy Minister Valery Khoroshkovsky. Intriago will be spending less time in Ukraine during the next three years when he takes on an assignment to take charge of EY’s Latin American business center.
Mikheil Saakashvili,
Odesa Oblast governor
Ukraine needs a Georgian-style miracle to boost economic development and defeat graft. At least that was the thinking behind President Petro Poroshenko’s appointment of the former Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, as governor of Odesa Oblast. Already, Saakashvili has made waves by articulating a comprehensive anti-corruption program, publicly taking on those he suspects of corruption and taking Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk to task for coddling oligarchs and stalling reforms. “Ukraine needs huge reforms, but also what it needs is total change of political class,” Saakashvili said in accepting the award. “We are changing things. We will have the fastest business services, we’ll have the fastest customs in Odesa hopefully by the end of this year. We need to change everything and we will change everything. We need to do three things: 1. make it very easy to deregulate totally 2. make it very easy to fire civil servants and ministers; and 3. bring in totally new people through merit-based competition and let these guys to do the job of creating a new Ukraine … We will do it no matter who tells us what.”
Natalie Jaresko,
finance minister
Long before becoming finance minister, Natalie Jaresko was a prominent figure in Ukrainian life. Raised in a Ukrainian-American family for the Chicago area, she is one of Ukrai-ne’s “original” expats, serving as the first chief of the economic section in the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv as far back as 1992. She is also a founder and former CEO of Horizon Capital private equity fund manager. Now she has been given the task of improving Ukraine’s finances – and she already did that by negotiating a debt reduction deal expected to save Ukraine nearly $4 billion in the next four years. She pledges to publicly call out corruption around her and Ukrainians hopes she keeps her promise there.
Tomas Fiala,
Dragon Capital CEO
The Moravian-born head of Dragon Capital has not only been one of the most successful foreign investors in Ukraine, he has also in recent years become more public in his criticism of the nation’s ineffectual fight against corruption and bureaucracy. He actively supported the EuroMaidan Revolution and has been an outspoken president of the European Business Association. He also has taken up the cause of increasing Ukraine’s choices of independent media outlets through his investment in the startup news magazine and website Novoye Vremya, led by former Kyiv Post staff writer Vitaly Sych.
Ukraine’s Best Reformers
Andriy Kobolev,
CEO of Naftogaz
Ukraine’s opaque and wasteful energy sector has been the source of large and illicit fortunes that have robbed Ukraine’s citizens blind for decades. If Andriy Kobolev and a new crew at state-owned Naftogaz succeed in their changes, Ukraine’s economy could get a huge boost – and Russia will lose one of its biggest tools of blackmail. He now secures some 60 percent of gas from Europe through reverse flows, is promoting the new gas market law and is facing up to the Kremlin’s Gazprom. He is credited for bringing more transparency and professional management to Naftogaz.
Serhiy Kvit,
education minister
Serhiy Kvit is already one of the longest-serving ministers in the post-revolutionary Cabinet. He has made headway in reducing the number of state universities – closing 75 and reclassifying other under-performing ones, part of a drive to reduce the number of state higher educational institutions from 802 to 317. His plan is to transform a corrupt, Soviet-style educational system into one that will command greater respect among Ukrainians and internationally, from transparent admissions to credible diplomas. Kvit also relocated 16 universities from Russian-occupied areas of the war-torn Donbas. In his previous role as president of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, he led one of Ukraine’s best higher education institutions. He promotes the autonomy of universities and has signed an association agreement with the European Union program on research and innovation, Horizon 2020.
Davit Sakvarelidze,
deputy prosecutor general and chief prosecutor of Odesa Oblast
Faced with 18,000 prosecutors who have a reputation for covering up and participating in corruption rather than prosecuting lawbreakers, this Georgian reformer is trying to mount a two-front battle against corruption – within the prosecutorial ranks and outside of it. Davit Sakvarelidze has decided to clean up this pillar of Ukraine’s “blackmail state” by hiring 700 new prosecutors and slimming down the existing service by 6,000 prosecutors. We can only wish him luck and tremendous support – considering that not a single “big fish” has been brought to trial or convicted despite schemes that have robbed the Ukrainian people of tens of billions of dollars. In this cesspool of corruption, Sakvarelidze is battling powerful interests in society who do not want to be held accountable for their crimes – and who have their representatives in the General Prosecutor’s Office to thwart investigations.
Dmytro Shymkiv,
deputy head of presidential administration
For more than a decade, Ukraine has been talking about moving from 2G to the faster 3G mobile networks. It took Dmytro Shmykiv’s presence in government as deputy head of the presidential administration to finally push through the change with a rare transparent, competitive tender. The change has improved the lives of Internet users with faster speeds. Shymkiv takes a different approach to public service than some of his predecessors – he’s accessible, optimistic and focused on moving Ukraine out of the Soviet era and into the modern one, as one would expect from a former CEO of Microsoft Ukraine. He is also pushing for more transparency in government, including online access to public information. Greater transparency alone is a strong deterrent to corruption.
Eka Zguladze,
deputy interior minister
With the Interior Ministry’s new police forces now reaching more than 3,000 uniformed patrols in four Ukrainian cities, Eka Zguladze has led some of the most visible changes in post-EuroMaidan Revolution. Many dismiss these changes as cosmetic, since the Interior Ministry has 150,000 employees that are mostly unchanged – and many would argue – still serving the same old corrupt bureaucracy. But the new police patrols are part of the post-revolutionary government’s attempt to change public attitudes – from ones where the people serve government, to ones where the government serves the people. So far, the change is working – the new patrol units are more popular, visible and responsive than their predecessors, despite their limited powers.
