Ivan Petrenko – a businessman, the former Development Director of the Galnaftogaz Company, the graduate of Lviv Business School (LvBS) Key Executive MBA program – has become the Executive Director of the UCU Center for Entrepreneurship. The Center for Entrepreneurship is a business accelerator, a platform for studying and project development on the basis of LvBS and Ukrainian Catholic University.
When Ivan Petrenko was deciding whether to accept the position of the head of the Center for Entrepreneurship, he was motivated by the fact that the accelerator will work with young technological companies and promote the development of Ukrainian startups, including on the international scale.
“For the most part of my professional life I was a businessman, but at a certain moment, I decided that I want to be more engaged in socially important projects. After meeting Yaryna Boichuk, the CEO of Lviv Business School of UCU, I got really interested in the Center for Entrepreneurship, and I decided to become its head and take care of its development. The Center for Entrepreneurship is a business accelerator created to help young startups get more information and experience from mentors and professionals in the field of technology, to help the startups teams present themselves on global markets and realize their tech ideas”, Ivan says.
The first UCU Center for Entrepreneurship acceleration program starts this week, on September 29th. Ivan Petrenko says that it is only one of the Center’s strategic directions. “Apart from the acceleration program that starts this Saturday, we also have some short-term projects: hackathons where we will inform the youth about the opportunities of participation in the pre-acceleration program; pre-acceleration programs for the startups that have an idea but don’t know how to realize and present it in the right way… Also, we will constantly have meetings and lectures with practical experts who come to UCU from different parts of Ukraine and the world, in order to explore the ecosystem and share their experience”, he adds.
Ivan Petrenko singles out cooperation with investors as a significant stage in the work of the Center for Entrepreneurship; as a matter of fact, it is important, first of all, to the startups the Center for Entrepreneurship is going to work actively with: “Educating potential investors and engaging them in acceleration programs is another important part of our work. There are investors who are in active search of projects to invest their money in, and we are among those who will guide them in the right directions for investments. We want to create a network of mentors, teachers, startupers who will communicate and involve themselves and use their knowledge to make this network grow and become more productive”.
Information. Ivan Petrenko, the Executive Director of the UCU Center for Entrepreneurship. Master in International Economic Relations at Ivan Franko Lviv National University. He worked as the Corporate Clients Director of the Universalna Insurance Company, the Director of the Terrin Company that developed, launched and managed a network of A la minute and Pasta Mia restaurants and Hot Cafe sales points for the network of OKKO filling stations. Later he worked as the Development Director of the Galnaftogaz Company. For several years he worked as a consultant in sales, entertainment and restaurant business. He is the graduate of Lviv Business School (LvBS) Key Executive MBA Program.
Ivan spends his free time on active leisure in the remote corners of the planet; he likes skiing, diving and motorcycles.
