Olga Litkovets (Cundall): From Ukraine to International Leadership
A Ukrainian woman, building an international career at one of the world’s leading engineering consultancies — without family connections in the industry, without a technical degree, without a built-in path. Olga Litkovets’s story matters because it is evidence.
Olga Litkovets is Partner and Global Director of Business Development and Marketing at Cundall, a global multidisciplinary engineering consultancy. Over her career, she has built a strong leadership profile at the intersection of business development, marketing, brand positioning, and client engagement across international markets.
In our conversation, we spoke with Olga about the path that took her from Ukraine into international business — education in Kyiv, the move to Dubai, the transition into a technical industry without a technical background, the growth into senior leadership, the role of sport in sustaining performance over decades, and her perspective on women in engineering. The themes are universal. But the spine of the story is specific: a Ukrainian woman who built it herself, through her own work and her own mind.
How did her Ukrainian upbringing shape her leadership mindset?
One of the strongest themes in the conversation was the role Olga’s Ukrainian background played in shaping her thinking from an early age. For her, professional ambition did not begin with a job title. It started much earlier, in school, where education, standards, and responsibility were treated seriously.
“We were taught to think that we are the future elite of Ukraine, that we must develop our country and our state.”
That mindset stayed with her. While studying in Kyiv, she did not wait until graduation to start thinking about her career. She was already looking for practical work experience, trying to understand which industry and environment would suit her best.
“Very often, when everyone was on holiday, I was working.”
That sentence captures the kind of discipline that usually lies behind later career success, even if it is rarely visible at the time. Her early work in Kyiv gave her direct contact with international companies, including partners from China and Germany. A turning point came through mentorship: a strong, energetic female mentor encouraged her to gain exposure outside Ukraine. That advice ultimately led her to Dubai — a decision that changed the trajectory of her career.
How do you move into a new industry without a technical background?
One of the most interesting parts of Olga’s story is that her entry into engineering was not something she had originally mapped out. By that point, she was already working in Dubai, initially in IT. But when the global crisis hit, her company closed, and she had to stay flexible and respond to a changing market. That is how she moved into engineering-focused business development and marketing.
At first glance, this looks like a difficult transition. Engineering is a highly technical field, and Olga is open about the fact that she is not an engineer by background. Yet she moved into a role where she had to represent engineering businesses, understand technical services, and engage with senior commercial decision-makers — a remit typically filled by people with technical credentials. What made the difference was her approach to learning.
In fact, for professionals working in business development and marketing, switching industries is not just possible — it is often necessary. Moving across sectors is one of the strongest ways to bring fresh, non-standard thinking into a new industry. Every professional carries with them patterns, frameworks, and ideas from previous fields that the new sector has not yet seen. That is a real commercial advantage, not a deficit. The trade-off is that the fundamentals of business, business processes, and the specifics of each industry are not optional — they must be learned, deeply, every time. That is the essence of the profession: continuous learning, active adaptation, and bringing real value to whichever company you join.
“I wanted to be great at what I do, so I learned and read a lot, spoke to people, tried to understand, asked a lot of questions.”
This carries an important lesson for anyone working in technical industries: you do not need a purely technical background to create value in engineering — but you do need to understand the business deeply enough to speak about it with confidence, clarity, and respect.
“You have to go and learn, dig deep, and understand. You should be able to explain this to a five-year-old.”
That is not only a comment about engineering. It is a broader principle of professional credibility. In business development, strategy, marketing, or advisory roles within technical sectors, your value depends on how well you actually understand what your business does.
What made Cundall stand out as a company?
Olga’s move to Cundall did not begin with an active job search. It came through market presence, networking, and the impression the company made on her personally. She had been invited to a Cundall anniversary event by a professional contact. At the time, she did not know the company well, but after speaking with several partners and leaders, she came away with a strong feeling about the business and its people.
“I was so impressed because everyone from Cundall I spoke to, they were so passionate about what they did.”
What stood out was not only competence, but conviction. The people she met spoke not just about projects and cities, but about sustainability, the built environment, and the broader impact engineering can have on the world. When the opportunity to join eventually came, Olga already had a clear point of view on where she could add value.
“You need to be more visible in the market. People need to know about you.”
That became a central mission in her work — not business development in the narrow sense, but increasing visibility, strengthening the firm’s profile, and aligning commercial strategy with brand positioning. This is one of the strongest commercial lessons in the conversation: senior value is often created not only by doing a job well, but by seeing unrealised potential in the business and helping unlock it.
What changes when your career moves into senior leadership?
A major part of the conversation focused on leadership and what shifts when a career moves into senior roles. Olga spoke honestly about the fact that leadership is more complex than many people assume early on. The biggest shift happens when the role is no longer mainly about your own work.
“As soon as you begin to understand that this is no longer only about your own work, but about what you can achieve through your team, everything changes.”
That is a mature definition of leadership — and it reflects one of the hardest career transitions for many professionals. Being a strong individual contributor does not automatically prepare someone to become a strong leader. Each person in a team is different. Each is motivated differently and brings different strengths.
“I need to find what makes that person tick, and that person, and that person. They are all very different.”
Leading in a global business adds another layer of complexity. Markets differ. Clients differ. Communication norms differ. The way a message is received in one geography is not necessarily the way it will be received in another. Strong leadership is not only internal coordination — it is also market intelligence, cultural awareness, and adapting commercial behaviour to different environments.
One idea Olga returned to repeatedly was the importance of staying connected: “Develop and maintain your network, connect with people, stay connected with people.” For her, this is not superficial networking — it is how leaders learn, understand the market, and create long-term value.
Beneath the career, the practice.
How does sport fit into a senior international career?
One of the most unexpected — and most consistent — threads in Olga’s story is the role of sport. Not as a wellness routine or weekend hobby, but as a structural part of how she works. Across a global role spanning Dubai, the UK, Australia, Europe, and Asia, daily endurance training is not a side activity. It is the foundation that makes the rest of the day possible.
“Getting up without training would feel as strange to me as getting up and not brushing my teeth.”
Her mornings start with running, cycling, or swimming. For her, this is not separate from work — it is what makes professional performance sustainable.
“My morning session works like meditation. It helps me stay focused throughout the day and organise myself for everything that comes next.”
This is a pattern that recurs among senior leaders managing international workloads. The logic is straightforward: when professional intensity is high, mental and physical capacity becomes a real competitive advantage. People who maintain consistent training are not training instead of working — they are training to work better, longer, and with more clarity.
Olga also pointed to a structural problem in senior careers that many high-performing professionals recognise but rarely discuss openly. Demanding work absorbs you completely — until you have nothing else.
“High-level work can completely absorb you. It can take everything until you have no life outside of work.”
She referenced a conversation with a senior colleague — a partner at a large global professional services firm, in his 60s, who also competes in Ironman events. Their shared view was clear: a serious physical hobby is not a luxury for senior professionals. It is a defence mechanism. It protects health, longevity, and identity beyond the role.
“A hobby like triathlon keeps you physically healthy, in tone, and helps with longevity. But mentally it gives you something else — somewhere else where you are also achieving. That is what stops work from absorbing your entire life.”
This is one of the most underrated career insights for people moving into senior commercial roles. Career capacity is finite. Without active counterweights — physical practice, identity outside work, communities beyond the office — people rarely burn out suddenly. They erode gradually, often without noticing.
Why does consistency in sport translate into business?
What makes Olga’s story particularly compelling is that her endurance background did not come from childhood. Unlike many triathletes who built a foundation in competitive swimming or cycling at school, she had none.
“Earlier in my career, I admired the people who did Ironmans. I never thought I could. I didn’t swim properly. I didn’t cycle. I had no background in any of it.”
The shift happened gradually — partly through chance, partly through the people around her, partly through curiosity. And then, one morning, she stood at the start of her first Ironman.
“I pinched myself. I was just a regular person living in Dubai, and there I was, doing this. I couldn’t even believe I could achieve something like this.”
“We can do so much more in life than we think. We just have to find our path — small steps help us reach the mountain. Plan them well.”
The lesson she carries from endurance sport into her professional work is consistency. Sport teaches something that business obscures.
“Consistency is what makes you progress. In sport, you can’t fake it — your physical progress shows exactly what your effort has been. In business it isn’t immediately visible, but in a year or two, it will be obvious whether you have actually been developing.”
This is one of the strongest connections between athletic discipline and senior business performance. Both reward compounding effort. Both punish inconsistency — but slowly, in ways that only become visible after long stretches of time. Athletes feel this directly. Business leaders feel it indirectly, often when it is already too late to easily correct.
For Olga, sport has also become an unexpected business asset. In Dubai, cycling has become what golf once was for the previous generation of executives — a structured, repeating social environment where senior people meet, talk, and build trust outside the office.
“So many of my business connections came through this hobby. In Dubai, cycling is the new golf. The networking it builds genuinely helps me do business.”
That is a useful insight for anyone planning B2B growth in international markets. Relationship infrastructure does not always sit in obvious places. Sometimes the most important rooms aren’t rooms at all — they’re early-morning rides, training groups, or post-event coffees. People doing serious endurance work tend to be people doing serious professional work. The overlap is not accidental.
Sport for Olga is therefore three things at once: a daily mental practice that sustains performance, a defence against career-driven erosion of identity, and a relationship channel that builds long-term trust outside formal commercial settings. For senior professionals planning international careers — or for companies trying to understand how senior decision-makers actually meet, evaluate, and trust each other — that is worth paying attention to.
What inspires her — and what makes leadership harder today?
When we asked Olga what motivates her in daily work, her answer was built around growth and the desire to create something better.
“I like to look for opportunities to do better, to do something greater, to do something different, to stand out.”
At the same time, she was honest about what she finds harder in today’s environment. One of the biggest challenges in modern leadership is the dominance of digital communication. Video calls are practical, often necessary — Olga manages teams across Dubai, Australia, the UK, Europe, and Asia. But convenience does not eliminate the cost.
“Face-to-face can never be replaced by online video calls.”
Many businesses have become more digitally efficient, but not necessarily more connected. Real leadership still depends on human presence, direct interaction, and time spent with people beyond the screen.
What is really holding women back in engineering?
Another major part of the conversation focused on diversity, especially the role of women in engineering. Olga approached this thoughtfully. She did not reduce it to senior representation — instead, she pointed to a structural issue that begins much earlier: the industry is still not attracting enough girls into engineering in the first place.
Compared with fields like architecture or design, engineering is not always presented in a way that feels immediately attractive, especially when the public image is reduced to construction sites, helmets, and technical complexity. That is why many companies are now changing the narrative directly at school level.
“We go to schools and we talk to them about what it means to be an engineer.”
Representation starts long before hiring. It starts with imagination. If talented young women do not see engineering as a space where they can build meaningful careers, the sector will keep limiting its own talent pipeline. Olga also highlighted retention and progression after motherhood — many women build strong careers, then face a difficult balancing act once they have children.
“There are so many talented women engineers who are forced to choose not to work or not to progress in their career just because of the demands of children and work.”
This moves the diversity conversation away from symbolism and into structure. The question is not whether women can lead in engineering. The question is whether the industry creates systems that allow talent to remain, develop, and progress. At the same time, Olga was clear that merit remains central:
“Nobody wants to be told, ‘She got this job because she’s a woman.’ No. I worked really hard to be there.”
She also broadened the topic beyond gender — to ethnicity, socio-economic background, and access to opportunity. Many talented young people do not lack capability. What they lack is access to education, support, and pathways into major global companies. That is why internships, sponsorship, and structured support matter. The future of engineering will depend not only on how companies recruit, but on how seriously they widen access to talent that might otherwise remain unseen.
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Book a ConsultationWhat makes Olga Litkovets’s story compelling is not the title or the company. It is the consistency of the logic behind it. It begins with standards, discipline, and a strong Ukrainian educational foundation. It develops through curiosity and the courage to move countries when the path required it. It strengthens through learning, networking, and the willingness to enter a technical industry without a technical background. It is sustained by daily practice — physical, mental, social — that protects identity outside work and keeps senior performance possible over decades. And it matures into leadership defined not by title alone, but by the ability to create value through people, teams, and strategic clarity.
For women reading this — and especially for Ukrainian women — Olga’s career is not symbolic. It is structural. Each part of it was built through specific decisions, specific work, specific discipline. There were no shortcuts. There was no inherited path. The same logic is available to anyone willing to put it in.
Her closing message — spoken at the end of our conversation — brought everything back to its foundation: responsibility, ambition, identity.
“To all young people starting their careers — always look for opportunities to do something greater. Be proactive. And to Ukrainians: please remember, you are the elite of tomorrow. Work hard to build something that you are proud of, and Ukraine is proud of as well.”
Olga Litkovets
There is no shortcut. But there is no ceiling either.
About the publisher
the nech
the nech is a boutique B2B consulting firm based in Warsaw, founded by Dmytro Nechyporenko. We help companies build market strategy, develop B2B sales, and enter new markets — across Poland, Ukraine, and Europe.
Our conversations with international leaders like Olga Litkovets are part of how we explore what makes complex commercial environments actually work — beyond the slides.
