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As part of the National Girls in ICT Day, Olesia Ulianova, founder of IT Grow Center, Ph.D. in Technical Sciences, MBA, USAID mentor, and expert in transformational management, delivered an inspiring speech about the role of women in shaping the future of technology, breaking gender myths, and creating an environment where women can thrive without limits.

Tech Is Not About Gender — It’s About Potential

“IT is not about men or women. It’s about mindset, curiosity, systems thinking, and the courage to create,” — emphasized Olesia Ulianova.

She highlighted that women today are not just part of the tech industry — they lead teams, build products, drive innovation, and reshape corporate cultures.
According to Olesia, the combination of female creativity and analytical thinking brings a new quality to leadership, teamwork, and the evolution of the IT ecosystem.

Five Myths About Women in Tech — and the Truth Behind Them

During her talk, Olesia debunked the most common stereotypes that still hold women back from tech careers:

💬 Myth: “Women’s brains work differently.”
✅ Truth: There are no physiological differences that affect technological abilities.

💬 Myth: “Women in IT only work in HR or recruitment.”
✅ Truth: More and more women hold technical, product, and leadership roles.

💬 Myth: “It’s hard for women to work with male developers.”
✅ Truth: Professionals speak one language — competence.

💬 Myth: “It’s harder for women to get into IT companies.”
✅ Truth: Hiring is based on knowledge and experience, not gender.

💬 Myth: “Women are less ambitious.”
✅ Truth: Responsibility, strategic thinking, and system-based mindset are key strengths of women in business.

The Mission of IT Grow Center

Founded by Olesia Ulianova, IT Grow Center is a space for managers and professionals who strive to combine technical expertise with soft skills, critical thinking, leadership, and personal growth.

The center conducts workshops, manager development programs, and team training for IT companies — building a culture of continuous learning.

“My mission is to help people grow in IT not only professionally but personally.
Technology changes the world — but it’s people who define the direction it takes,” — noted Olesia Ulianova.

Women Who Create Change

“When girls see examples of successful women in tech, they start believing they can do it too.
And that’s the best investment in the future of the industry,” — concluded Olesia.

💡 The National Girls in ICT Day is more than just an event — it’s a symbol of change.
Thanks to initiatives supported by IT Grow Center, more and more women are choosing IT as a space for growth, leadership, and inspiration.

As part of a Women in Tech community event, Olesia Ulianova, founder of IT Grow Center, Ph.D., MBA, USAID mentor, and expert in leadership development for technology businesses, delivered an inspiring talk titled “Challenges for IT Leaders in 2023+ and How to Overcome Them.”

The session brought together hundreds of women from across the IT industry — all seeking balance between leadership, change, and personal resilience.

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The BANI world: when old rules no longer apply

“The world isn’t just fast anymore — it’s brittle, anxious, and unpredictable.
Today’s leader must not only plan but also know how to improvise,” — emphasized Olesia.

She explained that we now live in a BANI environment — Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, Incomprehensible — where traditional management models no longer work.

To stay effective, a leader must be:
🧩 Build up — able to rebuild and create anew;
👁 Attentive — mindful of people and context;
🧠 Non-dogmatic — open to new ideas and unafraid to question assumptions;
💫 Intuitive — capable of transcendent thinking, guided by intuition and experience.

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What helps women leaders stay strong

Olesia shared key principles of open and inspired leadership:

Practice what you preach — authenticity over “being right.”

Responsibility is always personal — don’t delegate it to the system.

Don’t work with those who don’t believe in themselves — trust in the team starts with belief.

Teams thrive when taking action feels easier than staying still.

To be ready for change, you need a dose of “healthy social nonconformity” — courage and inner freedom.

“The leader of the future is not a superhero — she’s an architect of an environment where others can grow,” — noted Ulianova.

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Next-generation soft skills

During the workshop, participants explored the skills that are becoming critical for women leaders in tech within the BANI reality:
💡 flexibility and the ability to unlearn;
⚡ energy management — both personal and team;
💬 empathy that reduces anxiety and builds trust;
🎯 communication with clarity — “speak to be understood, listen to understand.”

A particularly strong response came from the discussion of the SCARF model — five basic human needs: Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness, which form the foundation of motivation and mutual respect in teams.

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The key message

“Women in technology today are not about gender —
they are about vision, resilience, and the ability to create meaning even in chaos,” — concluded Olesia Ulianova.

The greatest value of any leader lies in developing their people.
Some managers are naturally successful at this, relying on intuition and personal talent; others struggle simply because they lack those innate abilities.
So what should both types do? The answer is simple — learn how to do it consciously.

Mentorship is neither magic nor a sacred art that only a few can master.
Today, there are many modern methods and frameworks that help leaders:

• identify learning needs,

• organize and structure the mentoring process,

• apply a coaching-based approach, and most importantly,

• measure real results.

As Olena Urusova, HRD of Credit Agricole Ukraine, insightfully noted:

“Mentoring has replaced everything — coaching, facilitation, and even internal training.”

Throughout our program, we explored various development models, learned how to build both a personalized and adaptive approach for each mentee, and identified metrics to evaluate mentoring effectiveness.

Of course, we also focused on engagement techniques, methods for identifying mentees’ needs, and creating a roadmap — from the first meeting structure to ongoing mentoring sessions.

Nurturing new leaders is never easy — whether it’s a challenge for the company or for the individual themselves.
Leadership qualities take years, sometimes even decades, to develop.
Yet without strong management, a business cannot grow — and in some cases, it can simply disappear.

The first step in any meaningful learning process is to identify the real needs of people — those internal or professional barriers that currently prevent them from being effective managers.

Over the course of our Leadership Development Program for Primax and Adoriasoft, we explored three core areas of soft skills essential to leadership:
🧩 Personal skills
💬 Communication skills
🌟 Leadership skills

Participants spent nearly two years in this program — and the results exceeded expectations.
They achieved both personal growth and professional transformation, evolving as middle managers and C-level leaders.

We moved step by step — from self-management for leaders to engaged leadership at the CEO level.
Techniques of persuasion, team motivation, change management, and delegation have now become part of the new leadership philosophy within these companies.

Professional success for any business analyst fully depends on his or her soft skills. This fact is hard to dispute about, because the whole activity is built on communications and negotiations in particular.

A business-analyst is a facilitator between the two worlds – technologies and business. He helps the business to outline problems and suggests solutions, ensuring their efficient integration.  In addition, a business analyst at the product company suggests the information system for business solutions.

Here are the TOP 5 Soft Skills for successful business analysis professional by Olesia Ulianova and IT GROW Center

Self-management

A Business-analysis specialist must be self-organized. Hundreds of time estimates, deadlines and meetings fill the planner so that it is important to be able to prioritize tasks, plan your time evaluate results. You also have to be able to manage risks, so that all of the estimated agreements be fulfilled.

Public speaking skills

As a business analysis, you will have to speak a lot. Public speaking while presenting your ideas to a group of unknown people must become a usual thing. It is always stressful, but you have to get used to it. You will have to master your argumentation skills, facial expressions, gestures so that your speech will have a positive impact on people.

Active listening

It mostly comes together with speaking, because the common truth is that the best speakers are good listeners as well. It is about your ability to catch the implicit meaning of a person’s words, and understanding not only what is said, but also what was meant.  The client cannot usually clearly express his or her wishes. A business analyst namely translates a common human language into a technical one, usually spoken by IT professionals. That is why active listening techniques will be a valuable skill. 

Business correspondence

You will have to write a lot, letters, reports, other types of texts. No matter that it will happen in the language, that it is not your native one. Master your writing skills in English, learn standard phrases, as well as train your ability to structuralize sentences and letters.

Thus, try to be clear, precise, accurate, and polite.

Finally, Management skills

As a business analyst, you will have to manage people. It will not be the same thing, as a team leader of business director does, for example. Anyway, organizing meetings, managing different information channels, organizing the client’s demands and ensuring that they are going to be fulfilled, these are key management skills for a business analyst.

All of these skills can be acquired or upgraded at the IT GROW training center. Stay with us, and you will become a highly demanded professional.

No, this is not another HBO movie. Our founder of the IT Grow Center, Olesia Ulianova,  has participated in the event “The Future of IT Outsourcing: what has changed and what needs to be prepared.” In the framework of which the participants were presented the educational programs of IT Business School in Kharkiv.

The atmosphere was unforgettable. Olesia Ulianova together with her colleagues-speakers discussed
• how important it is to master soft skills competencies;
• what skills and qualities need to be developed in order to successfully start their own business;
• why communication with the client should come first, etc.

After all, the deep knowledge of the industry is not a guarantee of professional success. First of all, you should pump up your soft skills in order to get a boost, to promote your business, to beat the competitors like an expert. And even if you are like a fish in water in your business, but you don’t know how to present yourself, find contact with people or conduct negotiations, then it’s unlikely that you will be able to keep afloat for a long time. These are the facts of life.

People with good communication skills have an impressive personality. Communication is a key to success. The IT Grow Center helps IT-people to master their ability to communicate with different personalities, present themselves, freely express the intentions, conduct negotiations and, of course, come to aimed agreements. So, if you want to master the communication skills, stay with the IT Grow Center.