Society

Georgy Pashchenko, a graduate of the HSE School of Finance, was not afraid to leave his career in a large company and move to the EdTech startup Kodland that HSE ICEF graduates had founded. In 2022, Kodland raised $9 million in investment from a group of funds, including Baring Vostok, as reported by Forbes. In this interview with Success Builder, Mr Pashchenko shared how his HSE studies helped him solve real-world challenges at work and why EdTech is an extremely promising field.

Moscow hosts 75% of the country’s exhibitions and ICEF graduate and Exponic company head Ivan Nikolsky is certain that if not for the pandemic, the profits from this sector would attract a growing number of entrepreneurs. In this interview with Success Builder, he explained what a family business is, the challenges that small businesses in Russia face and how to boldly leverage networking connections with government ministers for maximum benefit.

Alina Akinshina earned her fourth university degree when she completed the HSE Corporate Research, Development and Innovation Management programme. She is now the CEO of Online Patent, an intellectual property protection company, and teaches at the HSE Department of Innovation Management. In this interview with Success Builder, she explains how to study in a new programme, what intellectual rights are and why innovation doesn’t always pertain to technology.

ICEF graduate Nare Meloyan is now a researcher at the Sberbank Laboratory of Neurosciences and Human Behaviour. After ICEF, she enrolled in a master’s programme at the HSE Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience and successfully used her education in finance to work in cognition studies. In this interview with Success Builder, Ms Meloyan explained how programming skills help in research, how she used an original approach to get a job and the way Sber tries to understand how the human brain works.

HSE School of Finance graduate Nikita Zubkov is certain that there are limitless opportunities for increasing margins in the industry and that students should pay more attention to the real sector. In this interview with Success Builder, Zubkov explained the difference between an industrial trader and a bank trader, why you need research skills at work and how to work hand-in-hand with AI.

When the concept of ‘lifelong learning’ becomes the norm, it is no longer in the spirit of the times to just take it easy after receiving that coveted diploma. Leonid Ilyukhin earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the HSE Faculty of Economic Sciences and now lectures in the fine arts at the Vivarium Novum Academy in Rome. In this interview with Success Builder, Mr. Ilyukhin explains how he converted mathematical thinking into artistic expression—and became an expert in the field to boot.

Maria Zolotkova, holder of a bachelor’s degree from ICEF, believes that an education in economics provides the foundation needed to manage brands on the market and be a truly effective marketing professional. She currently works as the Vice President for Brand Development at Azbuka Vkusa. In this interview with Success Builder, she explains why FMCG is the best marketing school, what a brand manager does and how to go from being a customer to one of the directors of your favourite store.

Andrey Kucherov became interested in the agro-industrial complex while still a bachelor’s student, choosing this industry as the focus of his final research paper. He is currently the head of the Department for Strategic Communications and Promotion of Agro-Industrial Products at the Agroexport Federal Centre under the Russian Foreign Ministry. In this interview with Success Builder, Mr Kucherov explained why the Social Sciences Faculty is the ideal foundation for a marketing expert, whether civil service work is easy and how Russia will feed Africa.

Yakov Barinskiy, who holds a bachelor’s degree from the International College of Economics and Finance (ICEF) at HSE, puts his degree in finance to good use in the field of crypto investment. His success running the HASH CIB crypto bank shows students that fundamental education in economics remains relevant even as fintech develops. In this interview with Success Builder, Mr Barinskiy explains why you should work in a good company before launching your own business and what the Russian authorities are doing to legalise digital assets.

At HSE University, Georgiy Sunyaev has gone from undergrad to graduate and researcher. He is now completing his PhD and has co-authored a global study on trust in vaccines. In this interview with Success Builder, he explains why a bachelor’s in economics is the best foundation for studying the social sciences, how to study a political regime dispassionately and how to speed up the vaccination process in Russia.