I received an invitation to join the “Blog It Forward” initiative by maybe the most passionate person about Design Thinking at SAP and who was the first one to share with me the secrets for successful Design Thinking workshops – heike.vangeel. Thanks for the invitation. What an entertaining BIF, I liked it!
Intro
“Hi, my name is Olena. I come from Ukraine! If you look at the map, you will find Poland in the east of Germany and Ukraine is simple in the east of Poland. You may have heard of Orange Revolution, and recently of the 2012 UEFA European Football Championship. Oh yes, we have our own language, it is Ukrainian. No, it is not very cold there; in summer it goes up to 35°C and in winter average temperature is -5°C. It is a beautiful place!” Here is a picture of independence square in Kiev decorated for the New Year’s Eve celebration.
When I was 19 I decided to see the life in a country with the most developed economy in Europe - Germany, which led to my study of computer science with multiple internships at Siemens, IBM, T-Systems and finally to my work as a Project Manager at SAP.
Fun picture
This is me in the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild in South France trying to move the huge vase... I believe things which seem at the beginning to be impossible to solve can be worked out when you have confidence.
How do you think the way you were raised affected your Career?
At this point, I am very thankful to my mother who has given me a lot of freedom to make my own decisions early and being responsible for the results. She was also a person who was always striving for a solution independent of how challenging the situation was.
What makes me happy?
Did you hear about Osho’s book “Maturity”? He writes “Do one good thing a day to others without letting him/her know – this will make you happier”. And indeed it makes me happy to give and help others, either participating in volunteering events, giving an advice to other people or working for non-profit organizations. The following pictures were taken during projects on communication strategy for a Brazilian non-profit organization ASMARE – association of garbage collectors and artisans and during volunteering activity in Palo Alto, USA, where we have painted the offices of the school district.
What do you enjoy most in your work and why?
Seeing that at the end of the assignment there is more than before - having created a valuable output and making customers and stakeholders happy. It gives me the feeling that I have made a change in this world.
Recommend resources of information that helped you in your work
Build a broad network, experts will help you to separate the diamonds from the rest.
What do you most enjoy on SCN?
Getting to know customers and partner’s perspective and leverage this knowledge to make SAP products and services even better. Cookbooks, How-To’s, technical materials from SAP experts are very valuable. I am curious to see crowdsourcing in context of the enterprise software on SCN.
Describe in one short sentence: "what need does your SAP solution meet" – in my original department
LVM Post Copy Automation provides automation for setup of test, quality assurance, and demo systems saving significantly efforts and time for the customer.
Do you know any other cool/very unique solutions related to your topic? – in my fellowship department right now
My colleague marco.cigaina, based in Milan/Italy, has developed (according my knowledge) for the first time in the SAP history a holistic approach for the company’s innovation management – Innovation Management Framework – and enriched it by examples from SAP and other innovative companies’ practice.
I blog it forward to
michael.fry – a person, who has the ability to recognize a positive side really in every situation and matter and has a huge talent for education
Stephan Reichart – person, who was my first manager at this exciting company and who is very optimistic and energetic
Evan Welsh – fantastic expert in Corporate Communication
nadine.gaertner – loves discovering cultures and countries, which is also my passion
michel.serie – is one of the most inspirational leaders at SAP
Questions to you - chose any 3 from the BIF blog started by moshe.naveh
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