SheLeads Breakfasts are meetings for women organized by the UCU Business School and the UCU Leadership Center. At the first such breakfast in 2026, participants worked on the Superhumans Center case study. Together with Superhumans Center CEO Olga Rudneva and international partner and lecturer Amy Kenworthy from Bond University (Australia), as well as Sofia Opatska, founder and dean of the UCU Business School, and CEO Yaryna Boichuk, they discussed and analyzed how Ukraine presents itself to the world and how much female leadership is needed in the country today. Read about the main conclusions of the meeting in the article.
In her opening remarks on women’s leadership, Amy L. Kenworthy noted that it is inspiring when it consists of three important parts: vision (when we know where we are going), exemplarity (when we demonstrate this to the people around us), and mentorship. She shared the purpose of her visit to Ukraine and, in particular, that she is working in partnership with the UCU Business School on various cases with Ukrainian entrepreneurs and the public sector. This is how the work on the Superhumans case began.
Olga Rudneva recalled that the idea for Superhumans was born in April 2022 as a response to the consequences of the war. It started as an initiative of a few people without the necessary medical experience, but within a few years it had grown into one of the largest organizations in Ukraine, with a team of over 500 people and several centers across the country.
The Superhumans center is moving from helping people with amputations to changing the entire existing system of assistance to soldiers with war injuries — through the introduction of new standards, protocols, scaling, and complex management decisions that inevitably accompany growth.
Olga noted that in the early stages of Superhumans, not only the idea itself played a significant role, but also the ability to acknowledge uncertainty and build trust. She recalled how the collaboration with the First Lady of Ukraine began, which was an important step toward international partnerships and donors at a time when the project did not yet have the necessary funding.
“At the very beginning, the First Lady played a key role — not by doing everything for us, but by connecting us with people with whom it was critically important for us to start a conversation when we had nothing but an idea.”
The breakfast participants also asked Olga how to maintain the feeling of a “small family” when an organization grows from a few people to hundreds. How not to lose values under the pressure of rapid scaling, a personnel crisis, and war?
“We can teach people processes, but we cannot quickly change their mindset. That is why culture is the most vulnerable area during rapid growth of an organization.”
This conversation also touched on leadership in conditions of acute human capital shortage. Advice was given on how to deal with this. There was also talk of non-profit organizations that cannot compete on salaries but offer meaningful work, development, and a sense of mission.
There was also a question from the participants: how does Olga Rudneva respond to international partners when they ask, “How can we help Ukrainians?”
“There are only three things we really need. First, bring Ukraine back into the media, because the world is starting to forget. Second, if you know experts who can come and work here with us, tell them. And third, just give us money. No advice. No technical assistance. We know what to do with it,” Olga shared her response.
This is how the request to the world is formulated: don’t look at Ukraine from afar, but come, see, work alongside us, and speak loudly about what you see — in the media, podcasts, and public speeches. Yaryna Boichuk took the opportunity to thank Amy Kenworthy for her active stance. This is Amy’s second visit to Lviv, and she supports Ukraine in various ways.
Read also: How has war redefined leadership? Interview with Sofia Opatska and Amy L. Kenworthy
At the end of the discussion, participants had the opportunity to ask Olga questions that concerned them and share their own life and business stories.
Finally, Amy presented each participant with lip balm brought from Australia and reminded them that despite their enormous responsibility, women also bring a lot of beauty to this turbulent world.
